Tes­ti­mo­ni­als to Prince’s mind-blow­ing musi­cian­ship flood­ed the media after his death, from cel­e­brat­ed stars and not-so-famous musi­cians who played in the artist’s back­ing bands over the decades. In the for­mer cat­e­go­ry, we have Prince’s own musi­cal hero, Ste­vie Won­der — no slouch as a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist — whose Songs in the Key of Life stood as a “per­fect album” for the Pur­ple One. Won­der describes their jam ses­sions as “amaz­ing” for the vari­ety of peo­ple and cul­tures Prince could bring togeth­er, and for the incred­i­ble range of his tal­ent.

“He could play clas­si­cal music if he want­ed to,” said Won­der, in tears after Prince’s death. “He could play jazz if he want­ed to, he could play coun­try if he want­ed to. He played rock, you know, he played blues. He played pop. He played every­thing.…” He played all 27 instru­ments on his debut album, from elec­tric gui­tar, bass, and piano to “mini-Moog, poly-Moog, Arp string ensem­ble, Arp Pro Soloist, Ober­heim four-voice, clavinet, drums, syn­drums, water drums, slap­sticks, bon­gos, con­gas, fin­ger cym­bals, wind chimes, orches­tral bells, wood­blocks, brush trap, tree bell, hand claps and fin­ger snaps.”

He did all of this with lit­tle to no for­mal train­ing, teach­ing him­self to com­pose in near­ly any idiom and to switch up gen­res and styles with ease. In short, Prince was a “genius,” says drum­mer Han­nah Wel­ton in the Drumeo video above. Wel­ton joined the New Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion in 2012, then helped form his new back­ing band, 3rdeyegirl. In the video above, the hard-work­ing drum­mer makes it clear that she does not use this word friv­o­lous­ly. “I don’t know that I ever heard an off note,” she says. “Piano, gui­tar, drums, nobody touched any of those instru­ments the way that he did.”

Wel­ton also talks about what she learned from Prince — after their first meet­ing when he asked her to play ping pong. “One thing,” she says, is that “the space between the notes is just a funky as the notes them­selves.” In the hour-long les­son, Wel­ton shows off her own drum skills in songs like “Wom­en’s Intu­ition” (which she wrote with her hus­band Joshua Wel­ton, one of Prince’s pro­duc­ers) and talks more about her time with the untouch­able musi­cian, includ­ing how he recruit­ed her after see­ing her on YouTube and what it’s like to have a “drum-off/bass-off” with him. As for whether she ever beat Prince in ping pong, you’ll have to watch to find out.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince’s First Tele­vi­sion Inter­view (1985)

Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blis­ter­ing “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” Gui­tar Solo (2004)

The Lit­tle Prince: Footage Gets Unearthed Of the Pop Star at Age 11

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“I was the young, lone­ly gay boy in the Mid­west who had no idea par­adise exist­ed. Every­thing about the Pines was new, the very idea of a place where you could play on the beach and hold hands with a guy and be with like-mind­ed peo­ple and dance all night with a man.” — pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tom Bianchi 

Dis­co did not get demol­ished at Comiskey Park in 1979. It may have dis­ap­peared from pop­u­lar cul­ture after jump­ing the duck, but it nev­er left the New York night­clubs that had nur­tured its exu­ber­ant sound — Stu­dio 54, Par­adise Garage, The Sanc­tu­ary.… Four on the floor beats pound­ed all night in the dawn­ing decade of the 80s, only the beat soon became house music, an elec­tri­fied dis­co deriv­a­tive — with­out the horns and string sec­tions — first played in clubs by DJs like Lar­ry Lev­an, who ruled the Par­adise Garage for a decade and “changed dance music for­ev­er.”

The sounds of Man­hat­tan nightlife at the turn of the 80s have gone main­stream, but sto­ries about the ear­ly, under­ground days of house tend to leave out anoth­er scene just miles away, led by DJs as beloved as Lev­an.

For LGBTQ New York­ers, the par­ty moved every sum­mer to Fire Island, where artists, vaca­tion­ers, celebri­ties, and DJs crowd­ed clubs like The Pavil­ion and the Ice Palace to hear DJs Rob­bie Leslie, Michael Jor­ba, Richie Bernier, Gian­car­lo, Teri Beau­doin, Michael Fier­man, and Roy Thode, “whose per­for­mance at the Ice Palace showed how shim­mery, gui­tar-dri­ven dis­co slow­ly gave way to the dri­ving bass of house music,” The New York Times notes.

Thode became a leg­end not only in the Fire Island sum­mer scene but dur­ing his res­i­den­cy at Stu­dio 54, at the per­son­al invi­ta­tion of club own­er Steve Rubell. Fire Island DJs played records they heard in the off sea­son at the island’s clubs, or debuted new­ly-released tracks. (Don­na Sum­mer’s “MacArthur Park” made its debut on the island, for exam­ple.) “Fire Island’s infa­mous bac­cha­nals have gone on to become the stuff of gay myth and leg­end,” write Matt Moen at Paper. The island has also long been “an icon­ic refuge and safe haven for New York City’s queer com­mu­ni­ty dat­ing back well over half a cen­tu­ry.” One res­i­dent calls it a “gay Shangri La.” Anoth­er com­pares it to Israel, a “spir­i­tu­al home­land.”

Split between two towns, Cher­ry Grove and the Pines, the sum­mer retreat has espe­cial­ly “been a haven for the cre­ative,” says Bob­by Bon­nano, founder and pres­i­dent of the Fire Island Pines His­tor­i­cal Preser­va­tion Soci­ety. It has also been a hide­away for celebri­ties like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Calvin Klein, and Per­ry Ellis. Bonnano’s exten­sive online his­to­ry of the island doc­u­ments its 20th cen­tu­ry ori­gins as a place for gay artists who built hous­es in a dis­tinc­tive archi­tec­tur­al style that defines the island to this day, and who par­tied hard at clubs like The Pavil­lion. The mix­es here from Fire Island’s best DJs come from one such beach house, bought by Peter Kriss and Nate Pins­ley, who dis­cov­ered a box of tapes left behind by a pre­vi­ous own­er.

The cou­ple gave the box of tapes to their friend Joe D’E­spinosa. A soft­ware engi­neer and DJ, D’E­spinoza has spent “count­less hours” dig­i­tiz­ing, remas­ter­ing, and upload­ing the col­lec­tion to Mix­cloud. The result­ing archive rep­re­sents a “trea­sure trove of record­ed DJ sets,” span­ning “two decades worth of par­ties,” Moen writes, from 1979 through 1999. The Pine Walk col­lec­tion fea­tures more than 200 tapes (some from gigs in Manhattan),“taken from from Memo­r­i­al Day week­enders, Labor Day par­ties, sea­son open­ings and recur­ring club nights.” These are sol­id sets of vin­tage dis­co and clas­sic house, many of them doc­u­ment­ing the tran­si­tion from one to the oth­er. Browse and stream the full col­lec­tion on Mix­cloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

Dis­co Saves Lives: Give CPR to the The Beat of Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”

Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music: An Inter­ac­tive, Ency­clo­pe­dic Data Visu­al­iza­tion of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music

Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night: Scenes from the Night Dis­co Died (or Did It?) at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, 1979

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness