Category Archive

By Max Conroy

Living in Ann Arbor, it’s strange to have to purchase a European import that compiles a bunch of records recorded here, but I’m glad it’s available at all.  The name of the label, A-Square, is a nickname for the city of Ann Arbor.  It was created by Jeep Holland, a compulsive music and comic collector, DJ, manager, promoter, and manager of Discount Records, the store that Iggy Pop worked at as a teenager.  Holland would stock import records that no other stores would carry, British Invasion records, and get a feel for what area kids would respond to in the store and while DJ-ing events.  He met local musicians at Discount and eventually started promoting some of them.  In 1965 he began producing records exclusively as promotional material to get gigs for acts that he was promoting and put them out on his A-Square imprint. 

In five years, he put out records by approximately a dozen bands, including the MC5, the Rationals, the Scot Richard Case (SRC), the Up, and the Frost; all Detroit legends.  By 1970, for a myriad of reasons, including his domineering personality, poor business acumen, lack of payment from distributers, and changing times, he left Ann Arbor for Boston, leaving behind A-Square records and a wake of debt.  A lot of these records are very hard to find now, 40 plus years later, and the 45s have been the only way to hear most of these great bands.

A-Square (Of Course) was released this past May on Big Beat Records, distributed and marketed by the mega-reissue label Ace Records out of the UK.  The title comes from a button issued by the label that read A-Square (Of Course).  There are definitely some issues with this package, but the good greatly outweighs the bad.  First off, there are no Rationals tracks on it, which seems odd since they were the biggest act on A-Square and the label’s flagship act, but Ace intends on releasing a compilation of their work on A-Square soon, to be named Think Rational! (again from a button).  According to Scott Morgan of the Rationals, they’re still working on obtaining the rights to the masters.  Secondly, this is by no means an exhaustive collection of A-Square’s catalogue, which would require a multiple-disc release.  This collection contains 25 tracks by ten bands, 8 tracks by the Thyme and 5 by the Scot Richard Case.  More than half of the compilation is music that was never released originally, which is great if you’re looking for really rare stuff, but not if you’re looking to have high fidelity copies of the famous records that were actually released on the label.  Also, there are several bands that recorded for A-Square whose masters cannot be located and are not represented here; the Jagged Edge, the Children and the Gang most notably.

The bottom line, however, is that this anthology is filled with a ton of highlights and is most definitely worth the $19.  It contains an early MC5 single, Looking at You/Borderline, which has been released a ton and isn’t that rare, but is great to have in this context with fantastic documentation in the liner notes.  Apparently, Holland and John Sinclair didn’t get along that well for a variety of reasons, even though Sinclair managed the group and Holland was in charge of booking them.  According to the liner notes:

Jeep:  Sinclair went into United Sound and recorded that record with Danny Dallas, then just decided to use my label name.  He designed his own A-Square label, designed his own package and just put it out.  He finally got around to informing me as the record was coming out: ‘Oh, by the way, I put the record out on A-Square.’…My label was a success, and John thought it would get his record more attention… Danny Dallas told me some wonderful stories about that session.  He said they immediately turned their amps up as loud as they could go.  Danny kept trying to tell them, ‘You don’t have to do that.  Get a good sound and I’ll boost it in here.’  But no, John Sinclair came into the control room, looked at the board and went like this [sweeping arm motion] pushing every one of the faders up all the way.  Then he ate a big chunk of hash or something and lay down on the floor while the band played. 

Let’s just say that it’s not the 5’s best moment sonically, but well worth hearing and a great addition to this collection.  Also featured here is a rare live recording of the Prime Movers.  The Movers were a highly respected blues outfit in the Ann Arbor area at the time that never released anything.  The band included Michael Erlewine, the brain behind the All Music Guide, on vocals and harmonica and a young Iggy Pop on drums.  The track here is a cover of the Yardbird’s version of I’m a Man that was used as a tape that Holland took to New York probably around ‘66 to promote the band.  It actually features Iggy on vocals instead of Erlewine and might possibly be the earliest recording of Iggy singing.  The Up’s Just Like an Aborigine is a raw-as-hell protopunk gem and another massive highlight on this disc.  Everything else not mentioned here is good if not great, making this a must have for anyone even remotely interested in psyche, garage rock, the Detroit high energy sound, or Southeast Michigan culture.

