Before Laveda Jones: Kelvin's Memphis Musical Diary

As remembered by Kelvin, brother of Laveda Jones

Growing Up in a City That Lived and Breathed Music

Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, music wasn't simply something we listened to. It was everywhere. It came through the radio, spilled out of cars, filled neighborhood gatherings, and echoed through the streets.

Memphis had already given the world blues, gospel, soul, and rock and roll. But the Memphis I remember was changing. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, funk, disco, and rhythm and blues were transforming the city's musical identity.

I didn't understand musical genres, recording techniques, or the cultural significance of what I was hearing. I just knew what moved me.

And what moved me was rhythm.

There was something irresistible about a powerful bass line, a driving drumbeat, and a vocalist who seemed to become part of the percussion.

Long before my younger brother Laveda Jones was born in 1997, I was absorbing the musical influences that would eventually become part of our family's musical story.

WDIA: The Radio Station That Helped Define My Musical World

WDIA, broadcasting from Memphis at 1070 AM, was an institution.

The station had made history in 1948 by becoming the first American radio station to direct its programming toward Black audiences. Over the following decades, it helped shape the musical tastes of generations of listeners.

By the time I was growing up, the sound had evolved.

Soul music was still important, but funk was taking over my attention.

The Bar-Kays, the Gap Band, Parliament-Funkadelic, Rick James, the Commodores, Lakeside, Zapp, and countless others were creating music that seemed to place the rhythm section front and center.

One recording that stands out in my memory is Frankie Smith's "Double Dutch Bus."

Released in 1981, it was everything I loved about that era: playful vocals, a bouncing bass line, handclaps, rhythmic chanting, and a groove that seemed impossible to resist.

Years later, historical radio-industry records would confirm that WDIA had actually placed "Double Dutch Bus" into hot rotation in June 1981.

I wasn't imagining that sound. It really was part of Memphis radio.

The DJs themselves were also part of the attraction.

They weren't merely introducing songs. They had personalities. Their voices carried confidence, humor, excitement, and a sense of authority.

They made the music feel like an event.

I would come to appreciate that even more at the skating rink.

Disco: A Childhood Fascination

My relationship with dance music started early.

At seven or eight years old, I already owned a Village People album. I also remember Rick Dees' "Disco Duck," one of those wonderfully ridiculous novelty songs that somehow captured the spirit of the disco explosion.

To an adult, the Village People might have represented elaborate costumes, theatrical performances, and the commercial excesses of disco.

To a kid, they were simply exciting.

The songs had energy. The beats were relentless. The melodies were catchy, and the arrangements were full of movement.

Disco had a theatrical quality that fascinated me.

It wasn't just about the music. It was about creating an atmosphere.

The clothes, the lights, the dancing, the spectacle, and the larger-than-life personalities all contributed to the experience.

And nowhere did I experience that more vividly than at East End Skating.

East End Skating: My First Nightclub Experience

I can still remember the atmosphere of East End Skating in Memphis.

For a kid, walking into that skating rink was like entering another world.

It wasn't merely a recreational facility where people happened to roller-skate. It felt like a nightclub designed for young people.

The room was alive with sound, light, and motion.

Overhead, a disco ball scattered shimmering reflections across the skating floor. The lights bounced off the walls, the ceiling, and the moving bodies of skaters circling the rink.

Colored lights transformed the room.

The light shows changed with the music, sometimes bathing the floor in color, sometimes creating dramatic flashes and shifting patterns that made everything feel larger than life.

And then there was the sound system.

The bass seemed to fill the entire building. You didn't just hear the music through your ears. You felt it through your body, through your skates, and through the floor beneath you.

The entire rink seemed to move to one enormous beat.

But the most fascinating part of the experience wasn't the disco ball or even the music.

It was the DJ.

The Voice That Commanded the Room

There was something almost magical about the DJ speaking over the music.

His voice would suddenly rise above the pounding bass and drums, amplified through the sound system with an authority that seemed larger than the room itself.

He didn't need to stop the record to command attention.

He could speak right over the groove.

He could announce the next skating session, call out to the crowd, encourage the skaters, or build excitement around a particular song.

And people responded.

Hundreds of people could be moving around the rink, talking, laughing, and skating, yet one voice coming through those speakers could change the energy of the entire room.

It was commanding.

It was theatrical.

It was magical.

The DJ controlled the atmosphere in a way I had never experienced before.

He could build anticipation, introduce a favorite record, change the mood, or turn an ordinary moment into something that felt extraordinary.

And he did it all with music continuing underneath his voice.

Looking back, I recognize that I was witnessing something much more significant than a person playing records.

I was watching someone conduct an audience.

The turntables were his instruments. The microphone was his voice of authority. The lights and sound system were part of his stage.

And the entire skating rink was his audience.

There was an incredible sense of collective participation.

Everyone was responding to the same rhythm, the same announcements, and the same changes in energy.

The DJ was the invisible performer at the center of it all.

I didn't know anything about hip-hop MCs, live event production, or the history of dance-club culture at that age.

But I understood the feeling.

I understood the power of a voice over a beat.

And I never forgot it.

The Night I Discovered Michael Jackson's Off the Wall

One of my strongest memories from East End Skating was hearing Michael Jackson's Off the Wall.

Released in 1979, the album represented an extraordinary intersection of disco, funk, soul, and pop.

