Earl Smith Jr. obit

Last week, dance music lost one of acid house's pioneers. Jacob Arnold pays tribute to the Phuture cofounder.

 He was not on the list.

Earl Smith Jr., also known as Spanky and Spank Spank, passed away on September 21st at the age of 51. Smith founded Phuture with his friends DJ Pierre and Herb J. Their 1987 EP Acid Tracks, on Chicago's Trax Records, inspired an entire genre of house music.

In a statement, DJ Pierre (Nathaniel Jones) said, "Spanky is the reason why the group Phuture was formed. He got me in the game as a producer. The world has no idea how talented he was and how much I depended on him. He texted me last night [20 September] saying he was working on music and how excited he was to have this opportunity to perform again. We were working on our album project and he was so excited about that. I'm just speechless right now. All I know is he will want me to finish what we started. He will want me to say to you that Phuture will survive."

In January of 2015, I interviewed Smith and Jones via Skype from their respective studios. They were reuniting Phuture (with Lothario Lee) to tour and record. Smith revealed that it was Ron Hardy's DJ sets at The Muzic Box that inspired him to create his own music. In early 1984, Smith, who was living in California, received a letter from Herb J urging him to return to Chicago to hear Hardy play. "Long story short, I come back home," Smith said. "I never went back to California 'cause of the experience I had at The Muzic Box."

I asked Smith if he was a DJ at that time. "I was a DJ at home!" he laughed. Smith also attended The Playground, where Farley "Jackmaster" Funk and Steve "Silk" Hurley played for a younger crowd. "At that time I didn't know what type of skills I had music-wise," Smith said. "I always danced my whole life. I've been a big-time dancer. But what made me buy a drum machine was Farley. Farley used to play the 808 on the radio, and I really liked that sound, so I got up the next day and I tried to find me an 808. At that time, I didn't know what it was but I went out and I bought a little Boss drum machine, and connected with DJ Pierre for him to play my beats while he was DJing."

Jones, who lived out in University Park, was into electro and breakdancing before Smith introduced him to Hardy's more eclectic selections, ranging from the Philadelphia sound of Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes to stripped-down Italo tracks. At first Jones, who was a drummer, found it difficult to wrap his head around the concept of a drum machine, asking, "What's that?" Smith replied: "It's this box that has these sounds you can get from a drum."

"No one knew about sampling then," Jones said. "So I said, 'How can that be?'"

"I don't know," said Smith. "I just know that they put these sounds in a little box and you can play them!"