Detroit Rock History

Detroit: Rockin’ Through the Years

By David Carson

 

Mention Detroit to most people outside Michigan, and they’ll immediately think of automobiles and Motown. Rock fans, however, know Detroit’s sound is more than revving engines and ironclad pop hooks. Over the years, Detroit developed a distinctive brand of industrial strength, R&B-fueled rock ‘n’ roll, prompting Time Magazine to describe it as “pulsating with the belch of its smokestacks and the beat of its machinery” in 1968. Fostered by an expanding array of music venues, local record labels, aspiring musicians, and colorful promoters, the Motor City spawned influential national talent like Mitch Ryder, Bob Seger, and Ted Nugent, not to mention the acts who would follow years later like the White Stripes.

“It’s just a great rock town,” Seger said in a 2003 interview with the Chicago Tribune, “Rhythm and blues . . . has always been part of Detroit music. If you came out of Detroit, you had to have some of that in your sound.”

The day that elemental sound came up from the Mississippi Delta with blues legend John Lee Hooker, the future of Detroit’s sound was locked. From Hooker to the rockabilly stylings of Jack Scott, on through the ear-splitting chaos of the MC5, when Detroit plugs in, the rock world listens.

Blues and Boogie

When John Lee Hooker left his home in Mississippi to move North, he had two goals: find work at an automotive or steel plant, and launch a career as a blues musician. Like many other Southerners in the late 1940s, both Black and white, Hooker felt Detroit was the place to accomplish both.

After several years playing jams sessions and house parties, Hooker got his chance to record at United Sound Systems, a professional recording studio in Detroit. He put an electric pick-up on his old Stella acoustic guitar and recorded the influential “Boogie Chillen,” which told the story of his wild early days in Detroit, against a haunting, repetitive riff. As he half sang, half spoke, he stomped his feet on a plywood board. The song went to No. 1 on the R&B charts in January 1949 and touched off a string of hits.

Outside Detroit, he found international acclaim, but kept the Motor City close, telling Living Blues Magazine in 1997, “I spent all my best years right there in Detroit.”

A rash of solo blues acts didn’t follow in the wake of Hooker’s popularity. Instead, by the early 1950s, R&B groups dominated Detroit’s music scene. Singers like Hank Ballard moved from the city’s automotive assembly lines to the record charts.

In 1953, Ballard joined the Royals who changed their name to the Midnighters a year later. They released hot R&B singles like “Work with Me Annie” and “Annie Had a Baby.” These were songs that crossed the genre’s racial demarcations and appealed to white teenagers ready to take a break from the more mainstream fare of pop artists such as Doris Day, the Ames Brothers, and Perry Como.

In a 1999 interview with Rock and Blues Magazine, Ballard said that in Detroit at the time, “You couldn’t walk down the street without hearing groups that sounded like they should have a hit record.”

Singing with those local R&B groups proved crucial for Detroiter and R&B great Jackie Wilson. Before he recorded such hits as “Lonely Teardrops” and “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” he performed with the Thrillers, and later replaced Clyde McPhatter as lead singer of Billy Ward and his Dominoes.

Many other hopeful Detroit singers and musicians found their way to the storefront office and primitive studio of Fortune Records, owned and operated by Jack Brown and his poet and songwriter wife Devora. At first, the Browns released country and western before becoming better known for producing R&B artists like Nolan Strong and the Diablos, who gained doo-wop cult status with their eerie 1954 recording of “The Wind.” Fortune artist Andre Williams pioneered an early form of rap music, when out of insecurity, he talked rather than sang his way through “Bacon Fat” in 1955.

Despite such innovation, Fortune artists suffered from the label’s spotty distribution. Nathaniel Mayer’s bombastic “Village of Love,” performed better than most other Fortune releases, reaching No. 22 on the Billboard pop chart in 1962 after being leased to United Artists for national distribution.

Though Fortune didn’t become the best known label from Detroit, its influence proved strong for years to come.

Rock Gets Rolling

By the middle of the decade, R&B was being transformed into rock ‘n’ roll on radio and in multi-act stage shows such as deejay Mickey Shorr’s January 1956 “Rock ‘n’ Rollorama” at the Fox Theatre on Woodward Avenue.

