Do It to the Music

Raw Silk was assembled in New York by Ron Dean Miller and Bert Reid of Crown Heights Affair, with Jessica Cleaves, Tenita Jordan, and Sybil Thomas on vocals. Ron Dean Miller is credited as producer on the original release, and contemporary reporting described the track as a West End 12-inch club record. Released in 1982 on West End Records, the single broke through in clubs and became Raw Silk’s best-known record, reaching No. 5 on Billboard’s US dance chart and No. 18 in the UK. It also gave the group a Top 40 presence on the US soul chart, confirming its crossover appeal beyond the dancefloor. The track has remained a club standard and a widely sampled disco-era record, with WhoSampled listing more than 100 later uses. Reissues, edits, and remixes have kept it in circulation, and it still appears in West End retrospectives and dance-music canon lists.