The Up’s Just Like an Aborigine:

By Max Conroy

The Raconteurs played Saturday night at the Fillmore Detroit with the Atlanta-based garage punk revivalists the Black Lips.  All 2900 seats were accounted for, but the place didn’t seem overly packed at all.  This would probably have been a concert that I wouldn’t have thought twice about, seeing the ad in the paper or hearing about it on the radio, but a friend called me before getting tickets the day they went on sale.  What the hell, I’ll go; I like the rock and roll; I consider myself a fan of J. White even though at times I want to dislike the White Stripes.  I really like the Black Lips, particularly their 2005 record Let It Bloom, but didn’t know that they were opening until after I’d committed to the event.  No matter what you think about White’s music or his opinions regarding his music, he’s done a lot for rock and roll.  I can’t blame him for leaving Detroit either.  That said, I can pretty much take or leave the Raconteurs.

When I first heard that White was forming a band, I thought that it was a great idea: breaking away from the mold of a two-person ‘band’ where he most definitely calls the shots to working with three to four other extremely talented people, writing songs and collaborating in a super group, like they did back in the late sixties through the seventies.  I could really give two shits about Brendan Benson, based purely on ignorance, but drafting the rhythm section of the Greenhornes, bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, made me have to take this band seriously.  I have seen these two play live probably more than any other group of musicians. 

I’ve seen several incarnations of the Greenhornes, as a four-piece and a trio, and have seen them play with Holly Golightly several times.  One of my most profound dipshit, foot-in-mouth, moments was making some boneheaded comment about how the Greenhornes weren’t all that great to Holly Golightly while smoking cigarettes outside of Kraftbrau Brewery in Kalamazoo, and she basically said, “There are a lot worse bands out there.”  About ten minutes later, the Greenhornes tore the place apart.  I’d seen them open for Golightly a few nights prior at the Magic Stick and they didn’t exactly put their best foot forward, but every time that I’ve seen them since, they have been absolutely amazing; one of the best bands I’ve ever seen.  And so much of what made them so good was their impossibly tight rhythm section; Keeler, the definition of the jazz-influenced rock drummer, killing the skins, sweat flying everywhere, drinking whiskey; and Lawrence the silent rock carrying the rhythm, his expression is comparable to Elijah Wood’s character in Sin City:  blank, verging on scary.

I got the Raconteurs first record when it came out, but never really listened to it seriously.  I also had the chance to see them a Lollapalooza a few years back, but chose to see some other band that was playing there at the same time; it might have been Sleater-Kinney playing their last non-Olympia show.  The music seems fine, and I’m not sure why I haven’t taken the time to listen to their records, maybe there just hasn’t been enough time, who knows?  So this show was a good opportunity for me to really give their music a chance.

Upon entering the Fillmore Detroit, if you are a guy, you have to empty your pockets, hold all your shit for security to go through while they frisk you.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do this and was somewhat freaked out by it as I did have something that would be considered contraband, which I held under my wallet, hoping they wouldn’t notice.  They were some huge fellows and seemed very good at their job.  I made the mistake of wearing a green shirt that said ‘Boston’ on it with a clover.  The guy who was about to frisk me mumbled something, and it sounded to me like, “If I find anything in your pockets, I’m going to fuck you up.”  My stomach sank as I was holding onto my wallet and contraband, hands shaking.  I quickly ripped out anything else that I had in my pockets and explained rapidly what it was.  He could tell that I misunderstood what he’d said and repeated it: “I should fuck you up for wearing that shirt.”  That I could handle.  The Pistons were just knocked out by the Boston Celtics in the conference finals.  “Oh, sorry, man.  I totally didn’t think about it.”  “You should go home and burn that shirt.”  “Oh, I will.”  My hands were still shaking when I bought a round of beer five minutes later.

