Kenny Carpenter DJ'd at Studio 54 and the Legendary Black Gay Club Better Days. He's Still DJ'ing Internationally at 68.
The native NYer talks about starting as a lights operator in his teens, the night Diana Ross crashed his booth, the contrast between white and Black gay clubs, and why he doesn't want to leave Italy.
Hi, Caftaners. I write to you in the wake of yet another sad and scary but also slightly hopeful weekend in Daddy Trump’s cruel America. Sad and scary because of continued deportations and the horrific, terrifying appalling home assassination (apparently committed by a MAGA psycho) of Minnesota Democratic state senator Melissa Hortman and her husband, leaving their children parentless. Every day in this country is a descent into a deeper ring of hell—it’s like a cortisol-spiking trauma assault that never ends.
But also hopeful because of the overwhelming turnout in thousands of cities and towns nationwide Saturday for the NO KINGS protests. Here is me with friends at the NYC march, which was massive—despite the rain.
It seems that millions people everywhere are boiling mad, and I hope that rage intensifies and results in more and bolder acts of nonviolent resistance—that in turn will embolden a new kind of leadership from existing or yet-to-emerge figures. I believe to the very core of my being that the energy has to bubble up from the streets. Nobody is coming down from on high to save us. Barack and Michelle Obama have permanently retired their superhero costumes.
(In fact if you want to see an example that brought me to tears of a community coming together to nonviolently resist ICE terrorization, watch the video embedded in this story in The Intercept; it becomes dramatic and extremely moving at about the halfway point, and that’s all I’ll say. But we need to see this happening in every community that Trump’s ICE goons are terrorizing.)
In between protests, I retreat into the gay culture of yesteryear, which brings me joy, via Caftan. And on that note, I am so happy about the following chat with longtime DJ Kenny Carpenter. It has its origins in my search in recent weeks to see who was still around from the era of a Black gay NYC club called Better Days (1972-1988), which I’d heard about for years intermittently amid the much more robust archiving of legendary clubs of that era such as Paradise Garage and The Saint. I learned via this terrific RedBull Music Academy oral history of Better Days that one of the DJs there in the early 1980s was named Kenny Carpenter. A little more research informed me that Kenny was not only alive and well but still traveling the world as a DJ at the age of 68.
When I reached out, he graciously agreed to talk with me—which we did for two hours on June 12. What follows is not only a look at how he revived his DJ career in the 90s after overcoming crack addiction…but what it was like being a gay teenager from the projects who, wide-eyed and amazed, insinuated his way into the evolving NYC disco scene of the 1970s (which many of you must know by now is an enduring obsession of mine).
If you like these interviews, which take considerable time to source, set up, conduct, transcribe and coordinate photos for, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Every bit of support helps me devote more time to this labor of love that I began four years ago with the goal of entering into the record the often untold stories of the gay men who made our culture. And now, without further ado (or self-flacking), here’s the Kenny Carpenter, a truly amazing and also very sweet and funny gent.
Kenny, thank you so much for talking. You said you were working in Italy at the moment. Where?
I’m in Rome now for a couple weeks, in an area called Conca d’Oro. I’m staying at a friend’s apartment. I love Rome. Naples is one of my favorite cities here as well. I would not come back to the U.S. if I could.
Favorite pasta?
The one I cook. Penne bolognese.
Kenny, where are you based?
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Europe but I’m still based in New York. I stay with a friend of mine when I’m there. Lately, I’m not there much though—maybe thirty percent of the year.
You’re 68. You look amazing. Do you work out or eat well?
I eat well, I walk five miles a day and I swim.
When did you start DJ’ing internationally?
It started in the nineties. The first time I went to Europe I was invited to the Ministry of Sound in London, after Larry Levan was there for about a week when they first opened in 1991. (Larry died of AIDS a year later.)
Do you have to schlep your DJ equipment around the world?
No. These days, I could have everything I need to DJ in my back pocket.
Does it feel less real?
