Rodney Bakerr is a veteran Chicago house producer, multi-instrumentalist, educator and visual artist who sadly passed away due to a heart attack last week.

Amongst his many achievements, he wrote factory preset house music patterns for Roland’s drum machines. His compositions being a part of the Roland Drum Machine Dictionary meant he had a large global impact on the development of electronic music.

On Rodney Bakerr’s website it cites him as the first person to add live instrumentation to house music and acid house. Rodney Bakerr also wrote music under the alias Jaquarius.

Lots of his tracks are considered classics within the house music genre. Mr Scruff, for example, has described Rodney Bakerr’s “Love Is Happiness (Acid Rain)” as being “one of the best Chicago acid tracks ever.”

He was also the frontman of Strange Circuits which recorded a single for highly revered Wax Trax! In 1980. Rodney Bakerr’s website claims that: “Strange Circuits was the first electronic group, after Brian Eno’s solo (or non-group) effort, to record for the Wax Trax! label before Ministry and Front 242.”

In 1986, Rodney Bakerr founded Rockin’ House Records, which from its inception supported the Chicago house sounds, and became known for releasing the likes of Fred Brown’s “House Whop” and E-Smoove’s The Eric Miller EP.

The news of his death was first reported in 5 Mag.