It may be wrong, strictly speaking, to label Henry Lee Jackson – who performed under the name Big Bank Hank, and who has died aged 58 following cancer treatment – as a pioneering rapper. It would also be technically incorrect to claim that his group, the Sugarhill Gang, made the first rap record. But the detail is rendered trivial by the hugely significant effect their single Rapper’s Delight had after its release in 1979, and his pivotal place in the history of 20th-century music is unarguable.
Jackson was working as the manager of the Crispy Crust pizza shop in Englewood, New Jersey, when opportunity came knocking. Sylvia Robinson, a former chart-topping soul singer, co-owned a string of independent record labels with her husband, Joe, and had been alerted by their son, Joey, to the new music based around rapping and scratch-mix DJing that was becoming wildly popular in various New York boroughs.
Continue reading...