The bill included local rockabilly singer Jack Scott. Whether on stage at the Fox or out at the Dance Ranch, a huge club in suburban Troy in the 1950s, Scott displayed plenty of what could later be described as Detroit attitude. Scott became Detroit’s first big national rock star.

His gold records included 1958’s “My True Love” and 1960’s “What in the World’s Come Over You.” Scott was a rarity—a performing songwriter at a time when most teen artists sang what they were handed. He also bucked the system by using his own band and backup singers on all of his recordings.

Though Scott kept recording through the 1960s, his luck on the charts ran out. He wouldn’t be the last rock act from Detroit to fade out before reaching a lasting stardom.

Motown and More

For all the struggles of Detroit’s early rock, Motown’s unbridled global success cemented the city’s reputation as a musical hub.

In 1959, Berry Gordy was a local songwriter best known for turning out hits for Jackie Wilson. But Gordy had bigger ambitions. After famously obtaining an $800 family loan, he launched Motown and the careers of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops.

At first, only five people worked at Motown, Smokey Robinson said in 2014’s Motown Encyclopedia. As such, his responsibilities weren’t just limited to being the lead singer of the Miracles.

“We did everything,” he said. “We packaged records. We called disc jockeys. We took the records to record stores, to radio stations. We did everything.”

Motown worked—in more ways than one. Gordy saw the label’s achievements as being rooted in its environment. Motown fostered, “an atmosphere that allowed people to experiment creatively and gave them the courage not to be afraid to make mistakes,” he said in his 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved.

As the company began to grow, Gordy used lessons learned during his days working the Ford assembly line to make it successful in all areas. By recruiting top local musicians, many from the jazz world, Gordy put together a stellar studio band that came to be known as the Funk Brothers. Drummer Benny Benjamin and bassist James Jammerson laid down a pulsating rhythm which gave Motown recordings a consistency of sound few other labels could match.

Gordy also had a stable of songwriters competing to have their best songs recorded, the most successful being the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland who cranked out hit after hit including 10 of the dozen No. 1s by the Supremes.

Village of Rock

While Motown was taking off, a band that would go on to become one of Detroit’s best known acts was just getting started. In early 1964, the showstopping Billy Lee and the Rivieras were playing at an R&B venue called the Village, picking up valuable experience backing up the city’s R&B artists.

“I remember these guys tellin’ me things like, ‘Hit them drums hard, white boy!’ They gave us a lot of encouragement,’” the band’s drummer Johnny “Bee” Badanjek said in the 2005 book Grit, Noise, and Revolution.

The band moved on to the higher profile venue Walled Lake Casino, which was also a showcase for other top bands of the era like Jamie Coe and the Gigolos and the Sunliners.

By 1965 Billy Lee and the Rivieras left for New York City and took on the name people would remember for: Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. The group earned hits with soul-driven songs like “Jenny Take a Ride” and “Devil with the Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly.”

Mitch Ryder and the Wheels set the standard for the city’s up-and-coming musicians, said Detroit guitar great Ted Nugent in a 2000 interview with Goldmine magazine. Nugent described Ryder’s energy levels as “stupefying,” and in an interview with Guitar World, he called lead guitarist Jim McCarty’s style as “Chuck Berry on steroids.”

Back home, Walled Lake Casino burned down on Christmas Day of the same year– right on the cusp of a whole new era of rock in Detroit.

Out of the Garage

In the wake of the British Invasion, bands were forming in basements and garages all over town. The local music scene developed into a cottage industry where many Detroit bands were able to play, record, and prosper within what was becoming an increasingly insular world.

“We played frat parties, talent shows, and the Junior Prom,” said Bob Seger. “They’d say, ‘Seger, you sing the Black songs and we’ll sing the white ones ‘cause you sound black.’”

Eventually, he was asked to sing them all.

By the mid-to-late 1960s, Seger was headlining local rock shows with his band the Last Heard, and scoring regional top 10 hits such as “East Side Story” and “Heavy Music,” while remaining virtually unknown outside of Michigan.

Seger’s records were released on the Hideout label, named for a chain of VFW Halls-turned-teen-club raves, where he first found fame.

