Steve Hooks: The Pulse of the Party

“If there’s anyone who’s done more mobile DJ shows in their life, I’ll give them $1000”, flatly stated India Hooks after hearing that her husband, Steve Hooks refused to concur with her boast that he was the longest running mobile DJ in the country. Whether he holds that title or not, he is confident to say from the early days of college parties and Banchees to the festivals and proms of today, he has entertained over a million people. Though he laughed when this reporter suggested “I heard you wrote a book?”, the 42 page manual entitled “How to Start Your Own Disco Show Business” penned by Hooks in ‘78, predated the vast library of magazines and publications on the subject available today. Such endeavors, since establishing Hooks Sounds as a business in 1976, have made him a recognizable figure in the DJ community.

India recalls her first visit to the big DJ convention held every year in Las Vegas with Steve. “We were checking into the hotel and Steve gave his name. The young man behind them tapped him on the shoulder and asked ‘Are you Steve Hooks’, and as Steve said ‘yes’ and turned to shake his hand, the amazed, wide eyed DJ said ‘I heard you were going to be here, but I didn’t believe it.” India added “You hear people whisper to each other everywhere you go, ‘that’s Steve Hooks’, I look forward to going every year, it’s like going with a rock star!”

Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, Steve Hooks dates his first public performance to the second grade when he sung “Ringo” by Lauren Green, as his neighborhood friend acted it out. “I always could name every artist and song and release year” It came in handy for winning radio contests. After graduating from highschool, Hooks decided to postpone college plans for two years so that he could work two jobs and save up to buy the ultimate stereo system. Once that goal was achieved, he enrolled in Western Kentucky University and became an SAE.

Naturally his system was invited to all the parties, and Steve kept a watchful eye over it to prevent its being damaged. It didn’t take long to discover that he preferred controlling the music over mingling with the crowd and his brothers had dubbed him “Hoooksss Ssssoundzzzz”. By the fall of 1976, Hooks decided to earn his living with his new found skills and began renting the Jaycee Pavilion to host parties. With a $10 advertising budget, spent on poster board and magic markers, the first night was attended by over 3,000 people. Filled to capacity, there were more people outside than in and they drug speakers onto the lawn to accommodate the outdoor partiers. Hooks recalls afterward, “The parking lot glistened like a sheet of glass” there was so much broken glass covering it. He swept it all up and began making new posters the following Tuesday. “Hooks Sounds Disco” as he called it, became a Thursday night mainstay. Money was always reinvested back into the show and every week he would add something new. They built their own foggers, bubble machines and flash pots. He bought a mirror ball so big that they almost couldn’t get it in the door, and of course, the speakers got bigger and bigger and bigger.

By 1977, Steve decided to take his act on the road and booked his first mobile show in Hazard. He went with a DJ named Sisco to do the high school dance. The crowd loved Sisco, who was also an accomplished disco dancer and the two became a team. Though if truth be known, between the long drive that predated interstates, the motel room, and a new employee, Steve lost money on that first gig, but the potential was evident and in no time they had a 16 foot trailer and two matching, shimmering outfits to take their show on the road. After seeing the movie Saturday Night Live, they also built themselves a lighted dance floor which could be disassembled and taken on the road. Word of mouth spread and the jobs poured in fast enough that according to Hooks, “I wore out 7 or 8 copies of Saturday Night Fever.”

By 1979, Steve decided to add a storefront and rented the back room from Blanton & Chandler Music to compliment their instrument and sound equipment offerings with a DJ and lightening shop. By the time the disco craze began to cool down, Steve Hooks was already tapping into the party potential of Soul. Feeling that the Black scene was leading the way in the evolution of dance music, he began renting the biggest venues to date for his soul parties and partnered with popular radio DJ from Ft. Campbell, JB Forte to host events at places like The CL Cutlett Building, The Cave City Convention Center and the Murfreesboro Civic Center. He remained an avid fan through the music’s evolution into funk and later rap. He recalls one listener saying they heard his song on the radio after Rapper’s Delight hit the airwaves. He had been “breaking in the song” by playing a prerelease version at his shows, and learned all the lyrics, which he incorporated into his own rap with the audience.

