BE YOURSELF
Born and raised in the suburb of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, Danny Tenaglia grew up in a typical Italian-American family. As a child he played some guitar and saxophone, but hated school and would cut classes to visit the record shops of Manhattan. It’s no surprise, then, that Danny dropped out of school as soon as he could, at the age of 17, much to the dismay of his parents.
Yet by this stage his DJ career was already well under way. At 13 he received a DJ mixtape from a friend and, astounded by this first exposure to mixing, young Danny rang the number on the tape and ended up selling tapes for the DJ responsible, Paul Casella. He began to buy records, too, mostly Motown, Philadelphia soul and – as this was the seventies – disco. He played his first club gig in Bayside, Queens at the age of 14 and worked the mobile disco circuit before landing his first residency at a roller disco in the late seventies.
From there, Danny played various Manhattan clubs and spent his free weekends hanging out at the newly-opened Paradise Garage, the legendary New York warehouse club that has proved so inspirational to so many DJs, observing master DJ Larry Levan at work. But in 1985, tired of endless gigging around New York, Tenaglia felt he wasn’t making the progress that he deserved and moved to Miami, Florida where he took up a residency at a gay after hours club called Cheers playing a blend of New York garage and early Chicago house.
It was in Miami that Danny made his first forays into the studio and he scored an underground hit in 1988 with his first release, Waiting For A Call, released under the name of Deep State. He followed this with a hip-house track, Everybody Get Down, and cut a remix of Double Dee’s Italian piano house anthem Found Love with Ralph Falcon - later to form the influential house production duo Murk.
Tenaglia returned to New York in 1990 and threw himself into studio work, releasing several influential club hits, like Soulboy’s That Harmonica Track, The Look’s Glammer Girl, Code 718’s Equinox and, working with keyboardist Peter Daou as The Daou, producing tracks like Surrender Yourself, Give Yourself To Me and Are You Satisfied? Tenaglia was part of a small group of largely NYC-based producers and DJs (others included Junior Vasquez, Murk and Deep Dish) who between them were helping to shape a different house sound: long, deep, dark and dubby, with tough, tribal rhythms and riffs inspired by techno and attitude-heavy vocals drawn from house and garage.
Tenaglia’s early nineties signing with Tribal Records proved to be a turning point in his recording career. He’d already built a solid name for himself on the house underground, but it was 1992’s Bottom Heavy single and subsequent Hard & Soul album which really broke him on the worldwide stage. His international profile rocketed and he found himself in demand for foreign bookings, although at the time he still found it hard to get a gig in the USA.
His studio career since then has gone stratospheric and today Danny has over two hundred production credits to his name. He’s released several more successful solo singles, most notably Music Is The Answer and Elements, and another solo album, 1998’s Tourism. The list of records he’s remixed could fill a telephone directory, but amongst those who’ve come looking for a slice of the trademark Tenaglia sound are Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, Blondie, Cher, East 17, Faithless, Garbage, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Jamiroquai, Lisa Stansfield and, er, Right Said Fred and Bette Midler, as well as a host of underground house releases.
Tenaglia’s first residency after arriving back in New York was at The Roxy, but at this point we should explain that a residency in New York is not the same as a residency in the UK. Here, the term ‘resident DJ’ has come to mean the guy who warms up for the guest for a couple of hours while the club fills up. In New York, the birthplace of modern club DJing, a resident DJ is something very different indeed. Disco tradition in the US dictates that one DJ plays the whole night, from start to finish. That’s how it was for great DJs like Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage, New York, Frankie Knuckles at the Warehouse and Ron Hardy at the Music Box in Chicago. A residency is therefore of crucial importance to many US DJs, which goes some way to explaining Danny’s infamous verbal feud with Junior Vasquez, widely covered in the dance press in the mid-to-late 90's
