"Music gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it."

C.J. & Company (also C.J. & Co. or C.C. & Co.) was a disco group from Detroit, Michigan. They were the partnership of producers Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore. Their highest charting single in the US was "Devil's Gun", which reached #36 on the Billboard pop chart, spending 29 weeks on the HOT 100. It wound up being the #100 song of the year on the Billboard's year end charts, (though only peaking at #36), and #2 on the R&B chart in 1977.

Credited with being the first modern DJ, Francis Grasso is a name that too few people know. In fact, odds are pretty favorable that most DJs of the present would respond with a blank stare if he or she were asked about him. Due to his pioneering approach of thoughtfully sequencing and mixing songs, he was the first to harness the ability to communicate with and directly influence the crowd's reaction and mood. He took up a job as a go-go boy at a Greenwich Village establishment run by Trude Heller. A little later on, in 1968, Grasso was thrown into DJ'ing at another Greenwich Village spot called Salvation Too. The club's DJ, Terry Noel (a pioneer in his own right; the first DJ to mix records), dropped acid one night and showed up late for his job. Grasso took over, learned his trade quickly, and fell in love with directing a crowd. He took Noel's job and began spinning constant flows of heavily rhythmic music. . A while after Salvation Too closed, Grasso DJ'd at the Haven and, most importantly, at the infamous Sanctuary, a venue that morphed into a gay disco where obscene levels of debauchery took place.

In 1976, Mel Cheren and Ed Kushins founded West End Records, the music label that defined the sound of New York City in the heyday of disco. Cheren created the 12-inch vinyl single, which permitted longer playing time than the standard seven-inch, and which gained its greatest popularity in discos. Cheren was business partner and former lover of Michael Brody, who created the Paradise Garage in 1977 with the financial back-up of Cheren. In the 2006 "The Godfather of Disco," a documentary about Cheren, he himself called the Garage "the ultimate expression of the whole fabric" of gay night life.

One night in 1981, Chicago DJ Frankie Knuckles was driving through the city's suburbs with a friend when he saw a sign in a bar window: "We play house music." "Now, what's that all about?" he asked. "It means music like you're playing at the Warehouse," his friend replied. And that's how Knuckles realized he'd inadvertently invented a new genre.

He played an important role in developing and popularizing house music, a genre of music that began in Chicago during the early 1980s and subsequently spread worldwide. In 1997, Knuckles won the Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical. Due to his importance in the development of the genre, Knuckles was often called "The Godfather of House Music".