Frankie Knuckles, a pioneer of house music who mixed records for the likes of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, died at the age of 59, news reports said early on Tuesday.
His death was confirmed by his longtime business partner, Frederick Dunson, the Chicago Tribune reported.
'Fame and glory'
"I witnessed that caper that Steve Dahl pulled at Disco Demolition Night and it didn't mean a thing to me or my crowd," Knuckles told the Tribune. "But it scared the record companies, so they stopped signing disco artists and making disco records. So we created our own thing in Chicago to fill the gap."
By the late 1980s, Knuckles and many of his peers were stars in Europe's emerging rave scene.
Knuckles joked that he could walk down the street in Chicago and not be recognised, yet be mobbed by upon arriving at European airports for DJ gigs.
"I wasn't frustrated by that, not at all," he said. "I'm not the kind of person that lives for fame and glory. If I've got a nice, clean home and can put a meal on my table and can entertain my friends, I'm fine. I don't need to see my face plastered everywhere," the Tribune quoted him as saying. – AFP