Check the Write Up in the NY Post:
Big Bank Hank, one-third of the Sugarhill Gang, the unlikely ambassadors who took hip-hop out of Bronx parks and onto the pop charts, died on Tuesday in Englewood, N.J. He was 58.
The cause was complications of cancer, said David Mallie, business manager for the two other members of the Sugarhill Gang, Wonder Mike and Master Gee.
The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” was not the first commercially released hip-hop single, but it was the one that effectively birthed the genre as a commercial force. The song, which used the break from Chic’s disco smash “Good Times” as a foundation, became a radio staple soon after its release in 1979, reaching No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sugar Hill Records, the group’s label, said it sold two million copies.
Big Bank Hank was born Henry Lee Jackson in the Bronx on Jan. 11, 1956, and grew up close to DJ Kool Herc, Coke La Rock and other hip-hop pioneers.He was not originally a rapper by trade. In the late 1970s he was working the door at a Bronx club called the Sparkle, where he met a rapper named Grandmaster Caz. He offered to manage Caz’s group, the Mighty Force MCs, borrowing money from his father to get it a worthy sound system for its live appearances. To pay back the loan, he took a job at Crispy Crust Pizza in Englewood.
“He would rap all the time,” Wonder Mike said in an interview on Tuesday. “While he was making the pizzas, while he was slicing them, while he was serving them.”
At the pizza shop he met Joey Robinson Jr., a son of Sylvia Robinson, soul singer turned record executive. After seeing a rapper perform at a club, Ms. Robinson had become determined to release a rap record, and she built the Sugarhill Gang from scratch. Mr. Robinson heard Mr. Jackson rapping in the pizza shop and invited him to audition for his mother, who approved of his rapping and his personality.
“He was boisterous — he filled the room,” Wonder Mike said. “Ralph Kramden-type stuff.”
The Sugarhill Gang was convened on a Friday, and by Monday it was in the studio to record its first song, “Rapper’s Delight,” which was soon released as a single, in the fall of 1979.
Until that time, hip-hop was mostly the purview of parties in nightclubs, parks and even apartment-complex rec rooms. Reportedly recorded in a single take, “Rapper’s Delight” — the full version ran more than 14 minutes — immediately shifted the center of gravity from hip-hop as a live form in which D.J.’s and rappers shared billing to one that gave primacy to rappers and their recordings.
Within weeks, the Sugarhill Gang was opening for Parliament, the leading funk outfit of the day. Soon it was headlining its own shows.
Many contended that “Rapper’s Delight” was not representative of the hip-hop that was pulsing through the Bronx — it was a little too smooth, and the Sugarhill Gang, from New Jersey, wasn’t one of the known crews. Nevertheless, it lit a fire under other record labels and hip-hop crews, and soon it had plenty of commercial competition.
The group was also chided for lack of originality; many of Big Bank Hank’s rhymes on “Rapper’s Delight” were taken from one of Grandmaster Caz’s rhyme books. Not having much experience writing lyrics, he had asked his friend for help.
His verse on the song began: “Check it out, I’m the C-A-S-AN, the O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y/You see, I go by the code of the doctor of the mix and these reasons I’ll tell you why.” Casanova Fly was a nickname of Grandmaster Caz. The lack of formal credit became a sticking point over the years; to this day, Grandmaster Caz does not receive a writing credit on the song.
Despite releasing a handful of records after “Rapper’s Delight,” the Sugarhill Gang never matched its early success and eventually disbanded in the mid-1980s, though it occasionally reunited for performances and released a children’s hip-hop album in 1999. In 2011, “Rapper’s Delight” was named to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
HERE is Grandmaster Caz's Insight on "Rapper's Delight" :
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