No. Only if I’m playing an MP3. Young people don’t understand the difference between an MP3 and a WAV file. Your frequencies are cut and modified in an MP3 version.
The WAV is the truer version of the recording?
Yes.
What is a typical work cycle like for you? Show up, play, leave, sleep, etc.
Currently, these sets have been reduced to two-three hours maximum. I could start at 2 am and finish at 4-5 am and then I’m back to the hotel. There’s all these DJ lineups. They don’t know how to set a mood and everyone comes in with a hammer. Bam, bam, bam! I hate all that. I want to hear one DJ who takes me on a journey.
Even if I play until 5am, I wake up before 10am because I want to get my breakfast before the hotel kitchen closes. Most of the time I’m in a city only for one night. I’m spending a lot of time in New York now because my brother is very ill.
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you get worn out from your traveling?
I’m still one of those old school DJs where, when I’m in the club playing, I lose myself. Somebody else is doing the selecting. I don’t want people to focus on me. I want them to listen to the music. You know what I’m saying?
See what he means here:
Let me be honest with you—I don’t want to come back to the U.S. I have to, but I don’t want to. Every time when I think we’ve reached the bottom, some other outrageous shit comes out. It’s a distraction ploy for [Trump]. He creates madness so you can forget about the $400 million plane [that Qatar gave him]. I’m so ashamed of the U.S. government right now.
I feel the same way—shame. But let’s set that aside because sadly we could spend the whole interview talking about that. So, when you play now, do you mix old and new?
I mix old and new.
Give me a sample…
I like to find songs that really aren’t available. Like “A Sky Full of Stars” by Coldplay. Avicii did that originally. But I got a different mix of it that’s not readily available. I have a producer here in Rome who just sent me a hot track.
Or listen to this. I found this disco track. It’s called “Temptation” by Tulio de Capo from 1977. [Tim: I looked for this online later and couldn’t find it.] I did an edit and made it more club-friendly.
He bops around on the Zoom while he plays it.
I love that. It has a bit of a “Soul Makossa” vibe. So let’s go back in time now. What kind of a kid were you?
I was one of eight boys, including the two sets of twins in this photo.
My father left us after the last set of twins were born. I don’t remember him ever living with us. I may have blocked it out from anger. Life was difficult after that because we were poor, living in public housing and receiving welfare and food from the city. I used to feel so humiliated when I had to go with my brothers to the center to pick the food up. My father remarried and his wife had a baby girl.
But I didn’t want to do things the other boys were doing. I was a weird child, you know what I’m saying? I hung around with girls.
Same.
About eight of them. My family thought I was some kind of a gigolo. [laughs] But when they found out the truth, when I was 19, it was devastating for my mother. I made a pass at one of my mother’s friend’s boyfriends. [laughs] The woman told my mother.
Shit! How did you make the pass?
I used to be a babysitter and mind the woman’s baby son. Sometimes her boyfriend would come over and he came one day when I was lying on the bed with the baby watching TV and he came and lay in the bed. That was a mistake! [laughs] Like a stupid idiot, I made a pass at him. And then the woman told my mother and that’s how the whole family found out. When I got home at nine a.m. from the club where I was a light man—this was 1976—my mother was waiting for me, with her liquor bottle. We were living in the Farragut Projects in Brooklyn. "Kenny, I wanna talk to you. Are you gay?" I said, "I don't wanna talk—I'm going to bed." But she insisted, so I said, "Yes, I'm gay." She cried and had a fit. "Lord, how could this be?"
Was your dad in the picture?
No, he left when I was so young that I don't even remember when it was. But anyway, my mom got over it because she had no choice. I said to her, "If it’s grandkids you're worried about, you have seven other sons." And when she died at 85, she had two grandkids, and one was a girl—which she always wanted.
OK, that's good. So when did you start going out?
I was 18 when I started going out in Manhattan, with those eight girls I was friends with. The first club I went to with them was called The Hollywood, on 43rd St.
Richie Kaczor [who later became a famed DJ at Studio 54] was playing there. It was a small bar but he turned it out.
