When I met “Big Bank” Hank he was the doorman at a club called the Executive Playhouse in The Bronx. It was 1977 or 1978, I’m not sure. I was performing then as Casanova Fly, and he’d be at the door. We got cool. He was a funny guy, jolly. We were always snapping and telling jokes. That’s how he was. That eventually led to him hanging out with us, the group that I was in before I joined the Cold Crush Brothers called the Force Five.

At the time I was a young DJ trying to come up in hip-hop. We didn’t have promoters and booking agents and publicists and all that. I did everything. And I couldn’t do everything. Grandmaster Flash had a manager, The Funky Four had management, and it looked like hip-hop was headed in that direction, so I asked Hank to manage us.

I liked his enthusiasm for the music and the scene. He was a big guy. He looked like, walking into a room, he’d get some respect.

He was the closest cat to me, and I trusted him.

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