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I met Hawkshaw Hawkins … after a show he did at Casey Clark’s barn dance. He told me, “You keep plugging, Don, and you’ll be as big a star as me.” – Don Rader [1]
Don Rader sang country and rock ’n’ roll for more than forty years. He grew up in Hazel Park, Michigan, a suburb at the northern border of Detroit, at a time when the city was settled by hundreds of families from the South. In 1958 Rader cut his first record, “Rock And Roll Grandpap.” Fifty years later, Rader personified the title of his song as he sang country and vintage rock ’n’ roll with a rock band in Southeast Michigan nightclubs.
Born December 15, 1937, in Royal Oak Township, Rader grew up in a household dedicated to country music.
“There was a place called the Wayside Garage over on [West] Coy [Avenue] and John R [Road] in Hazel Park,” said Rader, “and it’s still there, it’s a church now. I had a paper route. One day I walked in there to collect for the paper, and here’s this old May Bell guitar sittin’ in the corner — and I didn’t even know what it was! I looked at it and I just fell in love with that thing when I saw it. I said, “What is that?” And he said, “It’s a guitar. Haven’t you ever seen Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and these guys?” I said, “I want that!” He said, “Well, you get eight dollars and come back, and I’ll sell it to you.” And that’s where it all started. Eight bucks! You’d pay more’n that for a set of strings, now.”
After acquiring the guitar, Rader took music lessons from Edward Wygle, who held classes in rooms above the Hazel Park Post Office. At twelve years old, Rader soon made friends with other local boys learning guitar, including David Rohilier, and Jack Scott.
Rader listened to WEXL Royal Oak radio, and disk jockey Jack Ihrie’s “Sagebrush Melodies” program. Every afternoon Ihrie played records and interviews with local and visiting musicians. In early 1952 Ihrie advertised the “Big Barn Frolic,” a new barn dance in Detroit, and Rader attended the Saturday night dance every week. Casey Clark and his Lazy Ranch Boys hosted the “Frolic” during its first six months. During that time, Rader and his family made friends with Clark and members of the band.
Rader recalled many jam sessions with local pickers during his formative years. Banjoist Ford Nix “used to come over to the house all the time,” said Rader. “There was a guy, Orville Mason, I never will forget. He was a good lead guitar player. We was over to Sil Brown’s house on New Year’s Eve … I said, ‘Orville, how in the name of God can you do all them songs?’ He done over three hundred songs. ‘Don,’ he said, ‘if you keep rehearsing and playing, when you get my age (he was maybe twenty-five, thirty years old), then you’ll understand.’”
Barn dance days
By age seventeen, Rader was closer to understanding Mason’s answer to his question. Casey Clark had booked his Lazy Ranch Boys for a regular Friday night barn dance at the Pontiac Armory. Kitty Wells with Johnnie and Jack headlined the premier show. A more lucrative offer to play on the Boblo Island boats led Clark to recruit Rader to fill his remaining Pontiac dates. Rader hired steel guitarist Danny Weaver and bassist Rockey VanGieson. “We played a set of country, and country rock, then round dances, and finally a square dance,” he said. “Lonnie Barron used to sit in with me, … and I would sit in with him at his dance hall on Saturdays.” After the gig ended, Rader continued sitting in with bands and booking dances.
I had a 1941 Plymouth, and Mickey [Kreutzer, guitarist] and Buddy, … and there was a guy named Derwood – he sang like Elvis Presley – he looked like him, … long sideburns and everything, … we went down to Ford Auditorium. They was havin’ a big [talent] contest there. So we went down there and all of us won a silver dollar. That was a big thing back then, because gas was only twenty-three or twenty-four cents a gallon. We filled that old Plymouth up with gas and headed downriver somewhere to a barn dance, and sat in and played down there. That was some good days.