Do you remember what he was playing?
I don't. Just pull up a list of 1977 disco hits. The club was mixed gay and straight. It was my first time being in a club with other gay men. I guess a lot of Abba. "Dancing Queen" was big. But what was played in the clubs depended on whether the club was more white or Black. For example, "Born to Be Alive" by Patrick Hernandez would be played in the white clubs, but if you played it in a Black club, you'd have your head handed to you.
What do you think were the attributes that made a song Black or white?
Even though music was mostly created by Black people, white people needed some music they could call theirs.
So...like Cher?
Yeah. Or Karen Carpenter.
But that's not dance music. What about Chic?
Chic was universal. So anyway, that first night I went out in Manhattan, the club closed at 4:30 am, so we went to this afterhours place on 23rd called Galaxy 21 that closed at 9am.
There were three floors, but the bottom was the dance floor and the DJ was playing and I was standing there listening to it, feeling so excited to see a DJ playing. All I could think was, "I gotta get in that [booth] and see what's going on over there. So the DJ, who turned out to be Walter Gibbons—
A DJ legend!
Yes. He saw me and invited me into the booth. This was 1975. I go in and I'm so excited to see all the equipment, including a lighting board. So I started pressing some of the buttons, and he said, "I like what you're doing with the lights. Do you want a job working the lights?" And I said, "Sure!" You know what I'm saying? So I worked there from 1975 to 1976 but they fired me [laughs].
Oh, no. Why?
I believed the lights should be a reflection of the music. So sometimes when the music broke, I'd bash on the bright white light, then I'd plunge the whole club into darkness. So the owner came over to me and said, "I don't like that—do that again and you're fired." And as he was walking away, the break came and I just couldn't help myself and I did it again.
Oh, no! What compelled you to do that?
I don't know. I got a bad streak in me. I don't like people telling me what to do. But luckily one of the club owners, Angelo Clemente, was opening a new club on 19th St called The Inferno and asked me to do the lights. I was 19. I'd never finished high school but I got my GED. So during the day I was laying around being lazy, smoking weed and running bad. I never got a job during the day.
Describe The Inferno.
It was a giant loft with a dance floor that was probably 60 feet long by 30 feet wide. They designed the light for the club and I was there from the beginning. They had these beacons, which are like colored police lights but bigger, that would come down from these very high ceilings.
Was was your style of lighting?
When the song is speaking, I want the lights to go with the voice. So, like, "Holiday...celebrate..." [He sings Madonna's "Holiday.”] Or certain themes. Like if a song is about burning, I want red lights. If it's anything about sunshine, I want blue lights to signify daytime. But I don't do lights anymore.
Kenny, what was the racial landscape of clubs in NYC in the 1970s? For example, I've always heard David Mancuso's The Loft to be very mixed but I've also heard that certain gay discoes like Flamingo or the Tenth Floor were set up as membership clubs partly to keep out Black and Hispanic guys—you know, like, you had to know someone to get a membership or be invited by a member, and that filtered people out.
Racial exclusion wasn't enforced at the door.
Really? Not even in indirect ways like demanding several forms of ID?
One thing about Americans is that we bring racism on ourselves. For instance, if you went to Better Days—
Which I can't wait to talk about with you.
—you know you were going to a Black club and were going to hear Black music, soul, girls wailing, and very African drums. So that was the Black sound. I think I only went to The Saint once.
The Saint was very white, right?
Yeah. The only thing I remember about it is the planetary ceiling.
I was so fascinated by that that I don't even remember what music was playing. But I'll tell you one thing about race and clubs in NYC. The best parties are always the free ones because then everyone's welcome. Like [the current club atop The Standard Hotel] Le Bain.
It's free entry, so you have a mixed crowd. I had a birthday party there a couple years ago and I've played there a few times.
Did you ever go to The Loft?
Of course, I was a regular at both The Loft and Paradise Garage.
What would you say was the main difference between David Mancuso [The Loft] and Larry Levan [Paradise Garage] as DJs?
