We wish it was an April Fool’s joke, but it’s not – Frankie Knuckles, Chicago house legend, has died aged 59. Knuckles died on Monday, revealed his longtime business partner, Frederick Dunson. According to the Chicago Tribune, more details would be confirmed today, with Dunson writing in an email that Knuckles “died unexpectedly this afternoon at home”. Most famous for tracks such as 1987’s Your Love and 1991’s The Whistle Song, he was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2004, 25 August was declared Frankie Knuckles Day in Chicago with help from then-senator Barack Obama. Born in the Bronx in 1955, he became a DJ in the early 1970s with his friend Larry Levan. An integral artist in the development of house music, Knuckles went onto not only pioneer the genre, but mix records by artists such as Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Depeche Mode. Only last weekend, on 29 March, the DJ played at London’s Ministry of Sound, two days before his death in Chicago.
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