Remembering Mike Huckaby, Who Delivered Detroit’s Music To The World

The Producer and DJ who passed away in April was a cheerleader for the city
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Graphic by Drew Litowitz, photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Eaton Hotel

In many ways, Mike Huckaby was the glue that bound Detroit’s electronic music scenes together. Other Motor City exports may have more international name recognition—like techno innovators Juan Atkins or Derrick May or house titans Moodymann and Theo Parrish—but it would be hard to find anyone more respected and beloved by his fellow Detroiters than the soft-spoken man known as “Huck.” A DJ, producer, and educator, Huckaby died last month at 54 from complications of COVID-19 after suffering a stroke in early March. His tragically premature loss has left a city already too accustomed to hard knocks feeling even more beleaguered than usual.

Although never one to trumpet his own accomplishments, Huckaby was the kind of person who quietly enables a scene to function, both as a key connector between insiders and as an evangelist to outsiders. His productions were all meticulously executed—18 vinyl 12" singles and EPs over 25 years, a third of those on his Deep Transportation and SYNTH imprints—as were his remixes, which include a shimmery rework of Model 500’s “Starlight” and acclaimed reel-to-reel edits of Sun Ra tracks. As a DJ, he was equally adept at spinning soulful deep house or driving techno (he was also an excellent hip-hop DJ for a time). His deft touch on the decks was captured in online mixes for Resident Advisor, FACT, and XLR8R, as well as scores of recordings from DJ sets around the world. For a taste, start with Huckaby’s exuberant set at the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2000: Spinning outdoors on the downtown waterfront as part of the city’s first event of its kind, Huckaby launched his journey with the leftfield disco of Daniel Wang’s “Like Some Dream (I Can’t Stop Dreaming)” before leaning into dancefloor staples—including Mr. Fingers’ “Can You Feel It,” Paperclip People’s “Throw,” and Joey Beltram’s “Energy Flash”—mixed in a way that highlighted their strengths, until ultimately climaxing two hours later with Moodymann’s “The Third Track.” Grainy YouTube footage captures the unadulterated joy of the Detroit crowd dancing under the sun, and the set still sounds as incandescent today as it did on that spring afternoon two decades ago.

Despite his formidable DJ skills, Huckaby may have exerted his biggest influence through a record store: During his 13 years managing the Dance Room of Record Time in Roseville, a suburb northeast of Detroit, he became a mentor to several generations of house and techno DJs and producers, as well as an expert curator and a encyclopedic fount of knowledge to inquisitive consumers (including myself). A DJ’s DJ, he was committed to sharing his wisdom, whether it was teaching at-risk teens at the Detroit non-profit community center YouthVille or delivering lectures on production software around the world. And for those who preferred to continue their education via night school, his club sets served as the ultimate masterclass.

“He was a real person,” said Brendan Gillen, who worked with Huckaby at Record Time and would later launch the Interdimensional Transmissions label and the No Way Back party, “somebody you would dream would be your coach.” Among the many DJs who also consider Huckaby a mentor are Derek Plaslaiko, Mike Servito, and Patrick Russell, all Detroit-area natives who were nurtured within the scene before departing the nest, and are now residents with Gillen’s traveling No Way Back party as well as regular collaborators with the Bunker in New York. “Every part of his being was devoted to spreading knowledge and sharing the love of music,” says Russell. “He touched countless lives and set so many of us in Detroit and beyond on the right musical path. We wouldn’t be who we are now without him.”

Huckaby first became involved with dance music in the early 1980s while attending Detroit’s Cooley High, where his classmates included future electronic artists Anthony “Shake” Shakir (a criminally underrated techno producer), Robert Hood (a minimal techno pioneer), and Norm Talley (a deep house DJ and producer). They frequented backyard parties, school events, and gatherings thrown by high school party crews like Charivari. “We were all too young to really go to a ‘club’ club,” said Talley, “though if we could get someone who was older to open a club’s backdoor, then two or three of us would sneak in.”

Huckaby and his friends eventually acquired turntables and sharpened their DJ skills, with Shake even winning the nightly citywide “Mixadome” DJ battle competition organized by fabled Detroit radio personality the Electrifying Mojo. Huckaby's own mentor was the late Ken Collier, a legendary Detroit club DJ who had a residency at a black gay after-hours spot called Heaven. Collier would record some of his club sets, and Huckaby learned how to mix by studying the tapes. “When I first came to Record Time, I asked him, ‘Where could I see the real deal? Where could I see something that was on the level of Ron Hardy or Frankie Knuckles?’” says Gillen. “And he said ‘Man, you have to go the gay clubs. They archive this music and keep it alive. You have to go to black gay clubs if you want to hear what happened to disco and how it became house.’”

As Huckaby built his skills, his influence began to extend far beyond the city’s borders, not least because of his hometown’s top pedigree in electronic music circles. With his ear, the Dance Room became a mecca. Huckaby’s tastemaking also benefited artists. “If he liked your record, he would push it, and you’d be selling copies big time,” says Talley. “He could give you that exposure to all the DJs instantly, because that’s where they all shopped. He was really influential in what I played then and what I still play today.”

“You could easily look at his whole public life as educational,” says Gillen, “from what he did in the Dance Room: how he chose to buy records, how he presented them on the the wall, and how he steered people towards music that we still to this day find inspirational and exceptional.”

“Well before his YouthVille work, he was already educating everyone,” says Servito, recalling how Huckaby would point at the Dance Room wall and tell his customers, “You need that!”

“He was the kind of guy that would drive over a record that he knew you’d love without you even asking,” says Russell. “He had the biggest heart.”

Huckaby would select records for frequent shoppers and stash them in the Dance Room closet until their next visit. “You would buy something just because he said you should,” says Plaslaiko. “I guess it also helped that he didn't buy records that he thought were shitty to begin with. He had the most impeccable taste of anyone I have ever met in this business. That cannot be overstated.”