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By Max Conroy

Four years ago, I had the chance to see Bo Diddley play a concert at Fitzgeralds, a small bar on the outskirts of Chicago where they filmed some of the Color of Money, for his 75th birthday.  All I had to do was hop in my car or catch a train and go, but I got lazy and probably spent the night doing something very unmemorable.  Living in a thriving metropolis like Chicago numbs one to culture because you can do something great every night, all year round.  You have to pick and choose and I chose poorly here.  I was definitely into Bo Diddley at the time, and I think must have got a lot more heavily into his records shortly thereafter.  I didn’t read any reviews of the show and have no idea if he was good or not, but that would have been beside the point…it’s fucking Bo Diddley, man.  This ranks up there at the very top of my rock and roll regrets list, along with missing out on seeing Johnny Cash, pre-revival, in Kalamazoo and hearing about the last Pavement show in Michigan days after it had happened. I knew that I would never have another chance to see him live.

Bo Diddley died in Florida today of heart failure.  He’d had a stroke, followed by a heart attack a year ago and had been in poor health since.  He was 79 years old and one of the people that created rock and roll. 

When I realized, after years of seeing the name E. McDaniel listed as the writer of songs that were such blues and rock and roll standards that I thought that they must have been traditional arrangements and the name a ruse like Allan Smithee in the film industry, that it was in fact Bo Diddley, I gave him some serious listening attention.  A lot of people dismiss Bo Diddley as a one-trick-pony, and those people are missing out in a big way.  Sure, he did ride the wave of rhythm that he created on the track Bo Diddley for a long time, but the power and influence of that rhythm cannot be overstated.  EVERY garage band has used it, from Buddy Holly on.  But there was so much more to his sound than that rhythm.  He wrote some fantastic straight blues numbers and countless chugging rockers; take a handful of your favorite rock and roll records recorded in the 60s, flip them over and see how many times you see the name McDaniel.

Bo Diddley, sadly, doesn’t get the respect he deserves, but I’m confident that his importance to rock and roll will be realized as long as people continue to look back and question what is rock and roll and where it came from.  Here are four examples that made me a huge fan of his.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to his music without thinking about that show at Fitzgeralds…

Bo’s Bounce:

Keep Your Big Mouth Shut:

I Can Tell:

Road Runner, from Beach Party: one of the best live records of the early 60s:

 By Max Conroy

My struggle lately has been that I have way too much music to listen to.  In the past year or so, I’ve had some incredible resources and have acquired more music than I could realistically listen to.  It’s obviously the result of some sort of compulsion that I have to collect things.  But records are meant to be listened to, and I feel guilty about having some of the best records ever made lying around where I’m only able to dedicate a cursory listen.  Also, my interests wax and wane like the moon, so I’ll have some records that I’ve just purchased and my interest in that genera of music will fall by the wayside, the record filed to be stumbled upon when my interest in that music reawakens.  I guess the solution is to make it a point to try and not acquire anything new.  Don’t worry, readers, I’ll have plenty of stuff to write about.

For some reason, last night I actually went through my CDs and pulled out a huge pile and pretty much froze because it was late, past midnight, and I wanted to listen to everything, but I didn’t want to be up till sunrise.  I’ve been getting back into rock and roll, from jazz fusion and soul and funk.  I had also just hooked my DVD player up through my stereo, so I wanted to be able to watch a bit of something before I went to bed, so I had to make a tough decision, but I sure as hell made the right choice.

Starship, The MC5 at the Sturgis Armory June 27, 1968 is, in my mind, the best document of the MC5 live.  Don’t get me wrong, Kick Out the Jams is a hell of a record, but it doesn’t necessarily represent the 5 accurately with regards to their live show at the time.  They knew that they were going to make a record and had to trim parts of the set, like Black to Comm and various jazz and soul medleys from their set to make a digestible product for the masses (I’m not saying they sold out to the man or anything, they do say ‘motherfucker’ in the first five minutes, before their most commercial song).  The sound on Starship is obviously from someone in the crowd, so this is how it pretty much sounded if you were standing in the Sturgis Armory.  A lot of people don’t realize that soundboard recordings aren’t necessarily the shit because they just capture the sound that’s pumped through the system and not what comes out of it. 