Dozens of other hungry bands such as the Rationals, the Underdogs, the Tidal Waves, and the Pleasure Seekers (Suzy Quatro and her sisters) played on Michigan’s extensive teen dance club circuit. Along with the Hideouts, there were other venues with names like the Crow’s Nest, the Chatterbox, and the Drumbeat. The strongest groups went on to play larger Motor City rock venues such as the Grande Ballroom and later, the Eastown Theatre. The Grande (pronounced Gran-dee) was an old abandoned Moorish-styled big band ballroom in a not-so-nice part of town.

After visiting San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium in 1966, teacher and entrepreneur Russ Gibb came back to Detroit and transformed the Grande into the city’s premier rock emporium. Patrons climbed a wide red-carpeted staircase to the second floor, and the unique spring-suspended, floating hardwood dance floor. At the rear of the intimate stage, was a screen showing psychedelic oil and water images that bounced off a huge mirror ball, splashing across the crowd. Cream, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, and Canned Heat were some of the major national acts who shared the Grande stage with hard rocking local bands.

Quintessential Detroit rockers, the MC5 — who mixed explosive performances with the volatile politics of manager and activist John Sinclair, signed on early as the Grande’s house band.

“We were working on this really loud new song when Russ arrived for our audition,” said bassist Michael Davis in Grit, Noise, and Revolution. “When we finished playing, I remember Russ saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking for!’”

The MC5 took pride in upstaging visiting national acts by way of sheer noise and energy. From out in the audience, the band would also heckle bands they felt were underperforming yelling, “kick out the jams or get off the stage!”

The phrase inspired their first LP, Kick Out the Jams (recorded live at the Grande), which included the controversy-sparking expletive “motherfuckers.”

“[The Grande was] a big sweatbox with one little window,” said Iggy Pop, who also played the Grande with his band the Stooges. “You’d come out of there feeling like you’d really been through something.”

Tom Wright, the former road manager for the Who, remembered their first Grande gig in 1968, and how they had never seen an audience so close together, looking like they were “stuck to the walls.” Guitarist Pete Townsend credited Detroit as “an early stronghold for the Who,” and chose the Grande to premier The Who’s rock opera Tommy on May 9, 1969.

Pedal to the Metal

The local rock scene was peaking in the spring of 1969, and the Detroit Pop Festival, staged at Olympia Stadium on April 7, marked the occasion. Twenty Detroit area bands drew 16,000 paying fans. At the top of the bill per usual were the MC5, Bob Seger System, SRC, the Frost, and Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes, plus Third Power, and the UP. To Detroit fans, these hard-driving bands had as much star power as any national act who might have been in town. Creem Magazine stated that “Detroit [was] such a hotbed for rock ‘n’ roll because the kids are so deeply involved in it.”

In addition to the countless teen clubs, musicians found plenty of work with what seemed like a non-stop schedule of indoor and outdoor rock festivals, Goose Lake being the largest—and most notorious.

The band, Alice Cooper, joined the scene in 1970, toughening up their sound and introducing shock rock to their shows at the Eastown Theatre.

“We just fit in [to Detroit] like the scene was made for us. I saw the MC5 and I was like, Woah!” said Vincent Fournier who eventually became Alice Cooper, in a 2021 interview with Flood Magazine.

Frijid Pink exploded with their heavy, distortion-drenched version of “House of the Rising Sun” and had a world-wide smash. George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic broke new ground, gaining acceptance among younger white rock audiences, and performing alongside the MC5 and the Stooges. Grand Funk Railroad arrived on the scene, engineered by master promoter Terry Knight. At first ignored by their hometown audience, GFR conquered Detroit and the rest of the country, topping off their success with a sold-out concert at New York’s Shea Stadium, breaking the attendance record set by the Beatles in 1966.

The scene intensified as pioneering underground radio station WABX-FM provided a soundtrack for the era, and Detroit publications such as the Fifth Estate and Creem heralded a new style of journalism. They covered counterculture music and politics in the times of the war in Vietnam and the struggle for civil rights and social change in America, forging a stronger link between the music and the world around it.

