When James Brown Handed Him His First Promo Vinyl At 14, Danny Krivit Knew DJing Was His Future. Now 35 Years & 70,000 Records Later, He's Still At It Deeper Than Ever.

Published in the February 2007 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 20 - Number 2
By Jim Tremayne

     New York City—How does a DJ survive nearly four decades of work without becoming completely jaded? How does he maintain his passion while navigating the pitfalls of an often-fickle clubland? How does he make a living while remaining artistically viable and true to his craft?
     It’s a unique set of questions and one rarely asked because there are very few DJs in a position to answer. One of them is Danny Krivit, a man whose vast experience includes 35 years in the booth, an accumulation of 70,000 records and almost as many useful anecdotes.
     Krivit’s personal story is unusual from the very beginning. Growing up in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, he was exposed to legendary musicians at a young age—who meets Jimi Hendrix as a middle-schooler? His father managed artists like troubled jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. He was a childhood friend of future disco star and hit producer Nile Rodgers. His first promo vinyl was personally handed to him by none other than James Brown. At 14, he scored his first DJ gig at The Ninth Circle, his father’s club. Talk about auspicious starts…
     Like many DJs in the early and mid-1970s, The Loft—David Mancuso’s seminal private party—provided Krivit with a musical voice and social sensibility that he retains to this day. Later, the Paradise Garage and its booth maestro Larry Levan would show him the artistic heights a DJ could reach.
     Krivit experienced New York’s disco heyday on both sides of the turntables, hearing many of the era’s great DJs and sharpening his skills by playing a slew of area clubs over time—including Roxy when it was a roller-skating rink. But his experiences with Mancuso and Levan never left him, and the changes in New York club life eventually offered an opportunity for a different kind of event.
     Along with Joe Claussell and François Kevorkian, he co-founded the Body & Soul party in 1996. Running through 2002 at Manhattan’s Vinyl club, Body & Soul was based on a similar music-first aesthetic. Whether the trio was playing Garage classics, new drum-n-bass dubplates, Afro-beats, or original productions, a Sunday at Body & Soul was almost always an uplifting experience. It easily ranks as one of New York’s greatest club parties.
     Since B&S shut down, Krivit has stayed in the deep end of house music with his 718 Sessions, which just celebrated its fourth anniversary. A 718 evening at Club Deep will surely find Krivit playing his sharp re-edits of soulful and funky cuts, some hot new Quentin Harris mixes and a few well-timed surprises. It’s not an unusual occurrence to hear the crowd singing every word to their favorite numbers, while Krivit beams behind the decks. For Krivit and his acolytes, love is still the message.
     As he prepared for another tour of Japan, Danny Krivit connected with DJ Times to discuss his career, his perspective on the past and his views of the future.

DJ Times: I read that your dad was Chet Baker’s manager—that must’ve been a challenge.
Krivit: It probably was, but I think there was a cut-off point with Chet. So when Chet wasn’t [working], my dad went onto something else—and for him it was his club, the Ninth Circle.

DJ Times: You met Hendrix, Joplin and other legends as a kid. What was it like having all those musicians around?
Krivit: It was kind of endless. I was in Greenwich Village and I probably took it for granted a little because I even had a piano in my house and I didn’t take the time to learn it, which I really regret now. I think it was very influential. All these musical people surrounded me. The whole Village was like that back then.

DJ Times: So what made you want to DJ?
Krivit: There were a couple factors that made it happen. I was a huge James Brown fan and my neighbor, Jerry Schoenbaum, was a vice-president of Polydor and I met James Brown in his office. Jerry introduced me to James Brown and he said, “Oh, Danny’s a DJ.” I had just started. And at the time—this is around 1971—James was putting out about two records a week [laughs] and he says, “Oh, you gotta give him my latest things!” So he gives me “Get on the Good Foot” and “Think (About It)” by Lyn Collins. And they’re both white labels and I was used to the red label with his face on it [laughs]. And here I am getting promo music from my idol and I’m thinking, “I guess I’m in it now—I’m going to take it seriously.”

DJ Times: And the other thing?
Krivit: I grew up with Nile Rogers, who helped me pick out a guitar and buy a guitar. And I realized that it was a lot of work [to learn] and every time I listened to records, I thought, “I don’t think I’m going to get there [as a guitarist]—I’d rather play the record.” I can go out and pick out so much great music that I just got lost in the records. It was all kinds of music, music that made me move and music that was emotional.

