I Was There – Mary J Blige plays The Shelter, New Jersey 31/10/99

Jihad Muhammad recalls the night r&b royalty visited The Shelter

Ahead of his three hour set at the always shaking Househead LDN night at Aures in Waterloo, South London on Saturday April 27, DJ Jihad Muhammad recalls the original days of the hugely influential New Jersey club The Shelter Club, and one very special visitor…

I don’t really remember what year it was (google tells me it’s 1999) but it was a monumental night in New York clubbing history when the Queen of hip-hop soul, Mary J Blige came to do a live show at The Shelter Club. She was a huge superstar at that time and the excitement leading up to this show was off the hook.

I was a huge fan of Shelter resident DJ Timmy Regisford and had been listening to his weekly Saturday night Mastermix shows on WBLS forever. I was a bit too young to go clubbing then but in 1991 I got to see Timmy at The Shelter in its original incarnation at Hubert St in Manhattan. I was introduced to him by my New Jersey friend & music maestro, Kevin Hedge from Blaze, who’s one of the original three partners of the Shelter Club with Freddy Sanon and Timmy. I was really quite shy but Timmy let me sit in the booth as long as I stayed out the way so he could work.

Getting back to the Mary J Blige night, the buzz was phenomenal around this show and it was like the whole of New Jersey and New York’s music and clubbing family talked about nothing else in the weeks leading up to this Saturday night. This was before social media like Facebook and Instagram and it was intense with wall-to-wall ads on the radio and an incredible word-of-mouth buzz. Everyone knew Mary J was coming that night and you knew it was going to be totally, totally, totally packed so I I made sure I got there early around 11.30pm.

It was the busiest I had ever known Shelter  – way too many people – and around 12.30-1am Mary J Blige hit the stage. Larger than life, everyone surged forward to see her soaking up the atmosphere which was electric. Everyone in the club sang along with her and her live band and the energy and the vibe was off the wall. It was incredible to see a star of her magnitude in our favourite club. Then she was gone…it was unreal.

A lot of the commercial clubbers left after that and Timmy then picked up the mantle and started spinning in his deep underground style. He spun everything…gospel, vocal house, deep house, classic tracks and it was the Shelter sound which very much reflected the New Jersey sound back then. New Jersey is not always rated for its powerhouse of talents but it dominated those times which artists like Adeva, Blaze, Michael Watford (Rip), Gerideau, Kenny Bobien, SuSu Bobien, Stephanie Cooke, Ruffneck and producers and groups like Smack Productions, Backroom Productions, Kerri Chandler, Dennis Ferrer and DJ Dave Camacho.

Tracks at that time…so many but ones that spring to mind off the top of my head include Frankie Knuckles & Adeva “Keep On Moving”; Blaze “Elevation” and “How Deep Is Your Love”; “Thank You” – Be Be Winans; Don-E “Don’t She”; Dee Dee Bridgewater “Flying Saucer”; the Spen & Karizma mix of “Beautiful” by Mary J Blige:  the Sade bootleg of “Diamond Life”; Eddie Amador “House Music”; some Masters At Work tracks and classics like George Benson.

Timmy was an incredible Resident DJ mixing all the different sounds up, slowing down the tempo with some classics and then it was off on another excursion into some more new and deep house sounds.It was a real journey every session and no two nights were the same – you just had to be part of it…it was that exciting”.

Jihad Muhammad plays an extended set at Househead LDN on Saturday April 27, flanked by Johnny Reckless and Lee Coffey, at Aures in Waterloo, London from 9pm till 4am.