The dance music legend getting set for this weekend’s A Night In Paradise fundraiser at The Ministry of Sound…
Interview by Dan Prince
Special thanks to James Horrocks
Photo by Marc Baptiste
John it has been a while my man, not since you since the heady days of the New Music Seminar in New Your City? How are you, where are we catching you today?
Yes, I remember meeting you guys back in the New York days. I think I won Best Remixer and Producer awards with DMC in the 80s too at The Royal Albert Hall. I’m now based in Fort Lauderdale, a short distance from Miami. I am swamped with gigs and international dates in the run up to New Year’s Eve. I also have a monthly Friday residence at Libertine in Miami and monthly Saturday in New York at Club Remix.
Let’s rewind for a moment and discover how this magical musical journey began. What is your earliest musical memory as a child; there was a lot of percussion around you with your Puerto Rican roots…
As a child I listened to the music my parents liked, r&b or soul, as it was known – the Motown era, plus salsa, a Latin jazz hybrid, which was developed by Puerto Rican artists in New York in the 70s and released on Fania Records. Their classic output included the most popular Puerto Rican singer at the time, Hector Lavoe, who died tragically in 1982. Before that boogaloo was the Latin music sound, artists like jimmy Sabater, Joe Cuba, and Pete Rodriguez. There was also a rhythmic Latin jazz scene coming out of Spanish Harlem with Tito Puente.
Was a life in music the only ever ambition for you?
Yes, at one point I had an aspiration as an architect, but my ambition wasn’t so strong so music was a safe place for me.
What were your first steps into the music industry?
I used to hang out at a clubhouse in the Bronx as a child. I bought 45s and sat by the turntable and changed them to keep the music moving. Friends called me a DJ but I was just playing records. When I told people I was going to be a DJ, they thought I was going to be reading the news on the radio and play a few records in-between. Deejaying in a club was not a big deal in those days. Where I come from in South Bronx, if you didn’t study, you were a drug dealer, pimp or bouncer. I then was invited to a club to see a DJ playing on 2 turntables at a club in New York. I was under age so I was told “buy some cigarettes and a pair of sunglasses, you gotta look older!” I was introduced to a DJ called Spike who was playing on 2 decks and I was mesmerised. He was also using a box with big knobs and dials on it, which caught my attention. Then I watched as beautiful women arrived in the DJ box to say hello, others dropped off free records and drugs. I was like “ definitely need to be a DJ”. I borrowed my sister’s turntables and went to Radio Shack and bought a Microphone box mixer, and hooked them up with a wire adopter, which the store helped me set up. It worked, hallelujah, so here I was at 15, practising 2 deck mixing in my room. In those days, things were very unsophisticated tech wise. When I went back to the club to check on how the DJ mixed, I noticed that he was using Dixie cups fitted to the hole over spindle and added weights or different sized pebbles, coins and paperclips to slow the record down as this was in the days before pitch control. Without monitors in the DJ Booth either, cueing involved putting your ear against the grooves on the vinyl and listening to the needle on the record. Turntables with pitch control were introduced around 1973-75, with the advent of disco music, however they were belt drive so you had to stop/start or fiddle with the belts. Direct drive was much later.
Without precision equipment, Deejaying really was an art form then, and the most technical it got was using a metronome to keep track of the tempos as the beats used to drift as they were pretty much live recordings. I used to shop at Downstairs Records in New York. In those days, there were more clubs than DJs, as it was all news. Due to the lack of hands on decks, you’d find yourself playing 5 or 6 nights a week, and you were often booked in some pop up club without an actual address. However, I was lucky to grow up in New York at the time of disco and was able to see DJs like Walter Gibbons play at Galaxy 21. All of that musical energy happening in New York made the early 80s one of the happiest times of my life. I was playing out then and eventually i thought I could make better records than the ones I was playing from producers like Tom Moulton, and Jim Burgess, people I respected. I thought I could bring a different, younger perspective and so I went into the studio with an engineer and some musicians and began experimenting with sound by remixing some records, I had no knowledge musically or technically, it was all total instinct.
I watched an intriguing interview with you from 1979 in New York, it was the early days of mixing when you were still sending your charts into the ‘trade magazines’ and the interviewer couldn’t really understand how people stayed out until dawn dancing! But even back then you were talking about marketing and wanting to study music law so you knew the ins and out of the industry. Man, you were so far ahead of your time!
Yes, I was talking with Tom Silverman from Tommy Boy Records, New Music Seminar and Dance Music Report, and he mentioned this about me. He said when he first met me I was on a new tip, talking about charts, stats, analysis, and feedback; so far head of the curve. I just had a deeper, perhaps nerdier interest in the back end. To hear an industry legend that knew me and knew my journey say these things was interesting to me, because I felt differently about being a DJ/producer to the other jocks. Tom said I was definitely looking for more out of the game and being young I had these visions and my own belief system in what I was doing. I managed to make the transition from DJ booth to the studio in a short space of time, although it wasn’t easy without technical knowledge and knowing the lingo, I just knew what made people dance and not dance and turned it into a career
You were resident DJ of The Fun House in NYC during the 80s, what can you tell us about those days musically?
