Back in the good old days of 1977 when gas lines were long and unemployment was high, there were two schools of DJs competing for Black and Latino audiences in New York City: the Pete DJ Jones crowd and the devout followers of DJ Kool Herc. One group played the popular music of the day for party-going adult audiences in clubs in downtown Manhattan. The other played raw funk and breakbeats for a rapidly growing, fanatic—almost cultlike—following of teenagers in rec centers and parks. Both sides had their devotees. One night in the Bronx, the two masters of the separate tribes clashed in a dark and crowded club on Mount Eden and Jerome Avenues called the Executive Playhouse.

You can’t miss Pete DJ Jones at a party—or anywhere else for that matter. He is somewhere near seven feet tall and bespectacled. Today, at sixty-four years old, he is a retired school teacher from the Bronx, but if you listen to him speak, you immediately know he ain’t from New York—he’s from “down home,” as they say in Durham, North Carolina. But no matter where he was from, back in the ’70s, Pete Jones was the man.

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