Where is Sturgis you ask?  It’s in southwest Michigan, not far at all from where I, and Cousin Justin, grew up.  The area now is probably a ghost town, but back in the day when muscle cars were king the place was probably still out of the way.  This show catches the 5 playing their set in all its glory in a small town and displays perfectly their mettle.  They didn’t care where they were playing or who to; when they stepped on the stage it was all over; they were going to destroy any other band that dared share that stage, no matter who it was, Cream or Led Zeppelin.

I had to put the headphones on for this one as it was late and I needed volume, so I recommend that you do the same.  Find your headphones and brace yourself…

Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa:

James Brown’s Cold Sweat:  Dig Dennis Thompson’s drumming on this track.

PS:  In my opinion the only other live performace by the 5 that rivals this is Thunder Express, a live set in a European studio.  Go figure, Cub Coda gave it two stars in AMG, haha.

By Max Conroy

The deacon Solomon Burke played a free show in Detroit last night (refer to the previous post).  It was a fantastic show and one that I’ll remember forever.  He’s still got it to be sure.  A gospel choir performed Lay My Burden Down before he went on.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay for the entire show, but I saw a little over an hour of his set and caught a lot of classics: Cry to Me, If You Need Me, Down In The Valley, the Tom Waites penned Keep a Diamond in Your Mind, Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay, and many others.  I recorded some audio of the show and will work on getting that posted.

By Max Conroy 

On Saturday, May 17th Jandek played a free concert at the University of Michigan’s Lydia Mendelssohn Theater.  The show was sponsored by WCBN-FM (88.3 on your FM dial), the student-run station of the University, booked by Brendt Rioux, and featured James Cornish on trumpet, Christian Matjias on harpsichord, and Biba Bell on vocals and improv dance.  Apparently this was the first Jandek performance to feature live improv dancing.  Jandek played hollow body bass and sang.  This is what’s known.

This is what’s unknown:  the identity of Jandek, the aim of his endeavors, and virtually everything about the production and meaning behind his music.  Jandek has put out fifty-three albums in thirty years.  The records range from atonal bluesy folk to thirty minute vocal-only tracks and some feature other musicians most likely (even though he does overdub tracks).  The lyrical content of his songs are most definitely poetic in nature, possibly autobiographical, and definitely surreal, causing people to speculate as to whether or not this is a sort of diary of a person suffering from mental illness or records to be enjoyed as such, art for art’s sake. 

There are only a handful of people who have ever spoken to or communicated with Jandek; and in these instances, the person is known only as a “representative of Corwood Industries.”  Corwood Industries is Jandek’s record label and in his only recorded interview, by John Trubee for Spin in 1985, featured on YouTube and as an extra on the Jandek on Corwood DVD, he discloses that he is the “sole proprietor” of Corwood, which has maintained the same PO Box in Houston since 1978.  All of his records and DVDs are purchased directly from Corwood/Jandek, cheaply, and none are sold to record stores or libraries. Jandek also mentions in that interview that at the time he was working as a machinist and living in Houston, Texas.  The name on the copyright information for Jandek’s records in the Library of Congress is Sterling Richard Smith, born in Rhode Island in 1945 (he mentions Rhode Island in several songs).  He originally recorded one record under the name The Units and sent his record to radio stations and record stores, and was forced to change the name when a guy whom he sent the record to in San Francisco threatened to sue him as that was the name of his band.  As a result he wanted to find a name that no one could possibly have, so he ended up speaking to a fellow named Dekker in January and came up with Jandek. 

The more that I research Jandek, the more his history or what he’s illuminated for us seems to be the creation of a highly intelligent, very sane person, very similar to the way a novelist comes up with material culled from his past, subconscious, and ability to tell a convincing story.  Before his days as Jandek, he allegedly wrote seven novels, which he burned after being rejected by publishers.  He tells Trubee that, “I put out a product, and that’s it.  I don’t want to get too involved.”  This smells like bullshit to me, but very good bullshit.

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 By Max Conroy

Hong Kong Blues by Hoagy (ne Hoagland) Carmichael was recorded for Decca in 1942; he penned it and recorded it in ‘39 originally.   It’s a unique side recorded by one of the most highly regarded song writers of the first part of the last century.  Two of his biggest hits were Georgia on My Mind and the A side of this single Stardust. 