Songs like "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," "Rock with You," "Workin' Day and Night," and "Get on the Floor" seemed perfectly suited to the skating rink.

The bass lines were infectious. The drums were precise. The arrangements were polished but still full of energy.

And Michael Jackson's voice had an extraordinary rhythmic quality.

He didn't simply sing over the beat.

He interacted with it.

His short vocal accents, breaths, grunts, and tightly timed phrases became part of the percussion.

Hearing that music in the middle of the skating rink, surrounded by flashing lights and hundreds of moving people, was entirely different from hearing it on a radio.

The music became an environment.

The disco ball, the colored lights, the skaters, and the commanding DJ all seemed to become part of the performance.

It was one of those childhood experiences that stays with you long after the details of ordinary days have disappeared.

I didn't know who Quincy Jones was or understand the sophistication of his production techniques.

I just knew the music was incredible.

And I wanted more of it.

From Disco to Funk: The Rhythm Takes Over

As I grew older, my musical interests followed the evolution of dance music.

Disco introduced me to the excitement of a driving beat and theatrical presentation.

Funk introduced me to something deeper.

The bass became more aggressive. The rhythms became more syncopated. The vocals became more playful and sometimes more confrontational.

Groups like Parliament-Funkadelic pushed musical experimentation to extraordinary levels.

The Bar-Kays represented Memphis funk at its finest.

The Gap Band, Lakeside, and Zapp brought increasingly electronic sounds into the music.

Synthesizers could bend, slide, and produce sounds unlike anything traditional instruments could create.

Drum machines introduced new rhythmic possibilities.

And the relationship between the bass and the drums became increasingly important.

I loved the way a bass line could carry an entire song.

Sometimes the melody was almost secondary.

The groove was everything.

That was one of the most important lessons I absorbed from this period.

Music didn't always need elaborate chord progressions or complicated melodies to be powerful.

Sometimes a bass line, a drumbeat, and a repeated vocal phrase could command an entire room.

Just like that DJ at East End Skating.

The Birth of Hip-Hop Was Already in the Music

By the late 1970s, another musical revolution was underway.

DJs in New York were extending the instrumental breaks of funk and disco records. MCs began speaking rhythmically over those beats.

The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" in 1979 demonstrated how a disco groove could become the foundation of a rap record.

Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and other pioneers continued transforming the relationship between recorded music, turntables, rhythm, and the human voice.

Looking back, I can hear how songs like "Double Dutch Bus" fit into that transition.

The chanting, playful vocal delivery, and heavy rhythmic emphasis already shared important characteristics with early hip-hop.

The connection between the DJ and the MC also makes more sense to me now.

That commanding voice I heard at East End Skating wasn't so different in spirit from the MCs who would later energize hip-hop audiences.

Both understood that the microphone could become a musical instrument.

Both understood how to control a crowd.

And both understood the extraordinary power of rhythm.

The Memphis Influence and My Brother Laveda Jones

My younger brother Laveda Jones was born in 1997, long after the original disco explosion and the early years of hip-hop.

He grew up in a different musical and technological world.

By then, hip-hop had become a major cultural force. Digital recording, sampling, computer-based music production, and eventually internet distribution were transforming the industry.

But music doesn't begin with the generation that creates it.

It gets passed along.

Through records, radio, family conversations, personal collections, and shared experiences, younger generations inherit musical influences they may never have experienced firsthand.

Laveda developed his own interest in music, technology, history, and eventually music production.

His approach to hip-hop became increasingly focused on storytelling, social commentary, and intellectual subject matter.

But I can recognize familiar musical ingredients in the work.

The emphasis on bass.

The fascination with percussion.

The use of electronic sounds.

The appreciation for rhythmic vocal delivery.

And perhaps most importantly, the understanding that music can command attention while communicating something meaningful.

That last part always brings me back to East End Skating.

The DJ could take control of an entire room with a microphone and a record.

A hip-hop artist can use that same combination of rhythm and voice to reach an audience with ideas, stories, and messages.

The technology has changed enormously.

The fundamental relationship between rhythm, voice, and audience hasn't.

The Disco Ball Is Still Turning

When I think about the music of my childhood, I don't remember it as a collection of isolated songs.

I remember experiences.

I remember WDIA and the unmistakable sound of Memphis radio.

I remember the excitement of owning a Village People album and laughing at "Disco Duck."

I remember the infectious bass lines of funk records and the increasingly electronic sounds of the early 1980s.

And I remember East End Skating.

The lights.

The disco ball.

The skaters moving together.

The music pounding through the room.

And above it all, the voice of the DJ.

A voice that could interrupt a thousand conversations without stopping the music.

A voice that could turn a song into an event.

A voice that somehow made a kid feel like he was participating in something enormous.

That was magic to me.

Decades later, I can appreciate the musical, technological, and cultural forces that made those experiences possible.

But I also recognize something simpler.

Those moments helped shape the way I understood music, entertainment, and the power of performance.

And when I hear the music my younger brother Laveda Jones produces today, I hear echoes of a musical journey that began long before he was born.

Before Laveda Jones Productions, before modern hip-hop production, before digital studios and online audiences, there was a Memphis kid standing under a disco ball, mesmerized by the sound of a DJ commanding an entire skating rink.

And in my memory, that music is still playing.

Kelvin's Memphis Musical Diary — A family-history narrative for Laveda Jones Productions