How a 12-Year-Old Bronx DJ Accidentally Pioneered Record Scratching in 1975

The music and audio channel Mixed Signals explained how 12-year-old Bronx DJ Theodore Livingston, later known as Grand Wizzard Theodore, accidentally pioneered the now-iconic record-scratching technique.

While practicing his mixing skills at home in 1975, his mother came into the room and told him to turn the music down. As he lowered the volume, Theodore moved the record back and forth under the needle, creating the sound he would develop into scratching.

After his mom left the room, he decided to listen back to the tape, heard the scratches, and realized he had struck gold. And when I rewinded back to the part where my mother came in the room, I can hear myself baby scratching. I was like, Wow, I can incorporate that into all the other things that I do as a DJ."

While DJs had previously manipulated records by hand, Theodore developed scratching as a deliberate musical technique.

Radio DJs would have been manipulating records with their hands to find the start of a track for decades, which is called backing. ...And presumably someone out there had moved the record with their hand at some point, accidentally or otherwise. The difference was that Theodore was the first person to treat this as a musical feature as opposed to a mistake.

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