Around 1958, Rader played rhythm guitar with pianist Roy Hall and his band. Hall had been in and out of Detroit for several years since 1949, when his group recorded some of the best-selling hillbilly disks Fortune Records issued. “I remember my mom driving me to the (Fortune) studio on Third Street so I could sit in on a recording session,” said Rader. “At that time the band was Roy Hall on piano, Glen Ball on guitar, Buddy Heller on bass, and a girl on the cocktail drum by the name of Christine. All I know we cut for sure was ‘She Sure Can Rock Me.’” The ditty was released on Fortune’s “The Original Skeets McDonald’s Tattooed Lady And Others” album in 1961, as well as a 45-rpm single on subsidiary label Strate-8. [2] “Roy was wild,” said Rader, who joined the band at Dutch’s Log Cabin in Port Huron for a couple of weeks. “He used to line up shots of whiskey on top of the piano, and knock ’em all back before the set was over. Then we’d all drink beer and go swimming in Lake Huron in the middle of the night,” he said.
In 1956 Rader wrote “Rock And Roll Grandpap,” about his own grandpap, who used two canes to walk. In December 1958, Rader cut “Grandpap” and “A Day At The Pines” at the Fortune studio. The recording featured Bill English, guitar; Ted Wilson, drums; Billy Cooper, steel guitar; and Freddie Bach, piano. The band represented some of the best country musicians who worked in local dance bands, and the record rocked with a western swing.
Listen to: Don Rader – Rock And Roll Grandpap
Rader’s parents paid for the manufacture of a couple hundred 45-rpm platters (Fortune 206). As with most Fortune custom orders, Rader distributed the records himself. He visited disk jockeys, jamborees, and nightclubs for a few months, before hitting the road to Chicago, Illinois.
Windy City rock
“Somebody told me that there were a lot of gigs in Chicago,” said Rader, “and sure enough, we weren’t five miles outside of town when we stopped at a club and were hired on the spot to play that night.” Rader played country and rock ’n’ roll in Chicago for a couple of years. He joined the band of Hank Mizell and Jim Bobo of “Jungle Rock” fame. “For a while, I played drums with them. Those guys were like brothers – they either got along with each other, or they were at each other’s throats.” Rader didn’t play on Mizell and Bobo’s 1958 recording of “Jungle Rock” for the Ekko label (reissued by King Records in 1959). In 1976 a European pressing of “Jungle Rock” reached number 3 in the U.K. Singles Chart, and number 1 in the Netherlands.
Around 1959-60 Rader made another record, this time with Detroit guitarist Al Allen and members of his band, the Sounds. Fortune owner Jack Brown issued Rader’s “Rockin’ The Blues” backed with “I Was A Fool” on Strate-8 (1501). Rader returned to Chicago with copies of his new single. When he met a disk jockey at a top rock ’n’ roll radio station, “The guy told me he’d make the record number one, if I paid him a thousand bucks,” said Rader. “Heck, I just turned around and walked out.”
Roller rinks and records
In 1962 Rader moved to Hanes City, Florida, where he entertained television viewers on WHAN. Then Rader joined his niece, Terry Hinkle, at WLOF-TV Orlando, for about a year. Rader played Florida nightclubs, drive-ins, and roller rinks until 1966 when he returned to Detroit.
In 1967 Rader cut “Goodbye, I Hate To See You Go” in Nashville, Tennessee, with former Lazy Ranch Boy and member of Mel Tillis’ Statesiders band Jim Baker on steel guitar. Released as another Strate-8 (1509) single, Rader said the record reached the top of Michigan country radio charts in 1968. He played Midwest festivals and jamborees, appearing on bills with Ernest Tubb, Jimmy Martin, Kitty Wells, and Johnnie Wright. Nightclub work in Detroit during the 1970s included gigs with former Sun Records recording artist Jack Earls.
Listen to: Don Rader – Goodbye, I Hate To See You Go
In 1975, local record shop owner Gary Thompson tracked down Jack Earls, who Thompson recognized from European compilations of Sun Records rockabilly. Through his friendship with Earls, Thompson recorded Rader singing two songs: “My Baby’s Still Rocking” and “Rockin’ Blues,” issued on Thompson’s Olympic label. The band’s performances pushed Rader into a garage/punk style, and he pulled it off. [3] By then, Rader could sing country, pop, and rock equally well.
