Who coined the phrase Acid Jazz? Ask Gilles Peterson ... He said
"I was with Chris Bangs at one of Nicky Holloway’s nights. One room, five DJs, 1,000 people. Paul Oakenfold was before us. He was wearing a smily t-shirt and on it was ‘Get on one matey, acid’. Everyone was going nuts listening to acid tracks by Phuture. Chris Bangs and I were like, ‘Fucking hell, this is wild, what are we going to play? We’re on next’. There was a fusion of rare groove, acid house and growth in club culture that was making it quite an interesting period. Oakenfold left everyone in rapture, we put on this old 7-inch by Mickey & the Soul Generation which was a rare groove record with a mad rock guitar intro and no beat. I started vary speeding it so it sounded all warped. Chris got on the microphone and said, ‘If that was acid house, this is acid jazz’. That’s how acid jazz started, just a joke. That was really where acid jazz became acid jazz, it wasn’t a music form, it wasn’t anything, it was just a joke to counteract acid house. By calling our thing acid jazz we actually created a name for what we were doing that was contemporary with the acid house scene.
‘Within a few months of acid house happening, we were putting on parties of our own called Cock Happy. We were doing the acid house thing but to a different soundtrack. All the people who were the key people in acid house, the first prophets of that scene and that lifestyle, they were all regulars at my clubs."
LISTEN TO THE FEATURE ON ACID JAZZ FROM GILLES PETERSON'S RADIO SHOW
GILLES PETERSON COPYRIGHT RADIO 1 / SOMETHING ELSE
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London in the mid 80s had a thriving warehouse party scene and a lot of club nights. They ran the spectrum of music from upfront soul to hip hop but there was a strong liking of old funk and soul which eventually became labelled as Rare Groove. In the south east this became popular enough to propel the likes of Maceo and the Macks‘ Across The Tracks into the national charts. However there was really nothing happening outside the capital and when black America’s latest discovery hit these shores with a vengeance it all but wiped out rare groove.
Its prevalence also almost wiped out another one of London’s clubbing experiences - jazz dance. However with their eyes on the main chance DJs Chris Bangs and Gilles Peterson started playing funky jazz, a touch of soul and hip hop instrumentals alongside their more normal latin and soul jazz grooves and called it ‘acid jazz’. With clubs such as the Cock Happy and Talking Loud at Dingwalls they attracted not just their old following but a bunch of renegades from rare groove and in fact anyone who didn’t want to bow to the tyranny of the 4/4 beat.