Pete DJ Jones
A basketball hopeful from Raleigh who landed in New York in 1970, Pete DJ Jones taught himself turntables in restaurant basements and rec halls and became the top mobile disco DJ for Manhattan's adult Black party circuit — the same role Kool Herc played uptown for teenagers. He was among the first to run two copies of a record for an endless break, a technique a young Grandmaster Flash studied at his elbow, and his MC crews (KC the Prince of Soul, Lovebug Starski) gave early hip-hop some of its first dedicated hype men. Kurtis Blow counted Jones, alongside DJ Hollywood, as a direct model for how a rap record should move a room.
Jones's own account of his sets leans on James Brown as the backbone — the funky, downbeat-heavy records he spun were built for exactly the kind of extended, danceable break Brown's band specialized in.
listen forThe stripped-down, endlessly repeatable groove of 'Funky Drummer' is the exact kind of record Jones would double up on two turntables to stretch out for a room full of dancers — the raw material his whole DJ style existed to serve.
Jones grew up on Southern "gutbucket" R&B and cited blues records by artists like B.B. King as part of the foundation of his taste, alongside deep soul from Johnny Taylor and Tyrone Davis.
listen forThe slow-building tension-and-release in a B.B. King performance like 'Sweet Little Angel' is a world away from a disco break, but it's the same downbeat-first, feel-the-room musicality Jones cited as his Southern musical upbringing before he ever touched a turntable.
Records like the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "It's Just Begun" were exactly the kind of hard funk break that Jones's signature DJ trick — playing two copies of a record to extend the percussion section — was built to serve up for a dancing crowd.
listen forThe extended drum-and-horn breakdown in the middle of 'It's Just Begun' is the literal raw material of Jones's technique: find the part where the band drops out and just the rhythm section cooks, then loop it as long as the floor wants it.