Return of the rocker
Rader issued more country records on Strate-8 and his own labels through the 1970s. At Rader’s request, Fortune reissued “A Day At The Pines” b/w “Rock And Roll Grandpap” on Strate-8 (1507, with an alternate take of “Grandpap”). In 1994 the Rock-A-Billy Record Company of Denver, Colorado, issued a 45-rpm single (R-502) of a new Rader cut of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” backed with his 1967 “Goodbye, I Hate To See You Go.” As a result of the Rock-A-Billy single, Rader received invitations to appear at European rockabilly festivals, but never traveled due to health concerns.
Around 1997, Detroit rock musician Scott Campbell began booking gigs with Rader in Southeast Michigan. The collaboration re-introduced Rader to the Detroit nightclub scene, and Rader received accolades from local musicians and music writers young enough to be his grandchildren. He died of heart disease on July 4, 2004. Campbell produced a concert at the State Theater (now the Fillmore) downtown in Rader’s honor, and the Detroit Music Awards recognized him with a posthumous citation.
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Notes
- Don Rader interviewed by Craig Maki in 1993 and 2000.
- The label on Strate-8 1508 (“She Sure Can Rock Me” b/w “Rockin’ The Blues” issued during the 1970s) listed Roy Hall on “Rockin’ The Blues.” Rader said Hall didn’t play on the “Rockin’ The Blues” session.
- Jack Earls recorded for Gary Thompson’s Olympic label at the same session.
This post is inspired by a recent meeting with the late guitarist Happy Moore’s family. Moore earned mentions in the book, as well as in this website (see the Jimmy Franklin story). Many thanks to Robert, Candace and Liz for getting in touch and sharing the story.
Percussive guitar
Before the late 1950s, the managers of the WSM Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, did not allow the use of drums in its broadcasts. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys ignored this rule in 1944 when they made their only appearance on the show. Until rock’n’roll changed the musical environment, the use of drums in country acts across North America was a novelty, and more common in western swing bands. (In Detroit, Casey Clark was the first country bandleader to hire a drummer, in 1952.)
So what did bands do for rhythm? Bass players hit their strings on the beat. When a rhythm guitarist came into the mix, emphasizing the same beat as the bass player, this usually filled out the sound. A great rhythm guitar player, perhaps someone influenced by jazz music such as Happy Moore, could make a guitar sound like a snare drum.
Modern Mustangs
Born in 1920, Emerson “Happy” Moore inherited his nickname from his dad, and grew up near Dayton, Ohio. By age twelve, he played rhythm guitar and sang at public shows in pop bands. It wasn’t until he met lead guitarist and singer Chuck Oakes in Dayton, when Moore began his association with country music. Moore, Oakes, Jimmy Franklin, and his brother Whitey participated in the Dayton music scene during and after World War II, working nightclubs with their own quartet, as well as with bassist Jimmie Saul and his Prairie Drifters, and guitarist Roy Lanham and the Whippoorwills.
By the late 1940s, Moore and the gang were working restaurants and clubs in Detroit as the Modern Mustangs, playing and singing cowboy music, western swing, and boogie woogie. “My dad didn’t drink,” said daughter Candace. “He just loved to play music. And when he played, his face would light up, just beam with joy. His guitar playing added so much, just filled out any group’s sound.” [1]
Moore music
Happy Moore worked in Detroit, Bay City, and traveled the region as a full-time musician with Chuck Oakes, singer Danny Richards, the Franklin Brothers, and guitarist Chuck Carroll. In 1954, Moore took a day job with the Burroughs company. He continued to gig on weekends for the rest of his life.
Listen to: Tumbling Tumbleweeds – WXYZ Motor City Jamboree
Aside from Chuck Oakes’ “Hey! It’s Chuck’s Boogie” issued by Fortune Records [2], on which Moore might have played rhythm guitar, the only recording we have of Moore is with a vocal trio that included Danny Richards and Whitey Franklin doing the Sons of the Pioneers’ “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” on the WXYZ Motor City Jamboree, ca. 1954. [3]
“He was asked to move to Nashville by several people,” said his wife Liz. “Jim Reeves, Moon Mullican … but he decided to stay put.” Reeves and Mullican both entertained at Detroit’s Roosevelt Lounge (on Mack near Montcalm), where Danny Richards’ band, which included Happy Moore, played host during the early 1950s.
Moore passed away from a heart attack in April 1984. “He was on his way to a gig on the night he died,” said his son Robert.
