Classic Album: Ten City, Foundation!

Atlantic, 1989

After dropping his groundbreaking single, Move Your Body in 1986, Marshall Jefferson was “hotter than fish grease”. Sensing the heat, chum and vocal powerhouse, Byron Stingily, picked up the phone and got his hustle on, calling every major label, dangling the hottest name in house music in front of them.

Atlantic signed them up without even hearing a note from

Byron, himself. “Imagine signing someone without hearing their voice,” says Jefferson. “And then getting Byron – jackpot!”

After that, the pair assembled a supergroup of vocalists and musicians, and would produce an album rightly celebrated as one of the most seminal in dance music history.

“For the Foundation album we had the legendary Earl Young on drums,” says Jefferson. “The Grand Staff’s horn section with Orbert

Davis. My cousin Bill Dickens, who played with Ramsey Lewis. Herb Lawson on guitars. David Josias on percussion. Byron Burke, who would do musical bits. And, of course, Byron Stingily, who did lead vocals and most of the lyrics.”

This was a group of talented individuals, at the peak of their powers. There was no fumbling around in the studio. They had a job to do – make hits.

“All of us were in automatic songwriting mode,” says Jefferson. “And we got things done pretty quickly.

“Everything we wrote went on the album, too. That’s why we finished it so quickly. We didn’t have any songs that got turned down. And we finished the whole thing in two weeks.”

The LP still sounds fresh today, unusually for work from the early days of house music. Perhaps in part to Jefferson and crew’s unwillingness to rely on now-dated production gimmicks of the era.

“We were trying to be trendsetters… consciously,” he says. “Back then, everybody else was going more technical and digital, while we wanted to sound more natural. We had a different vibe to a lot of other house music. They were heavy on the digital edits – ‘Jack! Jack! Jack! Jack!’. We didn’t do that.

“And we’re still getting royalties from that stuff, so I guess somebody still likes us.”