Todd Sines, a techno producer and member of an electronic music collective in Columbus, Ohio, began to make regular pilgrimages to Detroit in 1993. “Huck compressed the wisdom and knowledge from behind the counter, behind the decks at parties, and behind machines in the studio,” says Sines. “He gave the illusion of being short with words, but as you got to know him, he filled your soul with his ever-expanding, passionate knowledge and wisdom. His hardened shell protected his soft interior, the warm heart that gave back to kids in Detroit, and he was never shy to share what he experienced with the world.”

Chicago deep house producer Ron Trent met Huckaby in the early 1990s while he was in Detroit working with Chez Damier on their now classic singles for Kevin Saunderson’s KMS label. “Mike would be one of our biggest supporters of helping us push the music forward to the public,” said Trent in an Instagram post tribute to “Brother Mike.” “Mike was a source of power that helped us all forge our sonics into existence.”

Away from the store, Huckaby was obsessed with practicing and improving his craft, displaying a Detroit-style work ethic of relentless practice and near-military discipline. Gillen says Huckaby believed that DJs should be required to have over 200 hours of practice behind them before they could even hand someone a mixtape. In the early 2000s, when he began to feel that sampled-based music and machines could only take him so far, he began building his own synths. He took piano lessons and studied studio techniques and music theory. “Huck understood a groove better than anyone,” says Servito. “He walked a fine line between perfect house and perfect techno. He had a full grasp and understanding of what he was doing out there for the dance floor. Those flawless transitions exemplified his accuracy and control, naturally engaging us all. He was magnetic, confident, and inspiring.”

In the 1990s, Huckaby DJed weekly at Saint Andrew’s Hall as part of the club’s Three Floors of Fun event. “That room was super difficult to play in,” said Plaslaiko. “The ceilings were super high, the windows rattled with every kick drum hit, and there was no monitor at all. Any DJ will tell you that playing house and techno without a monitor is basically suicide, yet Huck did this every Friday without complaint, and did it masterfully.” Huck put me on there several times over the years, and it was there that I, and so many others, got the first experiences of playing in front of a crowd. I've never forgotten him giving me those chances, and I know I'm not alone.”

“There's a lot of styles within the Detroit techno/house continuum, but people know what a Huckaby set sounds like because it feels so solid and releases so much energy,” said Gillen. “His production mirrored his DJ style in that it's not a huge number of elements but it does what it takes to communicate the concept. It might not be flashy and new, like whatever trend is currently grabbing attention, but it's the truth of where the genre comes from.”

While some of Huckaby’s own productions were influenced by the dubby Teutonic techno of Maurizio and Basic Channel, still others mined the deep vein of electrofunk that has long been synonymous with Detroit. For example, in 2011 and 2012 he created three different songs—”Baseline 87,” “Baseline 88,” and “Baseline 89”s—from the kind of Yamaha DX100 bassline popularized in the late 1980s by Derrick May. All three tracks wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the sweaty interior of Detroit’s fabled after-hours nightspot the Music Institute (where Huckaby sometimes spun) but still have a freshness that makes them work on their own.

Where Huckaby’s Deep Transportation label (which he started in 2002) was purely deep house, his SYNTH imprint, begun in 2005, was concerned solely with productions made using the Waldorf Wave, a wavetable synthesizer that employs a library of waves rather than generating those with an oscillator. “Huck's first couple SYNTH records, along with his Pole and Vladislav Delay remixes, are just a few of his productions still in my DJ rotation,” said Russell. “The simplicity and subtlety of his tracks make them not only versatile, but incredibly timeless. They always work.”

Ever eager to share what he’d learned with others, Huckaby began teaching new music technology to teens at YouthVille in the early 2000s. “He really felt deeply about helping underprivileged kids, giving them the opportunity to learn,” said Talley. “A lot of them may not have had computer access at home, so he would start them out from the ground up.” As Huckaby himself put it in 2011, to Resident Advisor: “The impact of shaping and changing kids' life is far greater than playing a festival in Europe.”

One of Huckaby’s prize pupils at YouthVille was electronic producer Kyle Hall, now 28, who started studying with him at age 13. “There was always something to learn from what he had to say, or even just his general approach,” Hall told Resident Advisor recently. “I don’t think any of his lessons were very direct. He was a very quiet dude, you know? But he just showed by example how to do things.”

Indeed, despite the lessons he imparted, Huckaby was enigmatic. He was “a man of little words,” says Gillen. “He would say multiple paragraphs of thought with like a glance and a half sentence.”

Despite his generosity, Huckaby’s taciturn disposition could occasionally be intimidating. “At times, Huck had that look in his eye that could scare the shit out of you,” says Sines. “But once you got to know him, you knew you were being observed by an eminent, prodigious scholar.”

Huckaby’s unpretentious manner, as well as his breadth of knowledge and depth of engagement, was on full display in a 2018 episode of Amoeba Music’s “What’s In My Bag?” video series—“Once a record store guy, always a record store guy,” he quipped—where his selections ranged from the kosmiche suite of Manuel Gottsching’s E2-E4 to the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane’s Journey to Satchidananda to the stoner metal of Sleep’s Dopesmoker. “He was just a real guy in a world full of people hyping you up,” said Gillen. “The dance world has a lot of bullshit in it, and a lot of the bigger DJs are scammers, pretenders, and con men. The benchmark of Huckaby is that he had integrity.”

Huckaby’s disciples attest to that most honorable quality. “I owe everything to that man,” said Plaslaiko. “He was the realest motherfucker I've ever known, and there should be a fuckin’ statue of his bad self right smack in the middle of Harmonie Park.”