“You couldn’t keep him away from playing music,” said wife Liz. “He was complaining about the way he felt all day, and I said, ‘Why don’t you stay home tonight?’ ‘But the guys need me,’ he said. He just loved to play music with his friends. Any time, any place.”
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Notes
- Elizabeth, Robert, and Candace Moore interviewed Feb. 9, 2014.
- Around 1950, Fortune Records issued “Hey! It’s Chuck’s Boogie” backed with “Waltz Of Virginia” (Fortune 711).
- A home tape recording of this show features host Milton Estes, Danny Richards and his Gold Star Cowboys, singer Mary Ann Johnson, guest singers Flash Griner and Dixie Lee Walker, and headliner George Morgan with steel guitarist Don Davis in tow.
Part 1: Detroit City
The things that keep you in a whirl will someday fall apart
Then you’ll make up your mind about your undecided heart
— “Undecided Heart” by Ralph Davis, 1957 [1]
Ralph Davis’ lines in the song “Undecided Heart” could have been written for many people who moved to Detroit from the South during the city’s decades-long economic boom of the last century. For like Davis, after some time spent in Michigan, many folks chose to return home. Born March 15, 1930, in rural Wayne County, Tennessee, Davis moved to Wayne County, Michigan, in 1951. “After a little while, I got called up to the service,” he said.[2] Following a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, Davis settled in Detroit in 1953, only to be called up by the U.S. Army in 1955. He returned to the Motor City in 1957, and formed the Western Rhythm Boys with two of his brothers, Kenny (fiddle) and Guy (bass). Later that year, Davis cut his first record, issued on Fortune Records subsidiary Hi-Q. In 1958, Davis and his brothers moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where they played music with stars of WSM radio’s “Grand Ole Opry” through four decades.
Woody Crowe Quartet
After Davis returned from his hitch in the Marines, he found work in Detroit. “I was living up there with my wife and working at Briggs Manufacturing Company,” he said. “There was a gentlemen from [Tennessee] named Woody Crowe — a great fiddle player. My uncle lived on Groesbeck [Highway], and there was a club out there called Harold’s Bar. Woody, the fiddle player, had a little band in there. I was sitting around one day, and my uncle and Woody called me. They wanted me to bring out my guitar and sit in with them, because they wanted somebody to sing and play. I knew all the songs back then — Hank Williams, Carl Smith, and all that. I’d just sit around at home [singing]. So I went out there one night and they hired me. I stayed there about sixteen months, I guess. We had a little four piece group.”
Bill Merritt played bass in the band, along with an unremembered electric guitarist. “We played there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. It was a home-owned place. Harold, he was a great guy. We had a lot of fun there,” said Davis.
“I played all over … all the clubs on West Vernor,” where Davis and his two brothers performed as a trio. Eventually Davis moved his family to the city of Wayne, Michigan, west of Detroit and home of two Ford factories. “We played at that one out in Plymouth, that log cabin Rustic Tavern.” Still in operation, Rusceak’s Rustic Tavern is now Karl’s Kabin, located on Gotfredson Road.[3]
Davis recalled attending Casey Clark’s Lazy Ranch Boys Barn Dance in Detroit during 1953-54. “I met a lot of the ‘Opry’ acts up there, out at … 12101 Mack Avenue, at the union hall,” he said. “I met Bill Carlisle, and a bunch of folks. They’d say to me, ‘Why don’t you come on back home, come on back down to Nashville?’ But [I’d say] what am I gonna do?”
Davis remembered he, Kenny, and Guy played local jamborees and nightclubs on bills with Jimmy Martin and the Osborne Brothers, and with Bill Merritt and his Sugarfoots. A promotional handout from the 1950s revealed Merritt’s band included steel guitarist Larry “Hoss” Douglas, and Bill (guitar) and Bob (bass) Titus. Another Titus brother, Leroy, nicknamed “Bud,” had played music with his brothers as the Rocky Mountaineers before he joined the Marine Corps in 1950. Davis and his brothers got to know the Titus brothers by playing music together, sharing show bills and filling in with each band when needed.
