Chicago house and ghetto house pioneer DJ Deeon is in the hospital, according to a post and photo from his Facebook account.
In hospital, amputation, Pneumonia, NOW icu
With heart infection
Wishing you well
AND ASKING FOR PRAYERS PLEASE 😊🙏👑
DeejayDeeon Boyd
A further post from the “admin” asks to “please continue to send your support with your comments. He sees them all. Meanwhile, here are some tracks he recently released.”
Deeon is a bona fide Chicago legend, a man who went from spinning records at parties in the projects and the El Rukn temple in the early 1980s to being name-checked by Daft Punk and playing around the world, collaborating with three successive generation of dance music artists.
He’s also been through way more than any man should have to face in the way of health challenges, some of which he’s opened up about with 5 Mag over the years.
“Last year I did an interview with Lil’ Louis,” he told 5 Mag’s Rees Urban in a 2013 cover story, “and we discussed some factors in my life including my bout in 2002 with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which I was diagnosed in my fourth stage. Well after a year of chemotherapy, I beat that. Praise GOD. Just before Louis left he turned to me and said, ‘You are no longer a survivor, you are alive. Time to start living.’ And I took that and said that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Later he was diagnosed with heart disease and a recurrence of lymphoma, and what he described as “mini-strokes” in September and November 2019.
Using an 808, a 606 and a sampler, Deeon made what he called “minimal ghetto beat tracks” and recorded them to cassette, while selling mixtapes at parties. “But eventually the Feds shut that down, so back to the streets I went. From there I sold tapes under my building and eventually to the Chinese clothing stores. That’s how it started for me.”
Deeon released some of the most choice records to appear on the legendary Dance Mania label, including “Work This MF” and “Let Me Bang.” His music has been repeatedly rediscovered by successive generations of electronic music artists attracted by a brilliant musical mind that has created some of dance music’s most devastating dancefloor records.
Deeon’s page admin posted a link to Housoholic 2, his latest LP on Bandcamp. The money certainly goes to the man who made it.
Update: A gofundme to support DJ Deeon is up…
