DJ Casper, musician who created "The Cha Cha Slide," dies at 58

In 1998, the clients at the Bally’s Total Fitness in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood had no idea what was about to hit then. It was something new, something funky.

The steps were basic: a shimmy to the right, then a shimmy to the back, a right foot stomp, a left foot stomp. Finally came the instructions that would echo through more than two decades of weddings, bar mitzvahs, barbecues and sporting events.

Cha-cha real smooth.

Willie Perry Jr., better known as DJ Casper or Mr. C the Slide Man, created the steps for David Wilson, his nephew, who taught an intro step aerobics at Bally’s, to freshen up his routine. That favor by Perry, who died Monday at 58 of complications from cancer, birthed not only a Chicago step-inspired classic but an enduring dance floor hit that became globally embraced and — as any party DJ will note — is still in heavy rotation to this day.

Wilson approached his uncle because Perry was both a music mixer and a great dancer, he told the podcast “Every Little Thing” during a ‘Cha Cha Slide’-focused episode in 2018. The steps came first, with Perry laying down smooth instructions over an early 90s instrumental dance track, “Plastic Dreams” by Jaydee. This unreleased version was dubbed “The Casper Slide Pt. 1.”

But copyright issues over using “Plastic Dreams” prompted Perry to record it with a live band, leading to the newer version, “The Casper Slide Pt. 2.”

The song created a wave of excitement at Bally’s, prompting Wilson to begin selling CDs of the song out of the trunk of his car.

The aerobics class staple starting picking up traction at roller rinks and clubs — and eventually landed on the radar of LaDonna Tittle, a veteran radio personality and actor who in 2000 was a DJ at WGCI, one of Chicago’s top R&B and hip-hip stations.

“When I heard it, I was like, ‘We gotta put this on, this is hot,’” Tittle told The Washington Post. She brought the record to the attention of Elroy Smith, who was program director at WGCI then.

Smith recalls thinking analytically about whether a song that’s all about moving your feet would work well on radio, which people tended to listen to while driving or working.

“I kept going back to it,” Smith told The Post. “This song was too big for me to be so analytical, so I ran it by a few of my teammates, and we all agreed, ‘Yeah, this could be a good move for the radio station.’ ”

WGCI put the track into rotation, where Tittle said it became a popular request. Almost immediately, Universal Records came knocking and released the single in the summer of 2000.

The song would go on to spend five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 83 and remaining on the charts for four years — long enough to catch the attention of BBC Radio1 DJ Scott Mills, who put the song in heavy rotation overseas. In 2004, Europe’s embrace of “The Casper Slide Pt. 2” — by now more commonly known as the “Cha Cha Slide” — was strong enough to help DJ Casper knock pop princess Britney Spears off her perch atop the U.K. Singles chart.

Smith, the WGCI program director in Chicago, knew it had become a phenomenon when he realized the song had amassed fans in every city he visited.

“Whether I would be in a different city listening or watching the news or seeing something on TV, I would see people dancing to it,” Smith said.

Tittle said the secret to the song’s staying power was its inclusivity. The song cut across ages, races and cultures, and could be spun as family reunions as well as quinceañeras or bar mitzvahs.

“I think it was widely embraced because everybody could dance to it — ‘Everybody clap your hands’ — you can hear it in a sports stadium,” Tittle said. “People from China, people from Australia, people from Canada — it just hit all over.”

Perry agreed.

“Line dancing attracts me because when you go out to a party, you can actually do it by yourself,” he told WBEZ’s Curious City in 2019. “You don’t need a partner, you can get up and have fun. You don’t feel out of place because you have no one to dance with.”

The song is credited for inspiring other line dance-like R&B hits like “Wobble” and “The Cupid Shuffle.” It’s been lovingly parodied on “Saturday Night Live” where comedian John Mulaney is a fish-out-of-water at an all-Black wedding whose salvation comes from knowing the DJ’s increasingly specific alternate verses for the “Cha Cha Slide.” Perry even popped up in an episode of the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” playing himself — clad in the all-white outfit from which he drew his DJ name.

Tittle, who learned of Perry’s death Tuesday, remembered him as kind, fun and upbeat — much like his “timeless” song. She said the “Cha Cha Slide” became a “recurrent” in WGCI’s rotation, the industry term for “a blast from the past” that still gets airplay.

“But the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ was never a blast from the past. It was always current,” Tittle said. “When you play that at the senior residence? Shoot, if you’re 90 years old you’re going to get up and do the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ if you can. I don’t think it’ll get old.”

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DJ Casper, musician who created &quot;The Cha Cha Slide,&quot; dies at 58

DJ Casper, musician who created "The Cha Cha Slide," dies at 58