The music was changing at that time, as there had been a backlash against disco music. Studio 54 was still going and there were the glamour and fashionable clubs in Manhattan playing more commercial music. I wanted to go back to my roots and play underground music, especially music made in New York. That’s when the opportunity to play at The Funhouse came up. Obviously my playlist included Loft & Paradise Garage classics and records I had grown up with. I spun ‘Planet Rock’, Shannon ‘Let The Music Play’, Liquid Liquid ‘ESG’, Rockers Revenge. Plus the groovier alternative records from Talking Heads, New Order, and The Clash groovier. A quantum leap in the development of dance and house music happened at that time.
An interview with Jellybean Benitez cannot be conducted without a mention on Madonna. You dated; you remixed her records…you were that right at the start of her career. What was it about this woman and artist you loved?
We lived together for 2 years when she was an excitable club kid with a lot of dreams. However she has always been dedicated to the arts with a thirst for knowledge and new ideas. She embraced dance culture early on moulded it into great pop music, which she has spent her career doing.
You still friends?
Yes, of course, we still speak.
You have remixed a long list of superstars. Many producers have different techniques when taking on someone else’s pride and joy, but to you keeping the artist’s integrity is really important to you right?
I believe their integrity is really important. It’s what inspires me. When I’m reinterpreting their work my goal is to retain the essence of what their doing while making =more accessible to the dancefloor
What can you tell us about your association with the films ’Carlitos Way’, ‘Get Carter’ and ’Species’…?
I was hired as the music supervisor for these movies. I wrote and produced songs that were included, and provided music for each director, pitching different tracks for different scenes and working with the film editors to see how the worked with the footage.
Which brings us to London Town and A Night In Paradise at The Ministry of Sound on Sunday November 27th where you are headlining with David Depino, Joey Llanos and Victor alongside a huge array of UK superstars. The event is an official fundraiser for two of the world’s first and leading HIV charities in New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the UK’s Terrence Higgins Trust in support of World AIDS Day on December 1st. This is going to be an incredible night of emotion, happiness and sadness for you…?
It’s something I feel strongly about. We’ve lost an incredible amount of talent and we lost a generation of friends and colleagues, gone too soon. Larry being a tragic example. Events like this create awareness and hope for the future in understanding and treating the disease, which has affected so many people over the last 30+ years. I am happy to do whatever I can to contribute towards awareness and helping to eradicate it completely.
What is your favorite Paradise Garage story you will never tire of telling?
There were so many. For me, I just loved going there and getting lost in the music and crowd, hearing lots of records I’d never heard before while buzzing or whatever. I once danced with Diana Ross, The Boss, on the dancefloor. We had become friends and were just hanging out when she said let’s hit the floor. I probably went there over a hundred times on Friday and Saturday with Madonna but the Miss Ross moment was the most special. She was such an icon at the time.
Your favorite tune of 2016?
Black Coffee ‘We Dance Again’. My kind of music. I’m a soulful house lover so I personally like anything by Louie Vega, Timmy Regisford, Black Coffee, Martinez Bros, Osunlade, plus deeper stuff from Tenglia, Sanchez etc.
What did you think when dance music finally took over the US. There were a lot of false starts and it was the now deceased EDM that finally did it, but wow…people are now dancing in the fields!
Let’s be honest, it never went away! It just went away from being the music that sustained the club and rave scene to a heavily marketed commercial enterprise when r&b pop adopted those sounds. I’m more of a fan of soulful house music…
One piece of advice you gave me when I was still in my teens was ‘Dan, go with your gut instincts in life, regardless of what people think. If you believe in yourself you can do no more.’ Is this something you still to do to this day, has it stood you in good stead?
Yes, absolutely. I have no regrets when it comes to music.
And finally young man, it was your sister in 3rd Grade who christened you Jellybean due to your initials being JB. But do you actually like eating jellybeans?!?!
Haha! That’s true! I’d been called that since I was 8 year old. However, I’m generally known by my initials, JB. I have a few friends who call me John or Johnny, but most call me JB. Jellybean is cool though, it reminds me of sunny day playing out in the park and getting a great response when she named me Jellybean.
https://www.facebook.com/djJellybeanBenitez/
A Night In Paradise, the official Paradise Garage HIV fundraiser returns to Ministry of Sound on Sunday 27th November. The unique line-up features key DJs of the legendary New York club between 1977-1987 including Jellybean Benitez, David Depino, Joey Llanos, and Victor Rosado. A Night in Paradise also features Ministry’s original house missionaries, and contemporary DJs who embody the club’s musical spirit including Justin Berkmann, Terry Farley, DJ Paulette, Paul Trouble Anderson, Fat Tony, CJ Mackintosh, Jazzy M, Ricky Morrison, Jeremy B, Severino, HiFi Sean, Dave Kendrick, Handsome, and Jamie Bull. This event is an official fundraiser for two of the world’s first and leading HIV charities; New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and the UK’s Terrence Higgins Trust, in support of World Aids Day on December 1st.
