Mr. Fingers

Larry Heard, the Chicago musician long credited with originating deep house, has primarily recorded under the solo alias Mr. Fingers. Beginning in 1985 he issued a series of instrumental singles that combined rich synth textures with minimal four-on-the-floor rhythms, frequently incorporating acid basslines or melodic keyboard passages. He simultaneously issued vocal material with singers Robert Owens and Ron Wilson under the group name Fingers Inc. Heard’s best-known piece, the uplifting “Can You Feel It,” first appeared in 1986 as a Mr. Fingers recording before being reissued in 1988 as a Fingers Inc. single. Two subsequent Mr. Fingers albums, Introduction (1992) and Back to Love (1994), leaned toward smooth R&B textures; after their release Heard largely set the alias aside in favor of his own name. He returned to Mr. Fingers in the 2010s, issuing the expansive Cerebral Hemispheres in 2018 and the two-part Around the Sun across 2022–2023.

Heard took up multiple instruments early and, from age seventeen onward, played in ensembles spanning R&B, reggae, jazz fusion, and progressive rock. Frustrated by limited creative control, he left band work in 1984, purchased a keyboard and drum machine, and began producing dance music. The instrumental “Mystery of Love” came out on his own imprint in 1985; the following year Robert Owens added vocals and DJ International issued the track as a Fingers Inc. release. Also in 1986 Trax Records put out a three-track 12-inch containing the acid cut “Washing Machine” alongside the atmospheric “Can You Feel It.” DJs routinely overlaid the sermon from Rhythm Controll’s “My House”—Chuck Roberts’ line “In the beginning there was Jack”—or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech onto “Can You Feel It,” prompting a 1988 Fingers Inc. single that incorporated both spoken-word segments and featured King’s image on the sleeve. Heard continued releasing Mr. Fingers material on his own label, later renamed Alleviated Records. Fingers Inc.’s album Another Side appeared on the U.K. imprint Jack Trax in 1988, after which the group dissolved. Without Heard’s authorization, the same label compiled earlier Mr. Fingers tracks as Ammnesia in 1989.

The vocal single “What About This Love,” issued in 1989, was licensed to FFRR in 1990; shortly afterward Heard signed with MCA Records and delivered Introduction in 1992. Black Market International released Back to Love, which blended jazzy house with New Jack Swing-inflected R&B, in 1994. That same year he began issuing albums under his own name with Sceneries Not Songs, Vol. 1 and moved away from the more commercial direction of his Mr. Fingers work toward an experimental approach. Classic Fingers, a wide-ranging compilation drawn from several Heard projects, surfaced in 1995.

Throughout the 2010s Heard reissued much of his Mr. Fingers catalog digitally via Alleviated Records. New tracks such as “Fingers Attack” and “Cosmic” appeared under the alias, and the Outer Acid EP—particularly the Neil deGrasse Tyson-sampling cut “Qwazars”—earned widespread praise in 2016. All four EP selections were incorporated into Cerebral Hemispheres, the first Mr. Fingers album in twenty-four years, a 100-minute set issued in 2018 that ranged from spacious house to jazzy downtempo material. After several remix EPs and a contribution to Dua Lipa’s Club Future Nostalgia remix album, the archival Vault Sessions 1 appeared in 2021. Around the Sun, Pt. 1, another atmospheric Mr. Fingers full-length, was released in 2022; its smooth, jazz-inflected counterpart, Around the Sun, Pt. 2, followed in 2023.