
Song: Mister Magic
Artist: Grover Washington Jr.
Year: 1975
Album: Mister Magic
Genre: Jazz
Style: Fusion Jazz
Pictured: LP
Click Here to Play the Song
A while back, song #350 to be exact, I wrote a bit about jazz fusion music. The verdict at the time was that the Blackbyrds don’t qualify. Today’s artist, and song, however, most certainly do embody the traits which fuse jazz music with rock and soul. Grover Washington Jr. was a master of the artform, and his smooth, jazzy saxophone is the perfect counterpoint to Bob James’ groovy playing on the Fender Rhodes and Gary King’s inimitable bass line. If you aren’t sure what jazz fusion music is, click the album above and after 9 minutes and 2 seconds, you most certainly will.
Besides being a fantastic song, this track also reminds me of one of my DJ idols. Like most who were fans of rap music in the ‘80s, I associate this song with radio DJ John Rivas, who went by the name Mr. Magic. For obvious reasons he made this his theme song. He was a significant figure in the growth of hip hop, and a champion of the artform in its early days, as rap was beginning its transition from being solely a live performance art to one that was more commonly heard in prerecorded form, on a vinyl record. His show, Mr. Magic’s Disco Showcase, began airing on WHBI in 1979, and it was the first commercial radio show dedicated to hip hop. If the name throws you, keep in mind that in 1979, and into the early ‘80s, the term hip hop didn’t yet exist. Rappers still referred to their music as disco, which at the time meant more along the lines of “loud dance music played at a party,” and took on many forms, including what we now think of as hip hop.
Radio was very different when Mr. Magic started broadcasting. This was before one or two multinational conglomerates owned nearly every radio station in the US, and a corporate team determined what songs were to be played, which is the case today. In the 1970s, most radio stations were independently owned, and each DJ chose the songs he played for the audience. This was also the era of public-access radio. In New York, anyone who wanted a radio show could buy time, if a slot were available, from a public-access station. WHBI was such a station, and Mr. Magic paid $75 an hour for a late night slot. It turned into a lucrative gig— as Mr. Magic gained popularity he began charging advertisers $100 a minute for airtime on his show— but initially it was a labor of love. Mr. Magic loved rap music, and he shared that love with the city of New York. His contribution towards the continuation of the artform cannot be understated.
That’s all you get for today, but as a parting gift, here’s one of very few existing recordings of Mr. Magic’s show on WHBI:
The show aired on October 10th, 1981, and not only will you hear Mr. Magic talking over today’s song, he’s describing some time he spent on the set of the film Wild Style. That film, released in 1982, is today a classic, and contains some of the only filmed footage of the legendary artists who founded hip hop, including an amazing scene of Grandmaster Flash, in his mother’s kitchen, demonstrating his turntable wizardry. If you’ve never seen Wild Style, I recommend you do so, even if you aren’t a fan of hip hop.