This was quite significant since now a DJ could eliminate pauses between songs completely and keep people on the dance floor. Around this time in Jamaica, DJ s were gaining superstar status. "[Djs] were now attracting several thousands of people and soon became recognized as a profitable, legitimate business" (Frick). In the United States, dance clubs and nightclubs began to multiply, especially in urban centers such as New York City. Gay nightclubs in particular were a place where DJ s gained fame. "Dancers and groupies alike flocked to see and hear DJ Francis Grasso, who had mastered a new instrument, consisting of two turntables and a mixer, and a new stage: the DJ booth with its controls of sound and light to fire non-stop, wall-to-wall dancing on the adjacent floor." (Fikentscher). Francis Grasso is perhaps the first DJ that could be considered an actual musician, as well as pop star. He pioneered the DJing technique known as beat matching. Beat matching allowed DJ s to seamlessly mix the end of one song, into the beginning of the next. Grasso ingeniously used this technique to make sure there was a continuous flow from one song to the next, which lead to people staying on the dance floor. Grasso was also the first DJ to view the turntables as actual instruments. As Grasso's popularity faded, so to did dance clubs. By the the late 1960's and early 1970s, many nightclubs in America shut down, or replaced DJs with live bands (Wegner). The disc jockey's popularity would not rise again until the emergence of disco music in the mid to late 70s. .
During this downtime, there was a plethora of advances in the field of DJing. Most notable is the introduction of the direct drive turntable by Technics (Wegner). This had a profound effect on DJ s of the day as the direct drive turntable made it much easier for DJs to remix songs, since the old belt driven turntables were prone to break if the record was interrupted.
