Happy Birthday Ronnie!

Ron Hardy is to House Music as Big Star is to Indie Rock.... supremely influential, yet little known in the mainstream. 

While others may have been more technically proficient, Ronnie gave many of us Chicago DJ wannabes our first evidence that we could reach for and, at times, touch the sublime using only some records, turntables, and the occasional reel-to-reel tape player.

It's an over used phrase, but that brotha changed my life. For real… Happy Birthday, Ronnie!

Further reading

• Wax Poetics feature which gives a great overview of Ronnie, The Music Box, and their influence.
• (for the DJ / music-obsessive) Gridface's list of Ronnie's mixes with track IDs