Charles Matlock started his DJ career in Chicago in 1984 and has spent many years learning from his longtime friend and mentor, Grammy Award winner, Frankie Knuckles. Since 1984, Charles has held more than 25 club residencies and has performed as a DJ at more than 100 clubs and events in Chicago, New York, Toronto and Miami, including the Edge of the Lookingglass and SideCar Café in Chicago. In 1987, Charles was hired to be State Street Records’ first record pool director and in that position he was responsible for breaking all of State Street’s hits in Chicago. Further, Charles is also an ASCAP songwriter and music producer and currently has releases on 3 different record labels in 3 different genres of dance music. He also often records as a spoken word artist under the name “The Voice”.

 

Charles is regularly a featured panel speaker at entertainment industry conferences and he has been a voting member of Miami’s Winter Music Conference. Charles was commissioned to work for Burrell Communications as a Project Supervisor on a DJ based international advertising campaign in conjunction with the 2004 Olympic Games. Charles was also commissioned to present a paper on the history of House music at the National Librarian Association’s Conference in Chicago.

 

Charles is a practicing entertainment attorney and he has been drafting and negotiating entertainment industry contracts since 1996 (please see www.charlesmatlocklaw.com for more information). In 2001, Columbia College Chicago hired Charles to teach their Club DJ class and he is currently their most senior instructor teaching the class with more than 100 hours of classroom time. Charles wrote the curriculum for his Club DJ I and II classes. Further, Charles was interviewed in 2000 for Chip E’s documentary on Chicago house music “The Un-Usual Suspects”.

 

He was featured in Chicago based Rolling Out magazine in 2002 and was also interviewed by ABC-Chicago’s 190 North show for his involvement with the Music Industry Workshop’s DJ Academy and he was also interviewed in 2010 for a New York Times article on Chicago House Music.