BC063 - DJ Q&A: DJ M-Traxxx (Manny’z Tapez)

Portrait of a DJ and his collection of nearly 30,000 mixtapes

DJ M-Traxxx, via SoundCloud

There are collections and there are archives, and then there are monuments to an artform that threaten to outgrow their living space. Say hello to Manny Cuevas, with whom I recently discussed the late, great Deep House Page, the first DJ-mix repository I ever found online, a life-changing event—some of whose sets Cuevas, aka DJ M-Traxxx, himself uploaded to the site. These days, the Florida-based DJ has been sharing his incredible archive of cassette mixes on SoundCloud, under the moniker Manny’z Tapez. This playlist of 500 (or so) of those uploads is a gold mine for any fan of old-school house music.

The Deep House Page discussion will make up part of my talk at Pop Conference at USC Thornton School of Music next Thursday, March 7, at 1 p.m., as part of a panel (more info here) that also features Zoey Greenwald, Lily Moayeri, and Tamara Palmer—the latter of whose new project, Music Book Club, has shot out of the gate with a superb lineup of author Q&A’s. Amazing company there and elsewhere: the keynote that night is by George Clinton, another the next night features Wendy & Lisa. And it’s free. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

A lot of what Cuevas had to say won’t make it into that talk, but I knew instantly as he was explaining how he got his amazing collection that it would find a home here. Enjoy!

BC: You were already a DJ for many years by the time Deep House Page came along.

MANNY CUEVAS: Yeah, ’77 is when I started. I’m originally from Cleveland, a suburb called Lorrain, which was where all the Puerto Ricans migrated back in the thirties and forties to work. It’s very Hispanic, mainly Puerto Ricans and Mexicans; Hungarian, Polish. It’s kind of like Chicago, actually. That’s where I grew up until I was 19. I moved to Orlando, Florida, in 1984. I got married young; I was young daddy.

When I DJ out, I never use a USB stick. And people make fun, because I play with CDs, because of the fact that it’s still kind of tangible. It’s closer to vinyl. I remember the last part of the plague, people were “You still play with CDs!” They were taking pictures of my CDs. I’m “Oh my God, are you serious?” I like to look with my hands. I don’t want to look at a screen. People are “Yeah, but you can play 8,000 songs!” I’m “I don’t want to play 8,000 songs. I want to go to the gig with this little bag, a little case of CDs. I walk in that club, and I gotta say to myself, “OK, I gotta make these people dance with whatever I have in this freakin’ case.” It makes it challenging for me. I know that, too, I can turn around and say hi to somebody, take a picture or whatever. You interact with the crowd more. When you have to use [digital]—the DJ consistently has his face in the screen.

What was your introduction to Deep House Page?

A friend of mine—he’s Japanese—mentioned it to me. I remember he had a tape of Andre Hatchett. I said, “Where’d you get that?” He’s “Oh, I got it from the Deep House Page.” I didn’t have the Internet yet.

Like most people then.

Yeah, exactly. That was around ’99. I already had a lot of tapes, because my cousin’s from Chicago. And I also had some tapes I’d saved, from the early 70s to now—either I recorded it or my cousin recorded it.

The Hot Mix 5 Party was always my favorite. I always call them my godfathers because my first house tape I got, my cousin recorded for me. It was ’85. It was Farley [Jackmaster Funk] on one side, and the other side was Mickey Oliver.

Back then, we didn’t have the Internet, so I would go to DJ Mag, and there was a lot of the back-page ads—there were these guys looking for tapes from Chicago at that time. I’ve been taping the radio since ’89. I wanted to hear what was going on, not only in Chicago, but also New York, London, or Paris. So, I started trading [through] these ads. I had a little base, maybe ten of us, where we’d trade tapes. I even got promoters—I think they even did it without telling them—but I even got tapes from the Ministry of Sound when [DJ] Pierre first played there. People were sending me stuff like crazy. Plus, I had guest DJs on my radio show—like DJ Duke, DJ Pierre, Felix Da Housecat, Armand Van Helden, and then, of course, older-school guys like Scott Smokin’ Silz.

