Curtis Alan Jones (born April 26, 1967) is an American singer, songwriter and record producer. His style of house and techno music has been compared to and inspired by the likes of Kraftwerk, Prince, Gary Numan, and Nitzer Ebb. Jones is also known as Cajmere, Geo Vogt, Green Velvet, Half Pint, Curan Stone, and Gino Vittori.
Before becoming a professional musician, Jones studied chemical engineering at the University of Illinois. In 1991, he left a Master's program at UC-Berkeley to move back to Chicago, releasing his first song ("Coffee Pot" on ClubHouse Records) the same year. Up until this point, music had been a hobby fueled by cobbling together tracks on his "sixty-buck keyboard, a cheap four-track and a cheap drum machine" set-up while still an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. This DIY method of production was never taken seriously, and when childhood plans to become a doctor were shelved, Jones was firmly committed to a career as a chemical engineer. His father was an occasional DJ and eventually became a budding musician. As time went on, Jones discovered what was his innate love and understanding for house music, a sound that had grown throughout the mid-1980s out of Chicago's deep-rooted house music scene. He played the saxophone at school and had a talent for trying to play with a keyboard but remained largely un-interested in what he saw as his father's passion. It was this cut-up and tacky production style of the early house sound that Jones absorbed and translated into the Underground Goodies EP, his first release as Cajmere (the CAJ derived from the artist's initials) ) put out in 1991 on his own recently started Cajual label. A year later he had his first massive hit as Cajmere with the house tune "Coffee Pot (It's Time for the Percolator)," which was also released on Cajual and distributed by NYC-based Emotive Records. He then teamed up with Chicago-based vocalist Dajae for "Brighter Days," which entered #2 on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play, a high-impact and mellower house tune that was released on Cajual and distributed by NYC-based Emotive Records.
Interested in making something totally different from his Cajmere moniker and other work, Curtis created Relief as an offshoot to his Cajual records in 1993. The first Relief release was also his first Green Velvet production, 1993's "Velvet Tracks," which came from a name given to him by a girlfriend's father, emerged as the flamboyant, neon-haired electro punk, although in interviews he denied being linked to the Punk lifestyle and fashion, as he was more inspired by the likes of David Bowie and Sly and the Family Stone, he created mid-1990s hits such as "Preacher Man," on which a Moral Majority-type of preacher spoke (the Reverend Trotter, not, contrary to popular belief, Reverend Franklin); "Answering Machine," a darkly funny house track consisting of taped messages from an answering machine, including a bad news message from a girlfriend and a noise complaint message from his landlord—all made with Jones's voice; and "Flash," which was a #1 US dance hit in 1995 and was included on many DJ-mixed compilation albums. After DJing under both of his now infamous monikers, he released his first album, Constant Chaos, with Belgian Music label Music Man in 1999, which showed Green Velvet's style of house progress into styles similar to Prince and Kraftwerk, his spoken-word monologues also took a bizarre turn. In Abduction he spoke about little green men turning up while washing dishes.
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