Trax Records
The Chicago label at the origin of house: cheap pressings, foundational tracks.
What you're really asking
You're asking about Trax Records, as close to the origin of house music as any single label gets. Its pressings were famously cheap and noisy, but the tracks are foundational: the jack, the acid, the first vocal anthems.
The label is the thread through Chicago's defining years.
Where it sits
Trax ran in Chicago from the mid-eighties under Larry Sherman, pressing records by Marshall Jefferson, Adonis, Phuture, Frankie Knuckles and Larry Heard. The quality control was poor and the business notorious, but the catalogue holds Acid Tracks, Move Your Body, Your Love and much of the music's founding vocabulary.
The scene
Who: Marshall Jefferson, Adonis, Phuture, Frankie Knuckles, Larry Heard, Farley Jackmaster Funk and the Trax circle. Label: Trax Records, Chicago.
What: jack tracks, acid, and the first house anthems. How a record gets in: it is a Trax release or from its founding circle, not any Chicago house record.
The leading records
Phuture
Acid Tracks
1987
Adonis
No Way Back
1986
Marshall Jefferson
Move Your Body / Dub Your Body
2001
Mr. Fingers
Can You Feel It '99
1999
Frankie Knuckles
Your Love
1987
Virgo
Free Yourself
1986
Jungle Wonz
The Jungle
Trax Records · 1986
Read more →
Farley Jackmaster Funk
Love Can't Turn Around
1986
Armando
The New World Order
1993
Mr Lee
Pump Up London
1988
Oddballs
Keep digging
- Start with the acid foundations
- The first vocal house anthems
- Larry Heard and Mr. Fingers on Trax
- Trax versus the other Chicago labels