Dance Pioneer John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez Looks Back on Madonna’s ‘Holiday,’ Remixing Paul McCartney & Breaking New Genres in the ’80s

Four decades ago, an effervescent dance-pop single titled “Holiday” hit the airwaves and the clubs. Not only did it earn Madonna her first top 20 Billboard Hot 100 hit and signal the ascendance of her globe-conquering career, but it marked the commercial breakthrough of a DJ/producer who would help define the sound of dance music in the mid ’80s: John “Jellybean” Benitez.

“I can be in a restaurant and someone is singing the lyrics,” Benitez tells Billboard of what happens when he’s in public and “Holiday” comes on these days. “I’m looking at them like, ‘They have no idea.’”’

Not only was “Holiday” Madonna’s first Dance Club Songs No. 1 (as part of a double A-side with “Lucky Star”), but it marked a historic first: “the only record produced by a current club DJ to hit Billboard’s Hot 100,” according to the Nov. 26, 1983, Billboard. Just a week earlier, the Hot 100 (dated Nov. 19, 1983) included not only “Holiday” but a whopping 12 entries that were aided by Jellybean remixes.

Around that time, the music industry was just beginning to realize the audience-boosting power of an officially sanctioned remix, and Benitez – a Bronx-born DJ who hosted 14-hour sets at Manhattan’s Fun House nightclub on Saturdays – possessed an instinctual understanding of what worked. “I knew what people would dance to, what would get them to cross the floor,” he says of those sweaty, marathon DJ sets.

Although his sets no longer go from sunset to sunrise, Benitez is still DJing, playing 100-some shows around the globe each year. On Tuesday (Nov. 12), the dance music pioneer is headed back to Manhattan for a different kind of party, one commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Cristian Rivera Foundation. Hosted by SNL cast member Kenan Thompson and featuring actor Luis Guzmán, MLB player Gleyber Torres, actor Malik Yoba and more, the gala will raise money to help find a cure for Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, a type of malignant brain tumor, and support families affected by it.

“Their overhead is very small, it’s significantly smaller than most foundations,” says Benitez of the nonprofit, which his friend John Rivera started after losing his six-year-old son Cristian in 2009. “You’re dealing with a disease where there’s no cure. And most of these kids that get it are between five and nine and they don’t even know what’s happening. Most of them die within nine months,” he adds, quietly. “It was really hard to watch. Even leading up to this [gala], I had a lot of feelings about it.”

Like Benitez, John Rivera was born in the Bronx and became an integral part of the New York City music scene in the ‘80s, working as a nightclub and nightlife promoter when freestyle and hip-hop were quickly changing the musical landscape of the city.

“At the time, I thought [hip-hop] could be big,” recalls Benitez. As with his remix savvy, Benitez was ahead of the trend, spinning records by Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa despite many industry insiders dismissing rap music as a fad. “I broke a lot of new music [at Fun House], different hybrids of genres that eventually became genres on their own,” he says casually, as if we were talking about his Thanksgiving plans. “I got to play a lot of music that wasn’t played in clubs at the time.”

Feet on the dancefloor weren’t the only thing Benitez was able to influence — radio programmers from three local NYC stations were regulars at his Saturday night Fun House sets. “By that Monday, those songs ended up in rotation. But I only played things I believed in — music that I loved or songs that made the party happen.”

A year after placing 12 remixes simultaneously on the Hot 100, Benitez was being hailed as a “remix master” by Billboard (Oct. 27, 1984) and promoting his own EP, Wotupski!?!, which touched on electro, hip-hop, Latin freestyle, synth-pop and featured the first two of his eventual three Dance Club Songs No. 1s, “The Mexican” and “Sidewalk Talk” (the latter, written by Madonna, also hit the top 20 of the Hot 100).

By 1984, it was abundantly clear that radio had done a complete 180 from hit music in the ‘70s – and plenty of rock artists felt left in the cold. As word spread throughout the music biz about his keen ear for sounds that connected with young listeners, Benitez became a go-to remixer, working with everyone from David Bowie to ZZ Top to Sting to Fleetwood Mac.

“Billy Joel called me after listening to the remix [of “Tell Her About It”] and said, ‘I don’t really understand this, but it’s making me want to dance.’” Not everyone was always happy with his work, however. Benitez chuckles that “Sting hated” his 12-inch rework of “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” — at least until the remix came out and “it flew up the charts.”

Benitez says he empathized with artists who objected to his work, though. “Some guy named Jellybean comes along and changes everything? That can be a little scary,” he says. “[David] Bowie was very open to it though, and David Byrne got very involved, came to the session and was turning knobs and having fun.”

While most artists insisted that Benitez remix their songs exclusively using music from the original recording, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson gave him complete leeway, allowing him to put new percussion on their duet “Say Say Say.”

“They were really taken with what I did and that was incredible to go to Abbey Road and meet George Martin and Paul McCartney,” he says, sounding vaguely starstruck for the only time in an interview that touches on some of the biggest names in music history. “They were like, ‘Do whatever you want, have fun with it. Make us a dance hit.’ Other artists were like, ‘Do whatever you want — but don’t change anything,’” he shares with a laugh.

The list of songs Benitez has remixed is lengthy – his Wikipedia discography includes more than 100 titles, and he says that isn’t even close to his career total. If the Wiki is incomplete, at least his own collection isn’t. Benitez has three copies of every single song he’s remixed: “One for myself and one for each of my daughters. My youngest daughter is a DJ as well.”

Those records are a slim fraction of his entire vinyl collection, though, which he estimates between 70-80 thousand. “Here’s the good thing: It’s all alphabetized and cataloged,” he assures me. “I love the sound of vinyl as opposed to the sound of the CD or listening to something on these little speakers in my ear. I’m sort of a perfectionist when it comes to sound.”

That love for vinyl motivated one of his latest ventures, Jellybean’s Funhouse Record Shop, a soon-to-open record store in Fort Lauderdale selling new and used vinyl in addition to boasting listening rooms with high-end sound systems and a small stage for in-store performances. Beyond that, Benitez still tours globally, including residencies in Miami, New York and Ibiza (“CAA has done a great job with me,” he says), and helps mentor up-and-coming, unsigned artists. He’s also on the board of advisors for the ARChive of Contemporary Music, a nonprofit archive that contains some 90 million songs.

He says he’s been offered “crazy money” to pen an autobiography, and while he doesn’t write it off entirely, he doesn’t sound all that interested in the endeavor. “It’s just… I’m not sure. I don’t know if it’s something I want to do,” he says. “My first love is playing records and record collecting. I’m really happy DJing around the world and opening my record store.”

If he ever does, however, you can bet it’ll be worth the price tag. In the liner notes to Wotupski!?!, he thanks Madonna with the following message: “Madonna, for your compassion and love. All I can say is, ‘Goo goo gaa gaa.’” When I ask what that means, he stonewalls me for the only time. “Look at the Like a Virgin album credits and see what she wrote,” he says. [The Like a Virgin liners aren’t terribly revelatory – Madonna also says “Goo goo ga ga” when thanking Benitez.] “If and whenever I write a book, I will disclose that.”