DJ Casper passed away on Monday after a protracted fight with cancer, his wife told Chicago’s ABC7. He was 58.
DJ Casper has died
The composer who created the “Cha Cha Slide,” the popular dance song from the beginning of the millennium performed at events and in gyms all over the world, has passed away.
In the late 1990s, Willie Perry Jr., a native of Chicago, first recorded a version of the “Cha Cha Slide” as an aerobic exercise for his nephew, a personal trainer at Bally Total Fitness.
According to WBEZ, Casper claimed that the song immediately gained popularity and that he began receiving requests to play it at local gatherings. Before being purchased by Universal Records, the song debuted in 2000 on WGCI-FM in Chicago.
Casper stated, “The ‘Cha Cha Slide’ did something that I truly wasn’t expecting it to,” in an interview with Chicago’s WTTW PBS station in 2018. “I received a call from Universal Records out of the blue asking me to join a tour. From that point on, everything got insane.”
Pitchfork claims that Casper created a new rendition of the song that year, originally titled “Casper Slide Part 2,” which later became known as the “Cha Cha Slide,” which became popular in the United States and reached its peak in the United Kingdom charts at No. 1 in 2004.
The “Cha Cha Slide” has endured to this day as a standard at weddings, birthday parties, school physical education programs, and more. It went from being a simple workout track to a worldwide craze.
In the song, Casper yells out simple moves that encourage dancers to crisscross, Charlie Brown, slide to the left and right, and, of course, cha-cha very smoothly.
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The “Cha Cha Slide” has established itself as a staple of mainstream culture, making appearances in programs like Saturday Night Live and Orange is the New Black.
DJ Casper revealed to ABC7 that despite losing nearly 60 pounds after receiving a diagnosis of kidney and liver tumors in 2016, he never lost the positive outlook that characterized his best-known song.
Anyone dealing with cancer should understand that they have it but that cancer does not have them, Casper advised the station. To proceed, do the “Cha Cha Slide.”