It's the sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn.

On our series The Song that Change My Life, we ask people who we admire to tell us about

the song that was most important in forming who they are.

On this week's edition, my guest is Chuck Brown.

He's one of the few people who can lay claim to creating an entire genre of music, DC Go-Go.

It's a rolling form of party R&B that is as big in Washington, DC now as it was when

he created it more than 30 years ago.

The song that Chuck Brown chose as the song that changed his life was the song that helped

him create the genre, Grover Washington's Mr. Magic.

I was playing R&B and we did all of his hits and then I got decided to do my one of my own songs.

Like James Brown, they had I'm not James Brown, you know.

And Grover Washington became I was a tune called Mr. Magic.

It was the best instrument I was there.

And that year, you know, everybody got on it.

That was the beat that I wanted to use for my sound,

because that was the beat that they used to use in church when I was a boy going to church,

I played it on piano for the church.

TV used to jump a shadow of that beat.

And then you can't do no bad move over that.

Because before 1976, before his big choral,

TV used to sit around, you know, just be cool and that's super,

next time in the main choral, they didn't dance until they got a little twisted, you know what I mean.

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