The song is a cautionary drug tale about “a very unfortunate colored man who got arrested down in old Hong Kong…for kicking Buddha’s gong.”  Kicking Buddha’s gong is a dated term for smoking opium. It took me a second to realize what he was singing about when I first heard the song.  It’s fairly subtle till the end of it where he actually mentions opium.  He doesn’t mention any specifics about the drug or his habit, only that he cannot leave Hong Kong for his home, which he tells everyone is in San Francisco, but is actually in Tennessee.  The geographic centering of the song is kind of strange in that he’s not from San Francisco but later in the song where Carmichael switches from the narrator’s third person to the first person testimonial, he keeps mentioning San Fran as his home.  Also, how would an unfortunate brother end up in Hong Kong in the 1930s? 

All of this gives one the impression that Hong Kong is opium addiction itself.  The only specific moment where you can really put yourself in his shoes is where he sings:

“Won’t someone believe me/I have a yen to see that bay again/But when I try and leave/Sweet opium won’t let me fly away.“ 

He’s asking his fellow opium enthusiasts in the den to take his desire to quit drugs seriously, but he’s obviously ignored. Also, the use of the word ‘yen’ is a pun here as it comes from the Chinese words for ‘addiction’ and ’smoke’.  Carmichael once described his voice “…as the way a shaggy dog looks…I have Wabash fog and sycamore twigs in my throat.”  His inflection and the first person voice in the middle of the song made me assume that Carmichael was black, so I was surprised to see a picture of him, white as can be.  Another strange thing about this song is that it’s difficult to discern exactly when he’s singing this in relation to his incarceration.  He doesn’t lament getting arrested and still has hope that he’ll make it home, so I’m inclined to think that he’s speaking before he got arrested. 

In the chorus he sings that he needs someone to love him.  When I first heard this, I thought that it was such a 1930s view of drug addiction that finding a good woman could save you from yourself and drugs, but if you listen to the rest of it, he’s asking to find someone that loves him so they can take his body back home.  Pretty grim stuff.  There’s also a part where he begs for fifty dollars to get home with, but one is left with the impression that he’d blow it on dope.

This music is great for the depressant glow of a burgeoning alcohol buzz, alone.  The white jazz comes out a bit more on Stardust, but it’s still worth a listen eighty-one years after it was written.

Hong Kong Blues:

Stardust:

by Max Conroy

I was at the Cousins’ warehouse this weekend, hanging out, looking through piles of records that were in too poor shape to sell, talking about music.  We found tons of cool stuff and unfortunately it won’t be available to you guys out there because they’d like to provide you with the best records available.  Perhaps email them or reply to a post if anyone out there is willing to have a less than perfect copy of a hard to find record.  One of the records that Geoff pulled out was by Jimmy McCracklin.  I’d heard the name but knew nothing about him.  Later that day Justin threw on his Twist with Jimmy McCracklin album.  It was definitely good, but we were hanging out, talking, not paying too much attention to anything.  It definitely didn’t sound like Chubby Checker.

The next day, I went to Encore to get some paper sleeves for the records they graciously let me have and casually looked at the first stack I saw, and there was Jimmy McCracklin’s My Answer record.  I really didn’t want to spend the money; $10 isn’t going to break the bank, but you know how it is, the end of the month and all.  So I walked around holding the record not convinced that I’d buy it, but not ready for anyone else to walk off with it.  I dropped the needle on the record, looking around the shop, earphones on, with the feeling that I’m on the inside looking out, through a fish bowl.  Hiss, pop.  All of a sudden $10 was put into perspective, it wasn’t a problem.  Jimmy McCracklin was worth whatever I would have spent the money on, including food or tobacco.