In 1955, Ralph Davis was drafted into the army. “I didn’t do the whole term because the Korean War had dwindled down,” he said. “When I was in the army, I had a ten piece band. … I was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood [in central Missouri], and there was a place called Jody’s that seated about three or four hundred people. We played in there seven nights a week, for a while. … The ‘Ozark Jubilee,’ down in Springfield, was just getting started at that time. I got to meet a lot of those guys down there.”
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Next week! Part Two — The Titus Brothers and Fortune Records
Notes
- “Undecided Heart” (Ralph Davis) Trianon Publications (Hi-Q 15, 1957)
- Ralph Davis interviewed by Keith Cady in 2003.
- http://www.karlscabin.com/history.asp (Retrieved 2011). Popular country venues on West Vernor in Detroit included 3-JJJ’s, Rose Bar, and the Dixie Belle.
One of the most talented musicians in Detroit during the 1950s, the dynamic, charismatic – and some say enigmatic – Chuck Hatfield played the fire out of a standard (non-pedal) steel guitar. His story, as well as that of his wife, Boots Gilbert, and their group the Treble-Aires, is finally told in the book “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
After leaving his home in Flint, Michigan, in 1948, Hatfield worked in the Southwest with Texas-based musicians such as Bob Manning, Billy Gray, and Hank Thompson, before returning to Detroit, where he played in nightclubs, radio, and TV. Here is a discography, compiled with the help of Kevin Coffey, listing the titles of records Hatfield is known to have played on.
Bob Manning and his Riders of the Silver Sage
“Lola Lee” b/w “Old Folks Boogie” Dude 1605 (1948)
Bob Manning and his Riders of the Silver Sage
“The Green Light” b/w “I Left My Heart In Texas” Dude 1606 (1948)
Texas Rhythm Riders (all recorded for the Royalty label, ca. 1948-49)
“I Turned And Slowly Walked Away”
“A Handful Of Kisses”
“The Green Light”
“Tennessee Saturday Night”
“12th Street Rag”
“Red Sails In The Sunset”
“I’m A Fool To Care”
“Blues In My Heart”
Davis Sisters
“Your Cheatin’ Heart”
“Cryin’ Steel Guitar Waltz”
“Rag Mop”
Previously unissued WJR radio transcription (ca. 1953) / Bear Family Records BCD 15722 (1993)
Davis Sisters
“You’re Gone” (swinging version)
“Sorrow And Pain” (fast version)
Previously unissued studio recordings (1953) / Bear Family Records BCD 15722 (1993)
Davis Sisters
“Sorrow And Pain” b/w “Kaw-Liga” Fortune 174 (1953)
Note: Band erroneously credited to Roy Hall
Davis Sisters
“Heartbreak Ahead” b/w “Steel Wool” Fortune 175 (1953)
Note: “Steel Wool” credited to Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
Listen to: Steel Wool – Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
Boots Gilbert and Bob Sykes with Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
“Take It Or Leave It” b/w “Man! Turn Me Loose” Fortune 176 (1954)
Note: Different takes of “Man! Turn Me Loose” were issued on 78rpm and 45rpm records.
May Hawks with Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
“Meet Me Down In Nashville (At The Opry Tonight)” b/w “Wasted Years” Fortune 178 (1954)
Boots Gilbert and Bob Sykes with Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
“Fickle Heart” b/w “Please Mister Bartender” Fortune 181 (1954)
May Hawks and Lester Thomas with Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
“Straighten Up And Fly Right” b/w “Baby You’re A Bygone Now” Fortune 182 (1954)
Boots Gilbert and Bob Sykes with Chuck Hatfield and his Treble-Aires
“Sadie And The Cop” (a.k.a. “The Club Song (Nite Club Song)”) b/w “When The Senorita Comes To Hear The Senor Play” Fortune 184 (1955)
Note: “When The Senorita Comes To Hear The Senor Play” was reissued with “You Can’t Stop Me From Loving You”
Boots Gilbert
“He’s A Mighty Good Man” Fortune LP 3001 (recorded ca. 1955)
In a lifespan of more than 40 years, WSDS AM 1480 was perhaps the longest continuously operating country music station in the midwest. The station would change hands only twice and stay true to the country sounds that brought the station fame.
