James Hamilton's Disco Page

[Spandex]

James Hamilton was a British DJ from the '60s up to the early '90s. He was one of the DJs that popularised the 'American style' of DJing in the UK (ie mixing records together). Greg Wilson wrote a brief piece about him here: GREG WILSON'S DISCOTHEQUE ARCHIVES #6

From 1975 he wrote a weekly Disco column in the Record Mirror.

There was a brief write up about the Disco scene in the UK that week, reviews of new singles and DJ charts each week.

And this website has got every column he did for the Record Mirror up to 1983, covering the whole of the classic disco era, with added Youtube links so it's easy to listen to the records he reviewed:

James Hamilton's Disco Page

There's loads for any disco fan to discover in there. There's the weekly write ups that give a flavour of how the disco scene developed from a UK perspective. There's reviews of classic records from when they were released:

INDEEP: ‘Last Night A DJ Saved My Life’ (Sound Of New York SNYL 1, via PRT).
Fantastic compulsive simple chick-sung chugger with ringing phone, skidding tyres and flushing loo effects, culminating in a rapping DJ who “can do it in the mix”, on multi-banded 12in with various dub versions and the sound effects usefully on their own. If this doesn’t go to the Top 20 I’ll be very surprised.

And reviews of the good, the bad (and of course, there's lots of bad disco - special mention for Jonathan King's cover of La Bionda's Italian Disco classic One for You, One for Me) and the unusual (Lalo Schifrin's jazz-funking disco version of the Jaws theme). And it's not pure disco, there's all kinds of weird and wonderful records that only fit the loosest definition of disco in there.

I keep delving into the site since I've found it and I've still only scratched the surface. Of course, I'm sure any real disco nerds know all about this site already.

 

[cantsin]

great find, can never forget his ' 128.3 bpm ( he used to time / workout with a stopwatch apparently ) slow building, synth driven vocal lead US houser ' type reviews for RM.

Or his pipe / beard, sherlock homes style deer stalker hat ( iirc ? ) ... started off Motown UK in the 60's i think ?

 

[blossie33]

Very interesting
Was reading his obituary, he sounds quite a character, says he was 6ft 8" sad he was only 53 when he died.

 

[AverageJoe]

Very interesting
Was reading his obituary, he sounds quite a character, says he was 6ft 8" sad he was only 53 when he died.

Wow. That's a lot of shrinking.

Oh.

 

[blossie33]

 

[Lurdan]

I started getting Record Mirror because of his column in the early/mid eighties, since it was one of the best sources of information on new dance and hip hop releases, at a time when the mainstream music press was barely covering them at all, and the more specialist black music publications were a little slow in fully embracing them.

He and Les Adams used to do four or five hour New Years Eve mixes for Capital Radio in the late 80s and early 90s - there are a number of them up on Mixcloud. Here's part of 1988's



There's a longer piece by Greg Wilson at his blog about the origins of DJ mixing in the UK and Hamilton's role in it as both a DJ himself and a columnist.

From Garrard To Technics - How British DJs Began To Mix - Greg Wilson

And some reminiscences about him here

He lived in Harlesden by that time, in a house with a specially constructed 14 inch letterbox to accommodate the hundreds of 12 inch promos that he was receiving every day

There are a bunch of scans of Record Mirror from the late 70s at this site, (along with a load of other magazines including the American magazine Record World which had Vince Aletti's weekly disco column in).

 

[Spandex]

Great stuff Lurdan

Love those reminiscences about him

 

[Ground Elder]

started off Motown UK in the 60's i think ?

You're thinking of Dave Godin

 

[cantsin]

You're thinking of Dave Godin

sh*t, of course, ta !

 

[blossie33]

Great stuff Lurdan

Love those reminiscences about him

I thought the bit about how he was supposed to have suggested to the Moody Blues that they record Bessie Bank's Go Now was interesting (became a huge hit for them) I wonder if that was true?

 

[Lurdan]

Enormous book of his Record Mirror columns from 1975 to 1982 coming out in ten days time.

James Hamilton’s Disco Pages 1975-1982 – Hardback (2024) - Super Weird Substance

James Hamilton’s Disco Pages 1975-1982 is as close-in as you can possibly get to the evolution of UK club culture as it unfolded through the disco and jazz-funk years, and on into…

superweirdsubstance.com

Got to say I'm a little tempted

Apparantly a second volume covering the rest of the 80s is planned