McCracklin was born in 1921…and still performes!  He cut his first record in 1945, ya know, back at the birth of the atomic age.  That would make him 45 years-old back in 1966 when My Answer came out.  I’m not sure if the record is supposed to be a greatest hits record or if Liberty records slapped a bunch of previously released songs around the title track, but I know some of the songs are on other records and the title track was released as a single the same year the record came out.  Anyway, I digress.  The music can’t be beat and is surprisingly broad in its variety.  When I read that it was a comp, I thought that it must have been over several years, but he was only on Liberty in ‘65 and ‘66.  The music is strange in that it’s soul, it’s blues, it’s funk, it’s so much all of these things that it’s almost difficult to pin down right away.  The first song, the title cut, is a Southern soul ballad about leaving a woman with a letter, ending it with, “I’m sorry for you”.  Meaning, I’m sorry for what you fucked up and that you’ll die alone, not I feel bad.  The second song Beulah is the one that really caught my attention.  James Brown and Dyke were hammering out the finishing touches of their grooves on the anvil of funk when this was made and it’s pretty much as funky as what they were doing at the time.  McCracklin’s drummer doesn’t seem like he gets the picture but he’s trying his best in a jazzy sort of way.  The next song, Every Day, Every Night, is a straight Jimmy Reed-style blues number.  Magic Sam later did a cover of it and it’s obvious that McCracklin was an influence.  All of these styles on this record are done so well that it’s mind blowing. 

My Answer:

Beulah:

Every Day, Every Night:

Country Roads, Happy Easter, and Sally Lives On

by Cousin Geoff:

I hope you all had a nice holiday weekend.  I spent mine in northern Michigan, all day out in the woods on snowshoes, shot some guns, found the best walking stick ever off a downed oak branch, and spent time with family.  I also gave away one of my dogs.  Sally the hound, gone, too much for me and my wife now with baby Ella.  Despite her bad behavior (constant nervous energy, getting up on the couch, in the garbage, that old coon-hound howl at all the wrong times) I was sad to see ol’ Sally go.  We’ve had a lot of good times in the past four years, but she’s just an up north dog, and not an Ypsilanti dog, and that’s just the truth.  My other dog Zoe we’re keeping, but she’s feeling down and out because Sally was her constant companion.  A sad story, but they are afterall, just dogs. 

Driving home today, I heard Toots and The Maytals sing Country Road on XM, and I realized that a good song is a good song, and a good friend is a good friend, even if it ain’t nothing but a hound dog.  Ann Arbor’s The RFD Boys (been meaning to write about these guys for a long time, and I will eventually) do a great version of this, more true to John Denver’s original, and very different than Toots and The Maytals, but still the same song. 

The RFD Boys version:

Toots version:

It’s Easter and I missed church today but I haven’t been in forever anyway.  So I’ll make up for it by including a few Jesus songs in this sermon.  More proof that a good song is a good song - Jesus is a Soul Man.  One of the Cousins’ favorites is the version by the Pathway Quartet - I compared it to the Otis Williams version in a previous post. 

As for Sally, I think she’ll be happy up north.  For some reason the Harry McClintock, Hallelujah I’m a Bum song pops in my head.   Hallelujah, I’m a bum.  Hallelujah, bum again.  HalleluJAH, give us a handout, to revive us again.  Well, as Bunny Wailer says, Time Will Tell.  Good luck Sally, may Jesus and St. Patrick lead you down a good Country Road to help you be Reborn.  Maybe there’s hope for you afterall.  Then again, maybe Elvis was right. 

Does it get any better than Magic Sam?  Would Magic Sam have been more widely known and followed had he not died in his prime at age 32, and been able to capitalize on the European blues tours that followed?  Here is west-side Chicago soul blues at it’s finest.

listen: Just Give Me Your Love, from the LP pictured above.

Great history of Magic Sam from Cascade Blues Association, also mentioning 1969′S Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival:

August 1969 may bring to mind the grandeur of the Woodstock Arts and Music Festival in upstate New York whenever you ask somebody with basic music knowledge to name an event of that year. It’s pretty hard to ignore an event of such magnitude which featured so many prolific artists of the day. But, in the Blues world, August 1969 also marked an extraordinary festival of its own, two weeks earlier in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival was a conglomeration of the greatest Blues musicians, past, present and future. The line-up was phenomenal: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Boy Crudup, Otis Rush, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Freddy King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, Jimmy Dawkins, Clifton Chenier, Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes, Luther Allison and Big Mama Thornton. But, the one musician who stood tallest over the weekend may have been the least known, at least outside of Chicago.

