A Syracuse-born art student turned nightlife fixture, Terry Noel talked his way into the DJ booth at Sybil Burton's celebrity club Arthur in the mid-1960s and is widely credited as the first DJ to actually mix records — blending one track into the next on a felt slip-mat rather than just playing songs back to back. When he no-showed a shift at Salvation Too in 1968, the club's next DJ, Francis Grasso, took over the booth and ran with what Noel had started.