Pioneering Hip-Hop, Inventing The Scratch

Grandwizzard Theodore debuted the seminal DJ'ing technique by accident. The story of how it happened is one of many fascinating moments from hip-hop's early days.

The following is adapted from my book, 3 Kings, ahead of my subscribers-only Zoom interview of hip-hop pioneer Grandwizzard Theodore on Friday, December 1st, at 3pm ET. This excerpt should give some context for the “Zogblog Book Club” event, where we’ll discuss how the Bronx-born DJ invented the scratch, what it was like growing up in the early days of hip-hop, and where the genre is going. DM me if you’d like me to send you the link to join.

On a snowy night in 1967, Clive Campbell and his sister, Cindy, emigrated with their parents from Jamaica to the Bronx. They settled into an apartment at 1520 Sedgwick Ave, a complex almost close enough to the Cross Bronx Expressway to smell the diesel burning. Six years later, inspired by Cindy’s desire to generate cash for back‑to‑school shopping, the two siblings threw a party in their building’s rec room. Admission: 50 cents.

Clive worked the turntable, selecting the name DJ Kool Herc for himself. The last part of this moniker aimed to signal his Herculean physical prowess (he earned medals, as well as American friends, for his track-and-field efforts in high school), while “Kool” was inspired by a cigarette commercial. In the spot, a James Bond look-alike drives an Aston Martin, his Kools in a box by the gearshift. When his lady-friend reaches for one, he stops the car.

“And the commercial says, ‘Nobody touches my silver thin,’” Herc recalled in Jeff Chang’s excellent hip-hop history book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop decades later. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s Kool!’ ”

Thus, the DJ many consider to be the foremost founding father of hip-hop launched his career with product placement ingrained in his professional name, auguring the multibillion-dollar connection between brands and the genre in the years to come.

In addition to his thick Jamaican accent, Herc possessed something his mostly teenage audience hadn’t heard before: a sound system as formidable as he was. Borrowed from his father, the speakers became especially important when, after a few parties, Herc outgrew the rec room and started spinning outside.

He’d crack open streetlamp bases and tap their wiring to power his massive system, playing songs with lengthy danceable sections—known as the “break” —by acts like the Incredible Bongo Band and James Brown. To optimize the experience for what came to be known as break-dancers, he’d pick up his turntable’s needle at the end of the break and set it back to the beginning, thereby extending the prime part of the song. He called this the “merry‑go‑round.”

On of Herc’s pals, an emcee who went by the name Coke La Rock, peppered the DJ’s performances with soon‑to‑be‑ubiquitous ad‑libbed phrases like “Ya rock and ya don’t stop!” and “To the beat, y’all!” In the mind of most historians, Herc’s back-to-school party in 1973 constituted the beginning of hip-hop (and he’s been celebrated accordingly throughout this year’s HipHop50 festivities).

“He’s the father,” says Grandmaster Caz, the pioneering emcee who grew up three blocks from 1520 Sedgwick. “He’s the guy that everybody aspired to be . . . Nobody was there when Herc was there in the beginning.”

Meanwhile, a couple of miles south of 1520 Sedgwick, Grandmaster Flash emerged on the scene, thanks to even more advanced methods of turntablism. He helped popularize the scratch move invented by his pal Grandwizzard Theodore, who discovered the technique of moving the vinyl back and forth in rhythm in 1975—totally by accident, as the latter explained to me in a hilarious recollection.