Larry had the power but David had the clarity. The Loft had a Class A sound system. The sound was very clean—you could hear a pin drop. But Larry at the Garage had a monster sound system, 10 times the size, and they designed the acoustics into the room.
So what was up with your sexuality around this time, the mid-seventies when you are coming up on age 20?
I'm dating but I never— one thing I've realized in my life that I can talk about now is that I am asexual.
Meaning you have no sexual desire?
No, it means I don't want intercourse.
Oh, so you're a "side" versus being a top or bottom, meaning you're into everything but fucking?
No. Asexual people don't want fucking or sucking. They want to cuddle and love.
And you've been like that your whole life?
Yes but I didn't realize it until I was in my thirties or forties.
So prior to that, you'd have sex but didn't enjoy it?
Yes.
Not even with one person with whom you felt safe?
No. [laughs] I can talk about it now because the clock is ticking, so I don't care. This is going to be a blow-up interview!
But why did you feel like you couldn't talk about it before? I mean, everyone's wired differently.
People think you're strange if you don't want intercourse, that's why.
Well, now there's this term, being a "side."
What's that? This is the first time I've heard it.
I think it's when you don't really want to top or bottom, you want to do other things like make out, cuddle, oral sex or rimming—I'm not entirely sure.
A lot of what's going on in the gay community these days, like "he," "she," I don't understand where I fit into that.
Oh, well, like being "they" or nonbinary? I think that's what we used to call being androgynous.
I don't know whether we have to have that category.
Do you know anyone who's trans or nonbinary?
No.
Really? Even in nightlife?
Maybe once or twice.
OK. So how did you transition from a lights guy to a DJ?
In 1972, I had a neighbor on the eighth floor of our building, Stevie Standard. He had his records stolen and I knew the person who stole them and I helped get them back for him, which is how we became friends. So I went up to his apartment and he had a set-up with two turntables. "Can I try to mix a record?" I asked him, and he said, "Go ahead." So eventually I got the hang of it where I could match the beats right. So he started taking me around to places where he DJ'd in NYC. He eventually became the DJ known as Strafe, who did [the 1990 house classic] "Set It Off."
So while I was working lights at The Inferno between 1976 and 1980, lucky if I made $75 a night for nine hours of work, I saw DJs come and go. Sometimes when they got tired in the final morning hours they'd let me play for awhile. I wanted to DJ there myself, but the owner didn't think I could pull it off. So by 1980, there was this well-known promoter, Mike Stone.
So when [Studio 54 owners] Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager went to prison in 1980 on tax evasion charges…
…Studio 54 stayed open under their managers but they lost their liquor license and all the celebrities abandoned the club. So they started doing Black gay parties there. We don't need no alcohol at Black parties—we'd just serve fruit punch like at The Loft and Paradise Garage.
So Mike Stone got Nicky Siano [Tim: Nicky was one of my first Caftan interviews] to play there, but for some reason or another they didn't like Nicky and were looking for another DJ. So one early morning at The Inferno when the resident DJ Rene Hewitt was tired and letting me play, in walks Mike Stone with his entourage. They came to me in the console and I told them Rene was taking a break. And I thought to myself, "You're being auditioned. If you've never turned it out before in your life, you better kill it now." And I did.
Do you remember what you played?
No. When I DJ, I go into a kind of hypnotic experience. But when Mike was leaving, he said, "I like your music—how would you like to play at Studio 54 on Saturday nights?" And I said, "Let me think about it for...okay!" [laughs]
So I started the following week, on my birthday, October 7, 1980. I was paid about $300 a night. Nicky was there that night even though he'd been fired. I realized that night that I didn't have enough records to play a full night. So after that I had to beg, borrow and steal to get more records. I bought them everywhere, including Vynl Mania and Rock 'n' Soul. I played at 54 for about a year.
Snaps of Studio 54 at that time, courtesy of Kenny:
Can you try to remember some of the tracks you played?