    Magic Sam was scheduled to take the stage at 3:00 p.m., Sunday afternoon. But, when his time came, he was nowhere to be found. Charlie Musselwhite, who was originally set to follow, took to the stage in his place. By the time Musselwhite finished, Sam had arrived, but with only his bassist Buffalo Bruce Barlow. Missing a drummer, he was fortunate to recruit Sam Lay to fill the void. As the three stepped to the stage, the crowd of 10,000 fans were leery of what to expect from this individual who should have been on an hour earlier. But, by the time he had finished the opening number, Freddy King’s classic instrumental, “San-Ho-Zay”, the word was out and the festival grounds were abuzz with the name of Magic Sam.

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Some things never change.  The alarm clock rings each morning, and it’s time to get ready to go punch in again.  For a lot of Michigan folks, this means working on the automotive assembly line.  Detroit isn’t called the Motor City for nothing.  But now that the rest of the world has caught up, we’re losing jobs left and right.  Ford just announced they were putting 8,000 more people out of work.  It should only add to Michigan’s unemployment rate, the highest in the country.  The times are a changin’.  But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.  According to the Detroit band Stix and Stoned, and Plymouth, Michigan’s David Walz, working on the line gives them a bad case of the blues. 

The band Stix and Stoned was formed by a group of buddies who worked together at the Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.  They had those rou-ou-ouge plant blues, and they had ‘em bad.

listen to Rouge Plant Blues:

I recently discovered this record by Plymouth’s David Walz, called Country Old Country New.

And to my delight, the lead off track on the B side was Assembly Line Blues.  Stix and Stoned were not alone as a local bar band who was factory rat by day, rock and roll dreamer by night.  I’m sure that playing music was much, much better, and this only contributed to the blues they all felt while bolting in those door panels or assembling those steering wheels.

David Walz doesn’t look like he has the blues, but that’s because he was posing for the cover of his new album instead of sweatin’ on that line.  Give his take a listen and see who makes the most convincing argument.

listen to Assembly Line Blues:

Who needs the blues?  As many of the immortals have said, They ain’t nothin’ but a low down achin’ chill, and if you ain’t never had ‘em, I hope you never will.  And if you listen to Stix and Stoned or David Walz, that’s all those auto jobs are good for anyway.

Chick and Boliver have got to be brothers from another mother.  Digging through my 45 box tonight, I found these two records next to each other in the stack.

Chick Willis is the cousin of 50s Rhythm and Blues star Chuck Willis, who sang the original version of my wedding song, What Am I Living For? (ours was the more modern Taj Mahal version).  Chick was most famous for this song, cut on tiny LaVal records out of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  He apparently came up with the lyrics while singing to people passing by as he worked at a carnival variety show.  My 45 is in really poor shape, but you’ll get the idea.

listen to Stoop Down Baby:

I’m not sure where Boliver Shagnasty is from (possibly the Detroit area?) or what is real name is, but this novelty 45 on the Fun record label is super raunchy, funny, and suprisingly really good.

Have you caught on to the theme yet?

listen to Tapping That Thing: 

You can still enjoy the thrill of playing good old soul 45s without having to break the bank like those British hipsters do.  Althogh, I have to admit, I would love to hang out in some northern soul DJs basement and look through all his rare 45s he has.  But the point is, there are plenty of good soul 45s out there to be had for very reasonable prices.  Even semi-obscure Detroit sides like this Lee Rogers on D-Town.  The A side was his one hit, “I Want You To Have Everything”.  An excellent, excellent song, one of my favorites - and my wife’s favorite 45 of mine.  And the B side to this is probably even better - the little more bluesy, smokey “Our Love Is More”.

Give these songs a listen and you’ll see the only reason this 45 is only worth about $10 and not $1000 is because it’s fairly easy to find.  But so what?  Either one of these songs would go great on a homemade soul comp and you’d still have 99% of the people listening to it saying, “Whoa..who was that?”

