The record

Jack Your Body: the story of the record

"Jack Your Body" by Steve "Silk" Hurley became the first house record to top the UK Singles Chart, holding No. 1 for two weeks in January 1987. Made in Chicago in 1986 on cheap gear and a four-track, it took a club sound with almost no radio support to the top of the British charts. This is the record our site is named after, and this is its story.

At a glance

Chicago, 1986: a DJ with a four-track

Steve Hurley grew up on Chicago's South Side, born on 9 November 1962 according to AllMusic. At 21 he moved out because his father would not let him play clubs, and he spent his teens making pause-button tape edits and working in a grocery store to pay for turntables. By the mid-1980s he was one of the Hot Mix 5 DJs on WBMX's Saturday Night Live Ain't No Jive, the radio show that carried the new Chicago sound across the city.

His studio was modest. He bought belt-drive turntables and a Gemini mixer, then made tracks and re-edits on a four-track recorder. With his roommate Farley Keith, later Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, he added a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine and Casio keyboards.

The labels came from the same few blocks of the city. Hurley's duo J.M. Silk, with singer Keith Nunnally, was there at the start of DJ International. In 1986 its founder Rocky Jones launched the sublabel Underground, and "Jack Your Body" became its first record, catalogue number UN 101.

Making the record: a joke for friends

Hurley never planned a hit. "I made Jack Your Body purely to amuse my friends," he told The Guardian in 2017. The parts were simple: a drum machine, a few loops, a bassline and a voice. The original Underground pressing runs at 120 BPM and was recorded at Underground Studios in Chicago.

It came out in 1986 while Hurley was busy finishing the J.M. Silk album Hold On to Your Dream for RCA. He never promoted the track, because the album deadline came first. Looking back, he even called that first pressing a bootleg that had not been authorised.

Two open questions

For a record this famous, two of its basic ingredients are still argued about.

The voice. Hurley says the grunts, squeals and stutters are his own: he was imitating James Brown, Mr T and Richard Pryor, as he explained to The Guardian. When Keith Nunnally died in 2025, Resident Advisor remembered him as the vocalist on "Jack Your Body". DJ International founder Rocky Jones even said it was Nunnally's voice that led the world to house music.

The bassline. Hurley says he built it on blues progressions a pianist friend of his manager had taught him. Haçienda DJ Graeme Park hears First Choice's 1977 disco record "Let No Man Put Asunder" in it, a staple of northern English clubs, made "faster and heavier". AllMusic and Insomniac agree with Park, the latter naming Shep Pettibone's 1983 remix as the model.

Neither question will be settled here, and maybe that is the point. A record built in a bedroom from a few borrowed sounds, with nobody quite sure whose they were, is exactly the kind of mystery that keeps people talking about it nearly 40 years later.

The other record: "Love Can't Turn Around"

One story shaped Hurley's mood at the time. On his four-track he had made a house version of Isaac Hayes' 1975 song "I Can't Turn Around". His roommate Farley Keith released his own version first, as "Love Can't Turn Around" with singer Darryl Pandy. "He used my arrangement, he used my keyboard riffs," Hurley told The Guardian. Farley's record entered the UK chart on 23 August 1986 and peaked at No. 10 on 27 September, the first house hit in Britain.

Today Hurley is calm about it. He told 909originals the episode may even have pushed him towards "Jack Your Body": "Maybe it was a blessing."

Britain gets it first

The record broke in British clubs before it broke anywhere else. London Records, whose dance imprint FFRR under Pete Tong had bought the rights to the DJ International catalogue, released it in the UK as LON 117. Graeme Park first heard it while working at the Selectadisc shop in Nottingham: "I remember screaming: 'This is the future!'"

It entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 18 and two weeks later knocked Jackie Wilson's "Reet Petite" off the top. A week after that it kept George Michael and Aretha Franklin's "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" at No. 2.

In total it spent 10 weeks on the UK chart.

A No. 1 without radio, TV or the artist

The climb happened without BBC Radio 1 airplay and without Hurley in the country. Top of the Pops wanted him, but his management turned the invitation down because of the RCA album deadline. When his manager mentioned the No. 1 "in passing", Hurley assumed he meant the dance chart. The show ended up running a compilation of old dance-craze footage instead.

There is a twist in the rulebook too. At the time, a 12-inch single had a maximum playing time to count for the singles chart, and the 12-inch of "Jack Your Body" ran over it. Nobody noticed until it was already at No. 1, so the rule was not enforced. According to everyHit, that cost "Reet Petite" a fifth week at the top and George Michael and Aretha Franklin their first.

Peak positions

Versions, remixes and reissues

The record has come back every few years, mostly with new remixes. The most important pressings and versions:

Why it still matters

"Jack Your Body" proved that a cheap, almost songless club track could beat pop at its own game. Its title comes from jacking, the dance of Chicago's house parties. Chip E had already used the phrase on "Time to Jack" in 1985, and Hurley admits he does not know where it started: "it just caught on in our clique". Critics have kept coming back to how stripped down the record is:

In Britain it opened a door. Journalist Sheryl Garratt, who reported from Chicago for The Face in 1986, called it a "proper punk moment": you could hear it had been made for £100. British acts like Coldcut and M/A/R/R/S answered with their own house records, M/A/R/R/S' "Pump Up the Volume" was No. 1 by October 1987, and acid house followed a year later.

Hurley never had another UK hit under his own name. He built a long second career as a remixer and producer instead, with club mixes for Michael Jackson, Madonna, Janet Jackson, CeCe Peniston, New Order and Black Box. He was nominated for the Grammy for Remixer of the Year in 1999 and in 2000, and he still runs his label S&S in Chicago. Keith Nunnally, his partner in J.M. Silk, died in September 2025.

The record keeps turning up in DJ sets nearly 40 years on. Its spirit, simple and raw and made for the floor, is what we look for in this month's chart.

Questions

Who made "Jack Your Body"?

Steve "Silk" Hurley, a Chicago DJ and producer, wrote and produced it in 1986.

When was it No. 1 in the UK?

On the charts of 24 and 31 January 1987, two weeks in total.

Was it the first house No. 1?

Yes, it was the first house record to top the UK Singles Chart. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Love Can't Turn Around" had already reached No. 10 in September 1986.

What does "jack your body" mean?

Jacking was the dance of Chicago's early house parties. The title is an invitation to dance that way.

Whose voice is on it?

Hurley says it is his own, imitating James Brown, Mr T and Richard Pryor. Others credit J.M. Silk singer Keith Nunnally.

What bassline does it use?

Hurley credits blues progressions he learned from a pianist. Graeme Park and others hear First Choice's "Let No Man Put Asunder" (1977) in it.

Did Hurley perform it on Top of the Pops?

No. His management declined the invitation because of an album deadline.