The big record for me was "Doctor Love" by First Choice. Also, "Down to Love Town" by the Originals, "Paradise" by Change, "I Hear Music in the Street" by Unlimited Touch, "I Want To Thank You" by Alicia Myers, "Candidate For Love" by T.S. Monk.
Then as a DJ I moved to Bond's International Casino in Times Square.
That was the largest club in NYC, converted from a department store. I played there from 1981 to 1983 every Saturday. It was the same people who went to Studio, but more of them, like 3,500 people. We had many great live performances there, like Eddie Kendricks, the Clash, Chaka Khan, Grace Jones and Evelyn Champagne King. Here’s a photo of my dance floor there:
That looks like an amazing party. So let's talk about Better Days now, which was on 49th St. from 1972 to 1988. A real mecca for gay Black men.
In the '70s, 49th St between Eighth and Ninth Avenues was a really rough area. You could have your ass kicked over there, you know what I'm saying? So the original DJ there was Tee Scott, who played there for more than 10 years.
Would you go?
Yes. From the outside, it looked like an apartment building—no big grand entrance.
As soon as you entered, you made a left to the bar, which was a big round bar, then you'd hit the dance floor that held about 300 people, with an amazing sound system. The big songs there in the 1970s when I'd go were "Love Hangover" by Diana Ross, "Love Epidemic" by the Trammps, "Call On Your Six-Million Dollar Man" by the Originals, Shalimar, Donna Summer and anything by First Choice, especially "Double Cross," which was a big Tee Scott record.
How did you become a DJ there?
For some reason, Tee Scott stopped, then came Bruce Forest.
Oh, yeah—the white guy that the gay Black crowd originally revolted against.
They attacked him one night. Bruce told me that he was coming out of the club, getting into a taxi, and someone asked him, "Excuse me, are you Bruce Forest?" "Yes, I am." They started to beat him and he was lucky he made it into the cab. But the crowd was angry and felt betrayed that they'd gotten ridden of Tee Scott and hired a white genius.
But he eventually won them over because he was so good.
Bruce Forest is a fucking genius. He was big on [sound] effects. He set up some kind of video projector where they could sync videos to the music. He'd use this old movie with Joan Crawford, "Straitjacket," where she goes crazy with an ax on her cheating husband, which they'd run while playing "Double Cross." [laughs]
So anyway, I'm DJ'ing there one night and this guy comes up to me: "Kenny, Diana Ross is here!" I said, "Get out of here." I figured it was a drag queen. But there, to my astonishment, is Diana Ross with this music manager, Michele Saunders. I think Diana was wearing all white. Anyway, I was just about to play all her songs from beginning to end starting with "Stop in the Name of Love" when she comes in the console and says, "Play for me but don't play any of my music."
And she stayed in the console with me for two hours. She'd had a few too many drinks and tried to stand up with me by the turntables but I said, "Get down from here before you fall, because we ain't got no money" [to give you if you sue]. We had a good time that night.
I played at Better Days for about a year and a half. Then I had a five-year hiatus, 1985-1990, where I didn't play music because I had a drug problem. There was a lot of coke at Studio, where I got hooked. More and more dealers gave it to me for free. Then in 1985, my mother had a stroke and died. I started smoking crack after that. I was doing everything possible to kill myself, but it wasn’t working.
You were devastated over her death.
Yeah, but I didn't realize that until 10 years later. I don’t even have a photo of the two of us together.
So while I'm smoking crack, I had to get a regular day job because I still had rent and bills to pay. Then one day I met this guy on the corner who said to me, "I think you have a problem, but these people will help you." And he gave me the number for Narcotics Anonymous. And I ended up going to those meetings for 10 years. When first started going, it was like magic for me because I heard other people's stories that were just like mine, or even worse, and I felt empathy. Knowing that I wasn't alone helped me to stay clean myself.
You never relapsed?
No. I'd made up my mind that I was going to stop, and that was it. But they said things in the meetings that I didn't agree with, like the fact that any drug or drink would lead you back to crack. And I was still smoking pot, and I still do, or I'll have a drink, but I don't do any other drugs and I'm just fine.
