Dave Lee (DJ)

David Russell Lee (born 18 June 1964) is an English DJ and music producer, formerly known by the stage name Joey Negro, which he retired in July 2020 following the George Floyd protests.

He has released music under a variety of pseudonyms, including Jakatta, Doug Willis, Raven Maize, and Sessomatto. He was also a part of the Sunburst Band. Lee has had some top 40 hits, among them "American Dream", "So Lonely" and "My Vision", all under the name Jakatta.

Lee was born on the Isle of Wight, but raised in Thorpe-le-Soken in Essex. His mother was the novelist Maureen Lee.

Dave Lee's interest in dance music began with collecting disco, soul and funk records in the late 1970s. In 1986, he got his first job in the industry, working at the short-lived store Smithers & Leigh. He moved over to Rough Trade, who were then setting up a dance division, Demix, and were looking for someone to run it. Within a short period of time, Demix was handling hits for Bomb the Bass, MARRS and Beatmasters. Less than a year later, Lee, in partnership with Rough Trade, set up his own label, Republic Records, which became known both for the series of compilation albums, The Garage Sound of Deepest New York, as well Lee's own early forays into studio production.

By the end of 1987, Lee began working in a Clacton-on-Sea studio with former schoolfriend Mike Cheal (real name Emmanuel Cheal) and another Smithers & Leigh employee, DJ Mark Ryder. The trio were responsible for the first release on Republic, under the name M-D-Emm: "Get Busy (It's Partytime!)". Two further M-D-Emm singles were released on Republic. Mike and Dave recorded the acid house songs "1666" and "Get Acidic" together without Mark, and continued the same partnership using other aliases, notably Masters of the Universe, Mystique, Kikkit and The Shy Boys. In 1989, Dave Lee, Mike Cheal and Mark Ryder broke through the underground with a club hit under the assumed name Raven Maize, which made use of disco samples, something Lee has returned to repeatedly over the course of his career.

In 1990, Lee's most enduring pseudonym made its debut, when he released Joey Negro's first single via New York indie house music label Nu Groove, with his new name a homage to Pal Joey and J. Walter Negro. After the single's success, Lee went totally solo allowing him the total freedom to explore his own musical direction. When the single "Do It, Believe It" was released in the UK, it was also the debut release on his own self-financed label Z Records, which remains his primary outlet. Around the same time, Lee met keyboard player Andrew 'Doc' Livingstone when he sent in a demo to Republic Records. Shortly after, the pair decamped to Unit 3 Studios in Chalk Farm.

In 1991, Rough Trade Records went into liquidation and with it, Lee's job. The slack was taken up by increasingly large numbers of studio commissions as his work as a remixer grew.

In 1993, Lee was approached by boy band Take That's label with a view to working together. Although the Dan Hartman song "Relight My Fire" had never been a hit in the UK, it had become a popular club track in the house music scene, so at Lee's suggestion they covered it, with Lulu taking the cameo role that Loleatta Holloway had performed on the original. It became the boy band's second number one in the UK. The same year saw the release of the Joey Negro album Universe of Love, featuring Gwen Guthrie and the Trammps. Its title track, with live instrumentation, prefigured much of the work he went on to do with the Sunburst Band.