Jesse Saunders

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. Please remove or replace such wording and instead of making proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate that importance. (May 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Jesse Saunders" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Jesse Saunders
Background information
Born	(1962-03-10) March 10, 1962 (age 62) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Genres	House
Occupations	DJ record producer film producer entrepreneur
Years active	1977–present
Labels	Geffen
Website	therealjessesaunders.com

Jesse Saunders (born March 10, 1962) is an American house music artist, DJ, record producer, film producer, and entrepreneur.^[1] His 1984 single, "On & On", co-written with Vince Lawrence, is widely regarded as one of the first house music records to be commercially released on vinyl.^[2][3] Throughout his career, Saunders has founded and managed multiple independent record labels, produced music and films, and worked in artist promotion and management. He is a long-standing member of The Recording Academy (formerly the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences).

Saunders was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. He attended St. Columbanus Kindergarten and Reavis Elementary School, where his mother, Lois M. Saunders, was a teacher. At the age of 10, Saunders learned to program and operate computers. He also performed and toured in the Chicago Children's Choir. Saunders graduated from Charles S. Deneen Public School before attending Hyde Park's Kenwood Academy as an honor student. He played intramural tennis and led his team to three City of Chicago Championships and one second-place finish, earning him a letterman's jacket. During this time, Saunders was selected by the city of Chicago's "Youth Action" program, which trains student athletes. During high school, Saunders' older stepbrother, DJ Wayne Williams, mentored him in DJing. In 1977, Williams brought Saunders into his Chosen Few Disco Corp. Starting in 1991, the two produced the annual Chosen Few House Music Reunion Picnic in Chicago, which has drawn crowds of over 30,000. Saunders studied communications and film at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His interest in music began with studying piano at age five, eventually exploring other instruments. His early musical influences included Aretha Franklin, Fleetwood Mac, Smokey Robinson, and Earth, Wind & Fire.

At the age of sixteen, Saunders was exposed to Chicago's night club scene through the music of Frankie Knuckles, who held residencies at gay nightclubs, primarily the Warehouse in Chicago, where house music began before expanding and evolving.^[4] In 1982, he opened his own nightclub, the Playground. Saunders incorporated his original material into his sets, expanding his musical repertoire beyond disco and R&B (as Knuckles did) and developing his signature style. As a DJ, he used loops and repetition for accentuation, focusing on sections stripped down to just the drum or bass — a tradition he carried on as a producer.

In 1983, Saunders began producing his own music. In early 1984, he and Vince Lawrence released "On & On" on the label they founded together, Jes Say Records. Saunders composed the track with Lawrence to replace a record that had been stolen from Saunders's collection, the "On & On" bootleg disco Megamix by Mach (1980).

That Megamix, a pastiche of loops from several disco records, particularly the bassline from Player One's "Space Invaders" (1979) and Lipps Inc's "Funkytown" (1980), had been Saunders's "signature" tune as a DJ. Saunders & Lawrence added hypnotic lyrics and electronic instruments, utilizing a Roland TR-808 drum machine as electronic percussion as well as a Korg Poly-61 synthesizer and Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer.^[5][6]

"Funk U Up" (the first house track to chart on Billboard), "Real Love", "Love Can't Turn Around", and "Dum Dum" soon followed. Saunders' group, Jesse's Gang, was eventually signed to Geffen Records, releasing the album Center of Attraction shortly after. The single "I'm Back Again" became a top-ten club hit.

By the late 1980s, Saunders decided to focus on writing, producing, and remixing instead of DJing, then returned to DJing throughout the 1990s. In this decade, he toured the world and produced music for television. His independent label, Broken Records, distributed music via the Internet. Since 1991, Saunders has been involved in House Music Reunion Picnic, celebrated every Fourth of July weekend. In 1997, he reunited with the other forefathers of house music to release Chicago Reunion Album.

In 2004, after touring the world, Saunders revived his Broken Records label, which releases digital content from many major download sites and features artists such as Inaya Day, Scott Langley, Sound Syndicate, Igor Garnier, Didier Vanelli, Mia Calderon, Joe Smooth, Marshall Jefferson, and Jesse Saunders.

In 2009, Saunders released the album 25th Anniversary of House Music, which resulted in a worldwide tour featuring art depicting the culture and pioneers of the genre. The tour went throughout the US and as far as Johannesburg, South Africa.

After the 25th anniversary of the House Music Tour, Saunders founded the Electronic Music Cafe in Las Vegas in 2010 to display the art from the tour. He also founded the Music & Arts Society, a non-profit for the advancement and preservation of DJ culture, with the launch of the world's first DJ Culture exhibit entitled "SPIN – Evolution of the DJ" that same year.

That same year, Saunders produced and released the first installment of the Above The Sound Cloud compilation series, as well as the first Chilled & UnBroken compilation series, and the internationally acclaimed DJ Divas album.

In 2020 Saunders released a book, titled In Their Own Words ^[7]

Saunders' maternal grandfather, Robert H. Miller, a funeral business owner and founder of the National Funeral Directors and Mortician's Association, was voted "Mayor" of Bronzeville from 1937 to 1939. He also became heavily involved in the American civil rights movement, walking with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches and erecting a statue in honor of King in Selma, Alabama. Miller also promoted the career of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and owned and operated the Grand Ballroom, which showcased artists such as Cab Calloway and Count Basie.

Saunders married actress and musician Jazsmin Lewis in 1992, and the couple divorced in 1998. He now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada..

In 2022, Saunders suffered a stroke.^[8]