I was getting music from everywhere. DJs sent me promos, whether it was a mix, whether it was records, beat tracks, or whatever. I would play everything, man. Of course, I couldn’t get through everything, because it was overwhelming. You know what they say: Watch what you pray for. People always ask me, “How did you get all that?” I go, “I actually prayed.” I’m a Christian. I actually prayed. “God,” I’d go, “I have to make contacts.”

I really wanted to hit New York, because at that time, Frankie Knuckles [had] moved back to New York. He was on a radio show, and I’m “I gotta get some Frankie, man, some David Morales and all that.” Some guy just came out of out of the blue, man, just left me a voice message on my answering machine—a long message. “Hey, I heard you have a lot of Chicago tapes. I would love to send you some stuff from here from New York.” I was “Oh my gosh, perfect.” Then in the UK as well. I had people who own clubs. I got one of Fingers Inc. live at a club in Scotland. That’s all on my SoundCloud. I have everything there. And I’m still excited. Every day I post something.

I’m a huge, huge fan of your SoundCloud page.

Oh, awesome. Yeah—I got so much stuff. I’m only scratching the surface, man. I’m serious, man! I have, literally, totes in my hallway, totes of hundreds or thousands of tapes. They’re not organized. When I bought this house, I just threw everything in totes. They’re not in organized fashion. I’m doing it as I digitize them.

How many tapes would you say there are, at an estimate?

I’m walking over to one of the big totes. How many gallons is that? . . . OK, this tote is twenty-seven gallons. So I got [starts counting] . . . go into the other room [laughs] . . . nine, ten, eleven . . . other room . . . I mean, I literally have no room for these things anymore . . . twelve—I think about fifteen totes, and like I said . . . No, wait! [enters another room; keeps counting]

Twenty. Twenty totes.

Jesus Christ.

[laughs]

Is that fifty tapes per? A hundred?

Oh no, no, no . . . [goes and does some checking] There’s sixty-five per layer, and each tote has 20 layers or more. It’s crazy, man. So many tapes.

As far as Deep House Page, I became friends with gman, Gerard Rose, who was the guy behind it. I think I actually donated some of the Frankie Knuckles tapes that were up there from the Warehouse. Those were my tapes. I have the masters here.

By the way, I did a little math. It’s 26,000 tapes.

Now add two more totes I found in my spare bedroom. [laughs] Wow. That’s a lot, man. Wow. Oh my god. [much laughter] That is crazy, dude! When my siblings come over, they’re “What are you going to do with all these tapes? My ex-wife was “You’ve got to get rid of these tapes.” When I moved to this house, I got rid of a lot of flyers from back in the day. I just threw them away. She’s Japanese; they don’t like clutter. I’m not blaming her; I freaking had thousands of flyers from back in the days from Chicago. I just said, “OK, let me just bite the bullet.” . . .

I think for a lot of producers who were coming up in that era, the rediscovery of disco is this interesting, cool thing instead of the cliche of it, really resonated for people. Deep House Page played a big part in that.

Yeah, absolutely. The new generation coming up at that time—the guy who told me about the page was actually a younger Japanese cat. He was always talking about house and dubbing my tapes. I said, “Yeah, man, go ahead.” He and another guy would come to our house—they’d have a stack of tape decks, stacked up. I would let them record whatever they wanted; they would just go crazy. But he was younger, and he’s the one who told me about the Deep House Page. I was like, “Where are you getting these tapes from? I mean, Andre Hatcher—that’s rare. That’s real stuff right there.”

Once I found out, when I got onto the internet, I went there. And right away, I was just like, “This is crazy.” It was kind of overwhelming, because the thing was with me was, being old school, doing radio, especially, I had to really bust my butt. I worked two jobs. One was strictly to make phone calls. I remember back then just calling New York. I would literally write down on a piece of paper what I’m going to say and get the heck off the phone. Imagine calling London and making my contacts. I’d send them—like old school, man—a snail mail letter. “Hey, I’m going to call you on this day, let me know,” and they’d snail mail me back: “OK, that day is perfect around this time.” And boom, exactly that day, I’d call them. I’ll see what I got to say, to see what he has to say, and we hang up—“Hurry up,” because it was too expensive.

When the internet came, it was easier for everybody. And I wasn’t mad—but I was like, “Man, it’s so easy for them now. They don’t have to hustle like I did—call the labels, trying to get people to trade tapes. Now, everything’s right here.” It took a couple years for me to get used to that.