So when and how did you start DJ'ing again?
I was working for Lane Bryant in the mail room on 34th St. until 1992, while getting clean. And this promoter, Greg Daye, had this loft in midtown where he'd throw basically straight Black parties, and he asked me to play. So I'd play all the Chicago house tracks of the mid- to late-eighties. After that, I was doing small gigs here and there. But then I got a call from the new club Ministry of Sound in London asking if I'd come over for a week and play. They'd brought [legendary Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan] over first, a little bit before he died of AIDS in 1982.
So I did that gig, which was heaven. They'd designed the club to resemble the Paradise Garage on a smaller scale.
Speaking of Larry, what was he like?
I don't think he liked me very much because we were rivals. We were never great friends. But I did go to Paradise Garage a lot.
It's a club that closed in 1987, a few years before my time in NYC, that I've always wished I'd gone to. Can you describe the experience?
You'd enter into the parking garage and have to walk up a ramp to the pay window, then you'd make a right and you're in a lounge, then off to the left was the massive dance floor that could hold about 1,500 people. It opened at midnight but Larry wouldn't play until two or three in the morning. Once he arrived, he'd either rip the place apart or he wouldn't.
One great memory is when Dan Hartman, who did "Relight My Fire," performed there, and the part where Loleatta Holloway comes into the song...
"Strong enough to walk on through the night..."
Yeah! At that moment, she busted out from behind some curtain in the back and everyone in the club went "Ohhhhh!" Another time, Grace Jones was performing and some fucking idiot pulled out handcuffs and cuffed his arm to her ankle. Well, let me tell you, you don't fuck with Miss Grace Jones, you understand? She kicked the guy in the face and told him, "Motherfucker, you better find the damn key." And he hurried up and got that key and then they threw him out the back door.
I was also there when Madonna performed, around when she first came out. It was okay. The crowd wasn't really feeling her. Paradise was primarily a Black club and they felt that Madonna was so pop.
Kenny, what do you think the main vibe difference was back in those days between a mainly white gay club and a mainly Black one?
At the white clubs, all these buff muscular guys have their shirts off.
Not at a Black gay club?
No. It's not like a show. Maybe some shirts are off but it's not because they think they have a great body. It's because they're hot and sweaty.
Why do you think the white gays are like that?
In white gay culture, muscle gets attention whereas in Black gay culture music is more important than beauty.
Why do you think that's so?
To be honest, I don't know. Maybe these gay white men crave attention.
Who's the ultimate diva for gay Black men? Diana?
No. It's Patti LaBelle. She's one of the last great soul voices left. She has an extra octave the other girls don't have. She can scream anyone off the stage. Don't try to have another act after her.
Haha, right. So you said when we started talking that you would stay in Italy if you could.
Yes.
Is there anything about NYC that you would miss?
A lot of people here in Italy ask me if I experience racism here. And I say no, because Italians never make me feel like they don't like me because of the color of my skin. I was in line here and this American husband and wife were behind me, and the guy says, "Kathy, be careful." And that's happened to me two or three times here, and it's always with white Ameircans. They think I'm African and so they speak English in front of me that way.
Did you say anything to them?
No. Another thing is, most Americans don't realize they're being slowly poisoned by the food they eat.
Right. So do you want to keep DJ'ing until you can't?
Yes.
No stop date?
No. Why should I? I mean, I'm healthier than most people my age. I don't understand why most people stop working.
A big reason is that they hate their job and can’t wait until they can retire. But it sounds like you love what you do.
I love what I do.
Why?
When I'm playing, no matter the size of the room, when people are dancing and enjoying music, when songs or beats come on that make them excited and want to dance even more—I just love it. Like I said, when I'm playing, it's a hypnotic state for me. Especially when the sound quality is good. I could go for hours and hours. I love using song and rhythm to tell a story that I want to tell. •
You can listen to Kenny DJ for hours and hours here. Thanks Caftaners…next week’s interview is with a literary LION! :) xoxox Tim