Who is Mr. Jonathan?
In 1994 Jonathan Barbeau was a freshman at Haverhill High School in Haverhill, Ma and needed some spending money. He found a job through a friend of a friend as a floor guard at the local roller rink. On his third night, the DJ called in sick. Like a scene from a cheesey 80’s movie the manager pulled him out of the “Sk8” room and threw him head first into the DJ booth with less than a thirty second tutorial on how things worked and where to find the music.
His palms were sweaty and his voice had a hint of uncertainty as he grabbed the microphone, “The first number will be an all-skate in the regular skating direction.”
Jonathan “burned” through every top forty song he could find in the first hour. Then in the second hour he played every song he knew from the mid to late 80’s. The crowd was loving it, and he was loving their love, but he was running out of hits from the 80’s and 90’s!
As he put in the last 80’s tune he could find, his eyes scanned across a CD called “Soul Jams”. The first track on the disk had Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man”, one of his all-time favorite songs. In an act of pure desperation, Jonathan grabbed the microphone and announced, “Boys and girls, we are taking a trip back into time!” And holding his breath, he pushed play.
It was as if “Soul Man” was the number one song in the country in 1994. Every skater, young and old, came out onto the floor and grooved along with Sam, Dave, and a very relieved Jonathan. He finished the night with an “oldies” set that brought the house down.
Jonathan was hooked but the job of DJ was not just his for the taking. You needed more than one good showing to score the top DJ spots of Friday and Saturday night. However, the manager was impressed enough to offer him Monday and Tuesday nights, Djing for the private parties. After two months, the private party business was booming due in large part to Jonathan’s ability to take his audience down memory lane and keep them skating all night. In less than one year, Jonathan worked his way up to the top spot.
Six years later, he branched out on his own, assuming the moniker of “Mr. Jonathan”. Fast forward to today: Mr. Jonathan Is My DJ is now an established music and MC service that serves a loyal and growing clientele, spinning and guiding the party-vibe at a number of regularly scheduled events as well as special functions.
In 2015 Mr. Jonathan was inducted into the Living Legends of Dance and was given special dispensation as one of the by-laws states you must be at least 50 years of age and at the time of his induction he was only 37.