In 1980, he opted for a more consistent venue and opened his own teen club in the Bowling Green Mall called “Finally’s”. Not ready to call it quits when the teen club closed at midnight, Hooks soon began reopening every night from 1-5am as an after hours club. Members could bring their own alcohol and dance to live bands. Slick Rock became the house band and the Itchy Brothers, forerunner to the Kentucky Headhunters were regulars among the frequent guest bands. In fact, jam sessions of all the local musician celebrities became common place as the club evolved into the place to go for both band members and patrons when their regular haunts shutdown for the night. The club featured extravagant lighting effects including the state’s first lighted dance floor, and was the place to be to dance the night away. Adjacent to the club was his new store Hooks Sounds House of Music, where he worked by day.

By the time 1984 rolled around Steve Hooks was refocusing his energies more on the store and opted to move back in with Blanton & Chandler in their new location. Marketing endeavors like his How-To manual for DJs had really started paying off and he was beginning to enjoy a lucrative mail order business. He advertised inexpensively, by putting one line in stereo magazines stating that a person could learn to start their own DJ business by ordering the free booklet. Complete with diagrams of stage plans, sample contracts and advice on everything from equipment to marketing, the self published guide inspired young music enthusiasts all over the country to call on Steve Hooks to help them order equipment. The mail order business was hot, but Hooks was about to get burned.

Approached at a DJ convention with an offer to disperse his marketing materials among the DJ’s in the Detroit area, Steve gladly gave the young man all the materials he requested. Soon orders poured in from different locations in Michigan as fast as he could fill them ship them out. But business was brought to a screeching halt when it turned out he was the victim of a credit card scam and suddenly he was ruined in 1986. His ambition was lost and he spent the next year doing a few shows with his remaining equipment to cover the cost of rent and food.

But as always, with Steve Hooks, there’s never much down time and by 1987 he was back on the road, following the masses to Daytona for Spring Break. He and his new partner, Terry Tunks convinced four large beach front hotels to let them make use of their decks for the patrons who were overflowing their bars on a profit sharing basis. Their piece of the pie grew as the deck parties became more popular than the indoor ones until according to Hooks “It was like Studio 54. They were so full that you had to wait for ten people to leave to let ten more in and the longer you were in line the more it cost. The cover started at $4 but the last hundred people in would pay $20 each.” One summer they let a guy offering piercings share the deck with them and over the course of four weeks he cleared $24,000 and that was before body piercing became the fad it is today. The duo appealed to and secured major sponsorships for their shows from companies like Coca Cola, Coors Light, Welches, Lecoq Sportif, Ban de Soleil and Hawaiian Tropics. But as the nineties drew near, the crowd migrated to Cancun and Panama City and before they could get their foot in the door corporate productions like MTV saw the promotional opportunities and took over the beach parties. So Hooks and his shark, which had become his mascot since accompanying him to Florida, headed back to Bowling Green to open a series of store locations from the ByPass to College Street until finally settling in the current location on Adams Street. Over the course of these years he also owned or partnered in over a dozen teen clubs in Tennessee and Kentucky and began consulting for other bar owners and installing sound and lightening for their clubs. But before leaving Daytona, he was introduced for the first time to his new love – karaoke!

At the time one disc was $105 and only contained a couple of decent songs, so it would be a couple of years before he invested in his first Karaoke system. But from the get go, Hooks was hooked. The first year after getting the new system, he booked 200 karaoke shows and a regular appearances at the Executive Inn to warm the crowd up for he band, seven nights a week. It was here that he was first approached by a blonde named India Wilson inquiring about buying a system and offering herself as a subcontracted karaoke jockey. Raised in the radio business, she had been behind a mic since the age of 14. She began attending his shows at the Blue Moose in Holiday Inn and before they knew it, they had sung their way into a long term partnership, marrying in 1996. This writer can bear witness to many a Tuesday night at Thursdays, after singing karaoke for the patrons from 9 to close, they serenaded me throughout the cleanup process and the next day reported the continuation of their karaoke marathon in the garage til sunrise!