The actual story of Lee Rogers is very interesting.  Maybe I’ll get into it in a different post, an I might have already done this before, but Lee was good friends with Marvin Gaye back in the day, and Marvin made it big time and Lee didn’t.  And of course, the smaller labels like D-Town got eaten up by Mr. Gordy.

There’s other artists like Lee Rogers out there, but we’ll start here for now and I’ll give you some more ideas later.

listen to I Want You To Have Everything:

listen to Our Love Is More:

Jessie White, a Detroit blues fixture who also played in the 29th Street Blues Band, died Tuesday at age 87.  There will be a tribute jam session tonight at Nancy’s Whiskey Pub in Detroit.

from freep.com:

Born in Mississippi, White moved to Detroit in 1950, finding work in the junk business. His house on 29th Street became a popular gathering spot for hometown and touring blues musicians, home to whiskey-fueled jam sessions that became the stuff of local lore.

White was a self-taught player who devoted himself full-time to music after retiring in the late 1980s, helping lead the weekly jam sessions at Detroit’s Soup Kitchen blues bar.

His work was imbued with the down-home Delta sound he’d grown up with in Mississippi. He eschewed standard song arrangements in favor of loose improvisation, keeping band members on their toes as he called out off-the-cuff chord changes.

“I don’t always like using the word ‘authentic,’ but that’s what this was,” said Betty Brownlee, who played bass in White’s band. “He never changed his style — he kept true to what he knew.”

Before he came to Detroit, White apparently worked in the fields in Jackson for $2.50 but learned he could make almost the same in one night playing harmonica at the local juke joint.  White also worked in a saw mill and ran a gambling house in Jackson.  More info, including an audio clip (and the source of the photo) here.

By Max Conroy:

This kind of blew me away.  For all you music geeks/bitches that haven’t utilized YouTube, you’re missing out.  This is a brilliant case where the seemingly obscure character turns out to have a community of people who have taken the time to upload what they have.  I thought for sure there’d be very little information about Jimmy McCulloch out there; the only hope is that he played with some big names.  There’s no information on Allmusic.com about him other than several brief mentions in the Stone the Crows and Thunderclap Newman bios.  I looked him up on YouTube and a number of interesting hits popped up.  There’s a retrospective that includes about every picture of him that could possibly have existed and some live footage playing Heartbreaker(ironic since he died of a heart attack as a result of a heroin OD), the last song he ever recorded with the band The Dukes.  There’s also an interview he did in Chicago during a Wings tour in 1976.  The interviewer mentions an injury to Jimmy’s hand.  He apparently broke it during rehearsals for the tour, wrestling with David Cassidy, which delayed the tour for several weeks. 

On YouTube, it’s interesting to look at the comments for the videos.  For one of the promotional videos for Something in the Air, a YouTube member reminisces drinking with Speedy Keen at a local wine bar, presumably in the UK.  The user who published the interview and some other McCulloch stuff’s handle is WinoJunko76, ironically a Wings song on Wings at the Speed of Sound about substance abuse.  This guy’s obviously a fan and the person you need to send a message to for any info or video on the subject of Jimmy McCulloch.  One time I saw an Awesome Color video, a band whose members are from Ann Arbor that now reside in Brooklyn, and emailed the person who posted it, he emailed back, I sent him $10 and he sent me a DVD of the entire performance.  That’s an awesome tool, man. 

Back to Jimmy.  There’s also footage of him performing another anti-drug song with Wings called Medicine Jar.  There’s also a video of him getting nailed in the face with a cake immediately after walking backstage after a Wings show on his birthday; Ringo eventually stumbles in and acts the fool.  One of my favorites so far is his doom, damned blues-rocker Too Many Miles with White Line.  There’s even apparently the only live recording of Thunderclap Newman on here (according to the poster); it’s only the song, which is great, no video.  There are also tons of videos of him playing with Wings (if you’re into that) and Stone the Crows. 

So I guess there is a lot of info out there about this guy.  I’m pretty sure that videos are commonly taken off YouTube, so sorry if some of these links don’t work anymore, but you guys really need to check out YouTube if you’re trying to research something that you think wouldn’t be out there.