1975–1980

Growing up in New Brighton on Merseyside, Wilson lived above his family's pub during the years 1966–1973. The premises included two function rooms where he'd witness mobile discos featuring on a weekly basis at wedding receptions and parties.^[1] His main musical influences came from the record collections of his elder brother and sister, especially the soul music labels Tamla Motown, Stax and Atlantic.^[2] Wilson began his career as a DJ in 1975 at the age of 15, having bought a mobile set-up from his schoolfriend Derek Kelsey (later known as DJ Derek Kaye).^[3] He held a residency at local nightspot The Chelsea Reach between 1975 and 1977. Further local residencies followed at The Penny Farthing (1976–1977) and The Golden Guinea (1977-1980), where he first built his reputation as a black music specialist, playing soul, funk, disco and jazz-funk.^[4]

1980–1984

Wilson left the Golden Guinea in 1980^[5] and worked in Denmark and Germany (he’d previously DJ’d in Denmark and Norway for a few months in 1978) before returning to the UK to take a 4 night a week residency at Wigan Pier. In 1982, he became a full-time black music specialist, continuing Wigan Pier's Tuesday night jazz-funk session, which was voted the North's Best Club by Blues & Soul readers, with Wilson collecting the North's Best DJ award.^[6] He controversially championed early electro records^[7] at Wigan Pier and, most notably, Manchester club Legend, where he took over their Wednesday jazz-funk night in 1981. As with Wigan Pier, people travelled to his nights at Legend from places including Birmingham, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Nottingham, Liverpool and London. Legend attracted a predominantly black crowd to listen to the new electro-funk records, which were mainly coming out of New York City. Wilson also began to take a serious approach to mixing around this point, and is regarded as one of the UK pioneers. In 1982, he began to present regular mixes of the music he was playing in the clubs on Manchester's Piccadilly Radio, and these featured on Mike Shaft's specialist black music show T.C.O.B (Taking Care of Business).^[8] These radio mixes are still talked about as being influential to this day, with the end of year Best of 82 and Best of 83 mixes regarded as classics.

In February 1983, Wilson was invited to demonstrate live mixing on the Channel 4 TV show The Tube. Interviewed by presenter, Jools Holland, with Mike Shaft commentating, Wilson mixed between 2 copies of David Joseph's "You Can't Hide (Your Love from Me)", then a new release, but subsequently a UK top 20 hit. This was the first time a British DJ had mixed live on TV.^[9]

Wilson was a fixture on the All-Dayer circuit in the North and Midlands during this period, regularly appearing alongside other black music specialists including Colin Curtis, Mike Shaft, John Grant, Hewan Clarke, Richard Searling, Kev Edwards, Pete Haigh, Jonathan, Trevor M and Cleveland Anderson.^[10] In 1983, Wilson began a Friday night residency at The Haçienda club in Manchester, which had opened the previous year. This was the club's first weekly dance music night and would lay the groundwork for its influential Nude night, also held every Friday, which came to prominence in the mid-'80s with DJs Mike Pickering and Martin Prendergast.^[8]

Wilson also put together the first UK 're-edit', Paul Haig's "Heaven Sent", in 1983, and taught Norman Cook (a.k.a. Fatboy Slim), then a young aspiring DJ called Quentin, how to cut and scratch in December 1983 during a short Haçienda tour of the South.^[11]

1984–1987

At the end of 1983, aged 23, Wilson retired from DJing to focus on record production, as well as managing Manchester breakdance crew Broken Glass. They gained national exposure via TV appearances including a famous edition of The Tube, filmed at The Haçienda in January 1984, on which Madonna made her UK live TV debut.^[12] Later in 1984, along with musicians Martin Jackson and Andy Connell, he co-wrote and produced all but one of the tracks on the Street Sounds UK Electro album, now seen as a seminal British dance album, the first to feature sampling.^[13] One of the tracks, "Style of the Street", a recording by Broken Glass, was sampled by The Prodigy on their 2004 hit “Girls”. However, the project was short-lived, Jackson and Connell going on to form the band Swing Out Sister, while Wilson, struggling for opportunities, would eventually re-locate to London in 1987.

1987–1993

In 1987, Wilson began to manage and produce Manchester's Ruthless Rap Assassins and sister band Kiss AMC. The Rap Assassins released two critically acclaimed albums via EMI, Killer Album (1990) and Th!nk (It Ain't Illegal Yet) (1991). Their best known recording, "And It Wasn't a Dream", a minor chart hit in 1990, focused on the plight of West Indian immigrants coming to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, and was named amongst Mojo's "50 Greatest British Tracks Ever" in 2006.^[14] In 2011, urban artist Roots Manuva would hail their music as "the roots of grime".^[15] Moving back to the North, Wilson would make further records between 1990 and 1993 with Mind Body & Soul (MBS), Sensuround, Mana Loa, The 25th Of May and Intastella.

1993–2003

The following decade was something of a wilderness period for Wilson, but in 1994 he revisited his electro-funk past, compiling the Classic Electro Mastercuts album. This would generate a small number of DJ bookings, his first in 10 years, in promotion of the album, and in 1996, he was part of a collective of DJs and musicians who promoted a series of nights called The Monastery in Birkenhead, Liverpool and London. A mix, The Monastic Mix, was the last he ever put together on reel-to-reel.

2003–present