Even before they were married, India had quit her day job and partnered with Steve to run the lounge in Howard Johnson’s. Karaoke through the week and bands on the weekends occupied all her evenings will Steve DJ’d shows at night. In no time, she took over the restaurant and banquet facilities for the hotel. After fire destroyed the facility, she brought her event planning skills to the Hooks store and initiated the introduction of complementary services from tables, chairs and tents to inflatable games and turn key party planning.

Proms, which have always been part of Hooks Sounds business preoccupy the months of April and May. Last year all but one school in Warren County had their prom DeeJayeed by Hooks Entertainment and can amount to as many as 17 shows in one weekend during peak time. Independent DJ’s are often contracted to help cover shows in the 300 mile radius they perform in and contacts are utilized from points even further away when requests come in to travel beyond the area. Equipment originally purchased to enhance proms and after prom parties such as video projectors, large screens and inflatable games have also caught on for a variety of functions from festivals to company picnics. And their fleet of trucks has taken their equipment to locations from New York to Idaho. And with the same enthusiasm they take on with all their offerings, you can on occasion find both the Hooks playing on the games!

Last year, Hooks Entertainment decided to bring the party home and partnered with Tony and Debbie Cardwell to purchase Gasper River Retreat. Living on the grounds, facilities such as a banquets hall, bunker cabins, pool and grounds are rented out for events such as family reunions and company picnics. They plan to start hosting bluegrass festivals and concentrate on providing turn key planning for weddings and other events.

Steve Hooks has seen a lot of changes in the 27 years he has enjoyed spinning disks (whether they were actually albums, casettes, cds, mini disks, dats, karaoke discs, laser discs, DVD or the internet). The audience, the music and the equipment have varied but the formula is still the same. According to Steve there is no better feeling on earth than when you have your theatrical effects and music lined up just right to move the crowd and take them where you want to. “When I played the clip ‘You can call me Al’ as Al Gore walked out, chill bumps covered me.” The parties aren’t as wild as the infamous Banchee parties he DJ’d in the nineties and the costumes aren’t as flashy as they were in the 70’s, but knowing how to mix into a new song before the dancers even realize they’ve left the old one or how coordinate with the management on when to slow it down and clear the dance floor to take advantage of a drink special are still the fundamental tricks of the trade. Timing and reading the crowd are the hallmark of any successful DJ, and though equipment is now cheaper and more accessible to everyone, these talents are harder to come by. As Steve Hooks begins to upgrade and shelve the cds, like the vinyl albums before them to make way for new computer systems which allow a 30,000 song library of mp3s and 8,000 karaoke selections at his fingertips as well video and graphic effects created and edited on site and projected on screen, he ponders the future of DJ driven shows where the DJ is allowed even more freedom to interact with and work the crowd. The adornments are less frilly, with sequins and rhinestones giving way to tuxedos and though the dancing is a bit dirtier, the crowds are more responsible and their musical tastes much broader. He believes that a good show has a wide mix of music from bluegrass to rap and that a seasoned DJ controls the pulse of the party and can take it in any direction he chooses. He continues to keep up with trends, adding foam parties most recently to their after prom party packages. Karaoke, he believes is bigger than ever now that so many are purchasing home equipment to hone their skills before public performances. Crazy will not soon be defeated as the most requested karaoke song, nor Old Time Rock and Roll as the most requested dance tune. And though a tuxedo may be the fashion, both sides of the Hooks’ closet is filled with matching his and her sequined outfits in a variety of colors and no matter what you thought, according to Steve Hooks “disco is not dead.” HooksEntertainment.com

GasperRiverRetreat.com

Kim Mason is the Content Manager of the Amplifier which was founded by her in 1995. She serves as Executive Director for the BG International Festival and designs websites. www.kimmason.ky.net