DJ Times: At your dad’s club, what were you playing?
Krivit: There was quite a bit of rock back then, a lot of soul and early disco. There wasn’t really the word “disco,” but these were now-established disco records. There were records from War and Rare Earth, but also some lesser-known kind of things like Exuma and other African-rock kinds of things, “I’m a Man” by Chicago, “Melting Pot” by Booker T. and the MGs, lots of things in that vein.

DJ Times: What was your first DJ setup?
Krivit: At home, I had a cheap little mixer—don’t remember the brand. It was the simplest thing. My turntables didn’t match—they were belt-driven. At the club, we couldn’t get the turntables to stand still because the floor was so wobbly. Back then, technology was primitive and cassettes weren’t a problem. We had two cassette decks and a mixer. I’d make tapes at home and my dad was buying tapes from clubs around the city. I’d program segments from the tapes and use those to program the night. Vinyl was skipping too much. Only later we began using turntables.

DJ Times: What was club DJing like in the early 1970s? What was expected from a DJ?
Krivit: It wasn’t very defined, and DJs were pretty low on the scale. You felt like a dishwasher some of the times. Superstar DJs hadn’t happened yet. I remember Nicky Siano being the first.

DJ Times: What about Francis Grasso?
Krivit: He was big, but I don’t remember him being a superstar. Those guys made $50 a night and that was a big salary. The next big thing was Richie Kaczor. He was an underground DJ, and he took off with Studio 54 and elevated the whole pay scale.

DJ Times: How did The Loft and David Mancuso impact you?
Krivit: When I finally got into The Loft, it was 1975, and it had been opened for about five years. You had to know somebody to get in. It impacted me greatly because I was early in my career and I had a lot of self-doubt. I’d get up a lot of steam to play something loved like “City Country City” by War. I thought that this is great music and it’ll make everybody go nuts—and I got so much grief, like, “Why are you playing this? What are you doing?” I mean, I’m on the verge of getting fired. Then I walk into The Loft and that song would be the biggest thing, everyone’s going nuts to it. It kind of gave me [confidence]. I wasn’t wrong about that. I was just programming for the wrong people.

DJ Times: Did you feel like an artist who hadn’t yet found his audience?
Krivit: Exactly. The Ninth Circle was a great audience, but I didn’t understand the limitations—you know how there’s a time and a place? It made me understand people on the floor and look for the reaction—that’s what I’ve carried for these years. I have to respond to them. The music at The Loft was mind-opening and free and pure, and so was the crowd. David’s thing was simple. The sound system was the highest quality. He focused on a good crowd of music lovers, and a community. It wasn’t transient drunk people.

DJ Times: So what did you learn?
Krivit: It opened my mind. I started to see that there’s my perspective of what I think the whole thing could be and there’s also the side where there are limitations. I’m not always going to play for the perfect audience. So what I try to do is teach people music and you can’t shove it down their throat. When they’re ready, I give them what I feel they can swallow. Then, I would tend to lean away from jobs that seemed like jobs.

DJ Times: You obviously began to make a living at this.
Krivit: Well, people were constantly asking me, “What are you doing to do when you grow up?” I mean, this is a hobby that I got paid for. I made living out of it, but I very rarely took it that seriously as a living. I took it seriously as a hobby. But instead of going for radio or the biggest audience, I was searching for music lovers. If the job went towards that, I went toward that.

DJ Times: What are the misconceptions of the disco era?
Krivit: There are a lot. The whole disco scene was exploding to a point that it had to kill itself because it was exploding so fast. The movies and all that focused on this one narrow view of it—the Enquirer point of view, the drugs, the celebrities, the thinness of it. Really, a lot of people during that period had a lot of leisure time. Today is astronomically different. Almost everybody had a music collection and they had spare time—they did things to music. I think they wanted an outlet and they went out and enjoyed it. They had the time to do it.

DJ Times: How did that impact the DJ’s job?
Krivit: The perfect story is [Taana Gardner’s] “Heartbeat” by Larry Levan. When he first played it, it took an entire club off the dancefloor with people cursing it out, like, “What is this drug music?” Because there was nothing like it, and he kept pumping it for a month. Every time he put it on, they were like, “What is he doing?” But then more and more people were saying, “Y’know, I actually like this.” And in a month, people were running to the floor. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen now. There’s no time for that to happen. The audience had more patience then. People would’ve left the club today. Music had a patience to it, like, “Oh, I learned to like this.” People had time to experience this.

And Krivit back in the day at the Paradise Garage with Larry Levan.