Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

Indeep recorded the single in 1982 for Sound of New York, with Mike Cleveland leading the session and vocals by Réjane “Reggie” Magloire and Rose Marie Ramsey. It was mixed by Michael Jay at Eastern Artists Recording Studio in East Orange, New Jersey. The track became Indeep’s breakthrough and the label’s biggest hit, reaching No. 13 on the UK Singles Chart and spending nine weeks on that chart. It also hit No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart and No. 10 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart, making it a major crossover club record. The song has remained a dance-music standard, with later writers and critics treating it as one of the defining records of early-1980s post-disco and club culture. It has been sampled or referenced in well over 200 later recordings, and the title inspired Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster’s book on DJ culture.