About 1957, University of Michigan Law School graduate Craig Davids stumbled upon a pasture near the old Peninsular Paper factory at 580 W. Clark Road in Ypsilanti, just east of Ann Arbor. He saw its future as an addition to his radio portfolio. Davids, along with his wife Kathleen and brother-in-law, owned WCER Charlotte, Michigan, but dreamed of building one closer to home. David Carmine, who broadcast at WYSI, and later WEXL, was there from the beginning.
“I was actually still in high school in Plymouth at the time, and was fascinated with radio – and in particular engineering – so I was out here more or less as an intern,” said Carmine. “Later on they said, ‘We’d like to pay you what you’re worth, but we know you can’t work that cheap, so…’ [laughs] Basically we were out here, and there was nothing but cows and a pasture. This woulda been ’60, ’61 when we broke ground on the building. The process even back then was lengthy and then it became even lengthier because there were a few technical snafus with the engineering after the building and towers were up, and that put a year, year and a half moratorium on the station getting on the air, ’til those problems were resolved. They were resolved and we finished construction. I say ‘we’ … There were a number of people involved besides myself. Jerry Adams, who was Chief Engineer for the Charlotte station was very much instrumental in building this place and oversaw the engineering.”
In 1962 the station signed on the air with 500 watts of directional, daytime power at 1480kHz as WYSI Ypsilanti – in a rather unconventional way. Greg Siefker, who went on to own WMLM radio St. Louis, Michigan, remembered listening the day they switched on the Gates transmitter. “They didn’t sign on at a normal time. During the morning, they fed a tone and then took to the airwaves at about 11 a.m. It was all very exciting for a young teenager who absolutely loved radio … and who couldn’t know at the time that he’d be working at the station one day.”
Early disk jockeys
The Ypsilanti Broadcasting Company, led by Program Director Don Thompson, began as a rock-n-roll station. Originally from Minnesota, Thompson broadcast daily from 3 p.m. until sign-off as “Bootsy Bell.” Carmine said of Thompson, “He drove the concept of the programming. He was very much into high-energy personality rock-n-roll.”
John Fountain signed on the station at 5:30 a.m. and spun records until David Carmine, known as “Dave Carr,” came in and took control from 9 a.m. ’til noon. Don McComb broadcast from noon to 3 p.m., when Bootsy Bell rocked the studio to its core. Weekends saw an ever-changing lineup of jocks and block programming, particularly on Sundays when religious programs dominated the time slots. Weekend jocks included Andy Barron (Andrew Spisak), Jim Hampton, Johnny Dew, and Marty James (Jim Martin). News and sales were handled by Jack Bobicz. Clara Hoedema gave weather reports and served as WYSI secretary along with Pat Tomkins. Al Berg was station manager.
Tom Chase, a.k.a. Johnny Williams
Legendary Detroit radio voice Johnny Williams, of CKLW Windsor/Detroit fame in the ’60s and ’70s started his career on Clark Road as Tom Chase in 1964.
“I was going to Eastern Michigan [University], driving in from Allen Park every day and listening to this station, listening to Bootsy Bell,” said Williams. “And I thought, ‘Oh my God, he is the worst jock I have heard in my life!’ (Sorry Don.) At the time I remember saying to myself, ‘I can do better than that.’ Of course I couldn’t, but at the time your ego is there. I had a great friend, Dave Kelly who owned a station up north. Dave and I went to high school together. I called Dave up and said, ‘Do me a favor. Write me a letter of recommendation. I wanna take it to WYSI and get a job, you know, weekends.’ He said, ‘You’re never gonna get away with that. But I’ll do it for you.’ So I picked it up, and I called the radio station. Didn’t know who to ask for, they put me in touch with Ed Smitt, General Manager. And I told him I was going to Eastern Michigan and I wanted to do something on weekends. Was there anything available? He said, ‘You’re in luck! Yes, Saturday and Sunday. Talk to Don Thompson.’ So I’m thinking, OK, he’s the program director. No clue that he’s really Bootsy Bell. So I come in for the interview, and I’d never been in a radio station in my life and I started asking all these stupid questions and Don says, ‘You’ve never been in a station, have you!?’ I said no. He swore a little bit and said, ‘Well I’m not going on the air Saturday and Sunday so you better sit down and learn!’ That first Saturday, I drove in and I was so nervous – I stopped the car a couple of times, and I said, ‘No, you gotta do this!’ I got to the building, walked up to the door. The engineer was, of course, sleeping on the couch like he usually was, and I turned around and I threw up. I turned around, got back into the car and drove to a gas station and cleaned up and I said, ‘Well, you better do this or you’ll never know if you can do this.’ So I came back and went on the air. That was 1964.”
