1975
FOXY LADY * CROWN HEIGHTS AFFAIR * DE-LITE 1581 * USA
Big groups were in fashion when Crown Heights Affair cut this Funky Disco record, and having eight members they were no exception. The label is Philadelphian but the group are named after the home town district in Brooklyn, New York, known as Crown Heights, which is for the most part a lower middle-class residential area, that lies on both sides of the ridge of Eastern Parkway. The section was known as Crow Hill until 1916, when Crown Street was cut through. Eastern Parkway, the main street of Crown Heights, is a copy of the Champs-Elysees in Paris. The area has long been settled by Hasidic Jews and African-Americans, mostly of West Indian origin; the two cultures lived side by side in an uneasy relationship until in 1991 when after the death of a African-American child by a Hasidic Jew in a motor car accident, both communities erupted in to riots, violence and murder. None of this world can be found in the music of Crown Heights Affair which is, basically, happy dance music aimed straight at the feet of the Disco dancers, and as such is, for me, a good example of the genre.