Jeff Dexter

Jeff Dexter (born 1946) is a British disc jockey (DJ), club promoter, record producer and former dancer, who rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the resident DJ at the influential London club Middle Earth. He is closely associated with the Mod scene and popularising The Twist in England. In 1970, he became the manager of America, the American folk rock band formed in London earlier that year, consisting of Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek. He also co-produced their first album, America and got them their first gig. They went on to have number one hits in 1972 including "A Horse with No Name".

Links To Peel
Dexter was the resident DJ at the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden in the 60's, along with John Peel. This was a bigger club than the UFO in Tottenham Court Road, London where Dexter was also the resident DJ.

In an interview with conducted in February 1998, Dexter mentioned his interaction with Peel at the Middle Earth:

In the Middle Earth, what was being played?

Well, there, the hot bands of the day. John Peel was also a DJ. And John hated ska and bluebeat and most of those records that I’d lived on. He thought they were awful. I was totally into what he was doing, but he didn’t understand what I was doing. The thing is, people still loved to dance and you really couldn’t dance to a lot of the new psychedelic records that were around. They were horrible to dance to. So to keep people moving I had to mix it up a bit.

The fundamental difference is probably that you came from a club background and he was a radio person.

Yeah. John’s records were strictly for listening to. I played to the audience. Any DJ worth his salt knows how put one record on after another so they seem seamless, and, although that was becoming less important, to me it was still important that once the place was full, I wanted those people to have a good time. I mixed the two together.