Rough Road Ahead

Just when it seemed that Detroit was at the zenith of a music and cultural revolution, the whole scene began to unravel in the early 1970s. As a result of bad management in a changing business climate, personality disputes, the increased use of drugs, and conservative political victories; the moment passed.

“It was painfully obvious that the Detroit scene was dead,” said Dennis Thompson, the MC5’s stick-breaking drummer in Grit, Noise, and Revolution. “It went from an atmosphere of hope and expectations, to one of fear and dread.”

The Grande Ballroom closed and the Eastown Theatre was shut down for being a “virtual drug supermarket,” as reported in the Detroit Free Press. The teen clubs were also fading fast as skyrocketing ticket prices for major concerts left kids unable to also patronize what small clubs were left. In a matter of months, the MC5, the Amboy Dukes, the Stooges, and most of the other top local groups had all called it quits. As a final kick in the ass, Motown packed up and moved to Los Angeles in 1972.

The Way Back

While Seger and Nugent finally broke through nationally, most musicians from Detroit’s classic 1960s scene, along with the city as a whole, struggled to survive.

Musicians who did, did so by playing non-stop sets of Top 40 cover songs, sometimes dictated to them by management at the bars they played. It was not a creative period. The rare exceptions included the Rockets, formed in late 1972 by former Detroit Wheels members Jim McCarty and Johnny Bee. After the addition of vocalist David Gilbert, they scored a national Top 40 hit with “Oh Well.”

Meanwhile, out of the ashes of the Grande Ballroom scene came Destroy All Monsters, formed in 1973 (Niagra, Cary Loren, Jim Shaw, and later recruits Ron Ashton of the Stooges, and Michael Davis of the MC5), and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band in 1975 (Fred Smith of the MC5, Scott Morgan of the Rationals, Gary Rasmussen from the UP, and Scott Ashton of the Stooges) who played for loyal but limited followings with meager recorded output. Sonic’s “City Slang” is a classic one-off underground cult favorite.

These groups made the most of the spotty gigs available for rock bands wanting to play original music—the Red Carpet Lounge on East Warren and the Second Chance in Ann Arbor were two of the few, and even those offered little stage time for original music.

The Scene Changes

In early 1978, the path through Detroit’s burnt out urban landscape led to a new scene unfolding at a place called Bookie’s Club 870 on West McNichols, a couple of blocks west of Woodward. The establishment was originally conceived in the 1930s as an upscale supper club known as Frank Gagen’s, but by the late 1950s, had morphed into a fading drag show bar managed by a Damon Runyon-like, cigar-chomping character name Sam Stewart — better known as “Bookie.” Stewart’s nickname and the club’s street number lent themselves to a new identity, although the Gagen’s signage was still out front.

By 1977, a punk scene was emerging around Detroit. As a result of a lack of places to play, some of these independent minded bands were approaching small, shady bars with the hopes of booking an off night and promoting it themselves with a split of the profits. That’s what happened when a band called the Sillies visited Stewart. Business hadn’t been good in a while, so he struck a limited deal for the Sillies to play there in March of 1978. After the band packed the house, Stewart decided to let band members Scott Campbell and Vince Bannon book the club full-time. Soon Bookie’s was rocking hard every night with punk and new wave bands blasting away from the raised stage before a crowded, elevated dance floor and overflowing circular booths upholstered in red leather long past its prime.

New and recently formed local bands such as the Denizens, Mutants, Coldcock, Flirt, Motor City Bad Boys, and Cinecyde, along with the 1960s vets in Destroy All Monsters and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, had found a homebase, and punk fans had found a scene.

Bookies was like “nothing I’ve ever experienced, before or since, the Denizens’ Mike Murphy said in an interview with the Detroit Punk Archive. “It just sprung up out of itself.”

Mike Skill of the Romantics also told the Punk Archive that Bookie’s happened at the right time, and that it had the “right artiness, right funkiness, and the right debauchery.”

Art Lyzak of the Mutants described going there as “a magical experience” with “the best looking girls.” “Everybody [was] wearing the coolest clothes.” The word spread and soon national acts including the Police, the Dead Boys, the Cramps, Ultravox and J. Geils were booked. In addition, Iggy Pop, whose fame had gone international, recorded a live show at Bookies.

