B-side "Beyond the Clouds" Format 12" | Released 1986 Label Trax TX127 | |
Recorded Chicago, Illinois, United States Genre Chicago house
deep house | ||
Can You Feel It is a 1986 house record released by Larry Heard (also known as Mr. Fingers). It is regarded as one of the first deep house records. Its seminal impact on deep house has been compared to that of Derrick May's "Strings Of Life" (1987) on Detroit techno.
Contents
In 2006, Slant Magazine ranked the song at number 51 in their list of the "100 Greatest Dance Songs".
Original release
"Can You Feel It" was originally released as an instrumental on Mr. Fingers' Washing Machine EP in 1986 on Trax Records. It became popular in the Chicago club scene and was often mixed with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. The song later appeared on the 1988 Fingers Inc. album Another Side.
Remixes
In 1987, Rhythm Control released a track called "My House," which contained spoken word vocals from Chuck Roberts discussing the feeling and meaning of house music. In 1988, the speech from the a cappella version of "My House" was later used in a remix of "Can You Feel It" and overlaid over Heard's original instrumental (with samples from The Jacksons' "Opening/Can You Feel It" off their 1981 The Jacksons Live! album used in the introduction). This speech version of the track was a bootleg and was dismissed by Heard, who has always been vocal in his disapproval of sampling the work of other artists without their permission. Regardless, this quickly became the most well-known version of "Can You Feel It" Both the instrumental and vocal versions have appeared on many house-music compilations.
A rarer alternate mix was also made with soul vocals from Fingers Inc. vocalist Robert Owens.
The only release in digital quality including both "a cappella" speeches from Martin Luther King Jr. and Chuck Roberts, was a limited edition Jack Trax promotional cd-single featuring 6 tracks.
Use in pop culture
The vocal remix was featured in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on the radio station SF-UR.