Grandmaster Flowers

Grandmaster Flowers
Grandmaster Flowers performing
Background information
Birth nameJonathon Cameron Flowers
BornFebruary 13, 1954[citation needed]
OriginBrooklyn, New York, United States
DiedJune 26, 1992[citation needed]
GenresDisco, hip hop, breaks, funk
OccupationDJ
Years active1968–1992

Grandmaster Flowers (born Jonathon Cameron Flowers) was an American DJ from Brooklyn, New York. One of the earliest DJs to mix records together in sequence,[1] Flowers was one of the earliest pioneers of disco. Flowers was involved in the hip hop and funk scene and had a "formative influence" on hip hop DJs[2] such as Grandmaster Flash[3] and Afrika Bambaataa in the mid-1970s. Although respected by those he influenced, Flowers himself never attained the heights of his successors.

As he found his career fading due in part to competition from the younger up-and-coming DJs at the end of the 1970s, Flowers struggled with a drug dependency.[4]

Flowers died in 1992.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Browne, P “The guide to United States popular culture” Popular Press, 2001. p.386
  2. ^ Shapiro, P “Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco” Macmillan, 2006
  3. ^ Price, E.G “Hip hop culture” ABC-CLIO, 2006. pp.25
  4. ^ Kalia, Ammar (22 July 2019). "Hip-hop horseman: Fab 5 Freddy gallops through Renaissance art". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-07-22.