Ron Hardy (? — 1991) is een van de pioniers van de housemuziek uit Chicago. Hij was in 1986 dj in The Music Box, een club die vooral bezocht werd door zwarte homo's.
In tegenstelling to Frankie Knuckles in de Warehouse, ging Hardy's voorkeur naar rauwere ritmische tracks. Door de tapes die ze meebrachten te spelen in de club gaf hij lokale producers de kans om hun pas gemaakte tracks op de dansvloer uit te testen.
Hij overleed in 1991 aan een overdosis heroïne.

Hieronder nog wat meer info,dit is wel in het Engels ma zeker de moeite om te lezen als je het mij vraagt:

Ron Hardy is the only man who can test Frankie Knuckles' status as the godfather of Chicago house music.
Though he never recorded under his own name and left little evidence of his life, Hardy was the major name for Chicago dance music from the late '70s to the mid-'80s. By 1974, he had already effected a continuous music mix with reel-to-reel machines plus a dual-turntable setup at the club Den One. Several years later, Hardy played with Knuckles at a club called the Warehouse and though he spent several years in Los Angeles, he later returned to Chicago to open his own club, the Music Box.

While Knuckles was translating disco and the emerging house music to a straight, southside audience at the Power Plant, Hardy's 72-hour mix sessions and flamboyant party lifestyle fit in well with the uptown, mostly gay audience at the Music Box. A roll-call of major Chicago producers including Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Adonis, Phuture's DJ Pierre and Chip E all debuted their compositions by pressing up acetates or reel-to-reel copies for Hardy to play during the mid-'80s.
Lingering problems with heroin addiction forced him to leave the Music Box around 1986 and though he continued to DJ around the area, Hardy wasn't around when Chicago became house music's mecca later in the decade. He died in 1991.

Deejay Ron Hardy died in 1991, and that's the only reason why he's not a star today. With the clubs he's been spinning for (especially the Music Box from 1983 to 1988), he was drawing the way of the new sounds of the night. Something was definitely changing, and he was part of the change. You know that one day 'Jack Has a Groove'... but did you really know when late Disco turned into early House music? Ron Hardy was it. Icon of the gay House nights of Chicago, that man was a deejay like some others are monk... it was everything for him, a sort of religion. Mixing speedy electro-pop with accelerated disco, edited disco-classics with acid tracks, when other deejays used to mix it warm... he used to mix it cold. One of his very close friends told me that he was almost never sleeping... mixing records all the time, doing weird things with his turntables. There was about nothing in his apartment, nothing but black shiny records, and a bed... and that for years since the 70's when he left for westcoast, the 80's when he came back to Chicago, until 91 when everything stopped. Too much drugs and awaken nights... he killed his own batteries for the music.
At least we still have the tapes of his talent and the memories of his friends.

Just some words about Ron Hardy, sampled from here or there:

In DJ Magazine, Marshall Jefferson remembers his first visit to the Muzic Box: "I went down right about the time it first opened and aw man, the volume! I'd never heard dance music played like that. It was so loud that the kick drum would feel like it was going through your chest. It was like boom, boom - like someone physically had their fist beating on my chest. It was like that. And it was amazing.
Ron was more adventurous that Frankie Knuckles. Frankie would play straight disco but Ron would play all kinds of stuff. He'd play Eurythmics, he play Man Parrish, he'd play Shannon, right along with the disco. And man, he just stole all of Frankie Knuckle's crowd."

"I remember Ron Hardy dropping Nitzer Ebb (hard industrial band) in between records by Marshall Jefferson and Adonis." says Scott K. (More club, Los Angeles "in URB magazine there's an article on Felix Da Housecat where he mentions Frankie Knuckles dropping cuts from bands like New Order. He then credits (rightfully so) Ron Hardy for starting that."

"Year 1983: Tony Humphries enters the NYC club and radio circuit with his influential mix show on KISS-FM.
Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles reign supreme on the turntables at the Powerplant and Warehouse respectively, with Farley Keith makin' noise at the Playhouse." in X-project.co.uk

"it was to be another DJ from the gay scene that was really to create the environment for the house explosion - Ron Hardy. Where Knuckles' sound was still very much based in disco, Hardy was the DJ that went for the rawest, wildest rhythm tracks he could find and he made The Music Box the inspirational temple for pretty much every DJ and producer that was to come out of the Chicago scene."

"The Music Box was underground " remembers Adonis. "You could go there in the middle of the winter and it'd be as hot as hell, people would be walking around with their shirts off. Ron Hardy had so much power people would be praising his name while he was playing, and I've got the tapes to prove it!"

"Ron Hardy took over the decks at The Music Box on the south side. The Music Box became known as a rougher, wilder and more hedonistic alternative to Knuckles' sophisticated mixes and it was here that the straight black crowds from the south side caught the bug."

Dit is een link naar live mix van hem waar je duidelijk het publiek hoort:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUo58TkF6rc
Dit is een link naar zijn enige officieel uitgebrachte productie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSpNvS5fa_E&feature=related