As the 1980s got underway, punk and new wave were mutating. The result was mid-west hard core – faster, louder and more furious. Among Detroit’s best known proponents of this style were the bands Necros, Meatmen, and Negative Approach. The three groups headlined together at Bookies on September 30, 1981.

The flame that was Bookie’s burned intensely for a couple of years. After changes in management and the gutting of the club’s interior to squeeze in more bodies, the magic began to fade and the crowds, and the bands moved on to new venues such as the Freezer Theater, Clutch Cargo’s, Todd’s, and the Old Miami. Bookie retired in 1982, died in 1984 and a few years later, in true Detroit fashion, the building itself burned down.

Brave New World

Out of Detroit’s industrial urban decay rose a different sort of music that would also draw attention in the 1980s. Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, collectively known as the Belleville Three, created Detroit techno. The scene centered around the Music Institute, a juice bar with a white interior and strobe light. The subgenre spread to underground raves that featured pounding bass-heavy electronic futuristic sounds. Detroit techno even made its way to Europe with due credit to the Motor City.

Like a Rock

After a period of dormancy, Detroit rock music once again experienced a rebirth in the early 1990s, largely thanks to a band called the Gories.

Founded by Mick Collins in 1986, the Gories, with their slashing approach to gritty R&B got people excited. Other similarly tough garage rock bands of varying styles began to form. Standouts included the Detroit Cobras, featuring Rachael Nagy’s scorching, soulful vocals. The band won respect by cutting innovative versions of obscure R&B songs. Other notables of the era included blues and funk rockers the Howling Diablos, the Witches, the Von Bondies, glam rockers the Demolition Doll Rods, and the Gore Gore Girls, described by their leader Amy Surdu in an interview with Recoil magazine as “the Stooges meet the Ronettes.”

By 1996, the new bands found a new Detroit home at yet another former drag show bar—the small, seedy Gold Dollar Club in the Cass Corridor.

Inspired by several of the aforementioned bands, Jack and Meg White started the White Stripes in 1997, taking the stage at the Gold Dollar in August and quickly developing an intense fan base in Detroit.

The White Stripes’ thrashing, stripped down blues/garage rock approach featured only guitar, drums and vocals. Jack, who wrote all the band’s songs, was not a fan of technology, saying in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud, that “ease of use is the death of creativity.” The duo preferred to record live in the studio on older analog equipment.

“The most important thing about art to me is knowing when to stop,” White said in a 2003 Guardian story.

Along with the Gold Dollar, Surdu also cited producer-engineer Jim Diamond’s Ghetto Recorders studio as instrumental to the success of Detroit’s music resurgence in the 1990s. After having made his reputation recording Detroit rockers such as the Dirtbombs (of which he was a member), Bantam Rooster, and the Electric Six, bands from all over the world traveled to the Motor City to record with Diamond’s collection of vintage gear.

When the Gold Dollar closed in 2001, the rock crowd poured into the Lager House, on Michigan Avenue in the historic Corktown neighborhood. The Lager House, which is still in operation, features two side-by-side rooms, with the wall on the bar side, plastered with posters of the legendary bands that have played there.

As for the White Stripes, the duo released several singles and three albums on a small independent label. A tour of the UK in July of 2001 set off a media frenzy. After a label switch to V2 Records, sales picked up on their third release, White Blood Cells. Their next album, Elephant, climbed to No. 6 on the modern rock charts. By 2005, the White Stripes were making the biggest noise in rock music, releasing the critically acclaimed album Get Behind Me Satan, which charted at No. 3. A 2005 article in Rolling Stone stated: “If you happen to be a rock band and you don’t happen to be either of the White Stripes, it so sucks to be you right now.”

It didn’t suck too bad, though. for breakthrough Detroit rappers like Kid Rock, and of course, Eminem. Their success also helped revive the city’s standing as a music town.

The music that comes out of Detroit has a deep past and ever changing future. Bolstered by R&B, born of a tough town and the often tough lives of those who make it—it remains to be seen where the scene will move next. One prediction stands as a safe bet: Detroit will always find a way to turn it up.

—

David Carson is the author of Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Rockin’ Down the Dial: The Detroit Sound of RadIo from Jack the Bellboy to the Big 8.