“Gary Stevens had the biggest numbers for afternoon drive in the history of Detroit radio,” said Williams. “He was on WKNR [Dearborn, Michigan], a 27-share in the afternoon. That’s like, unheard of! Anyway, I was here at WYSI maybe three weeks, and I have a rock-n-roll band I manage. We were supposed to be appearing for Gary Stevens at this club. I was at the club talking to Gary, the band’s not there yet, and he said, ‘You’re TC from twelve to three.’ And I went, ‘WHAT? How in the world would you know something like that? You’re like THEE jock. How would you know that?’ He said, ‘The general manager and I were driving through Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti going to the University of Michigan. President [John F.] Kennedy was giving the commencement speech and we were flipping the dial around and we hit you and left you on. The manager said, “Hey this kid’s gonna be good”.’ He said, ‘How long you been doing this, a year or two?’ I said, ‘Three weeks.’ And that spurred me on to stay in the business. If this guy believed in me, then I could definitely do this and make a living at it.” As Tom Chase, Williams stayed at WYSI, playing top 20 hits for almost two years and moonlighting in the news department at WPAG radio Ann Arbor before accepting a job as news castor at WJEF radio Grand Rapids. From there he made the switch to “The Big 8” CKLW [AM 800], and into Detroit radio history.
George Young
By 1965, WEXL radio Royal Oak, in a Detroit suburb, had already switched to a full-time country music format. WYSI also added a few country programs, hosted by Dave Carr, and Andy Barron. Musician Red Ellis, who also worked at WAAM radio Ann Arbor as an engineer, performed his brand of country gospel over WYSI, which he recorded for various local labels, as well as Starday Records of Nashville, Tennessee. WYSI paperwork revealed Ellis bargained to trade commercials for a piano from the Ypsilanti Piano & Organ Company in 1965.
Another popular music act in Detroit and downriver communities was George Young and The Youngsters. Young replaced Tom Chase on Saturdays with a studio record show, and later added live and pre-taped broadcasts with his band from various venues in Metro Detroit. “First time I walked into the studio, I was supposed to go on at twelve noon,” said Young, “and Smitt (the general manager) brought me into the studio to go on. He said, ‘You’re on in five minutes.’ So he walked out, and I was all new to this. He said, ‘There’s the log.’ To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what a log was! Here I am, nervous as hell – excuse the expression, that’s an old radio term [laughs] – and I’m looking around, about to throw up because Tom [Chase] left, and I’m all alone with Bootsy Bell. … So I look at the log and it said, ‘Weather on the reel-to-reel.’ Well, Johnny Williams never showed me how to put the reel-to-reel on! I didn’t even know I was going on the air! So I look at Bootsy Bell (or Don Thompson) and I said, ‘Man, how do you put the reel-to-reel on, right here with the weather?’ He looked at me and says, ‘You’ll figure it out. You’re on after this record’ – and [he] walked out! Of course we used to make up the weather …”
In 1966, Dave Carr negotiated a format change that ignited a spark that burned for more than 40 years: the country sounds of the “Big 1480.”
The book signing on Dec. 13, 2013, was a real blast. It was wonderful to see our special guests, Al Allen and Della Redbird, in the same room together. We thank everyone who made it to downtown Detroit in person, especially our friends who have waited so long to see this project appear in print.
Keith and I (Craig) also signed copies of the book at shops in Greenfield Village on Dec. 20 and 21. Copies of the book remain for sale there.
New on this site is a Press page. A link to it appears by navigating your cursor over the “About” button at the top of this site.
Thanks to all who have expressed interest and support during the last few months. We’ve just begun publicizing the book, and more signings are in the works. Feel free to “like” the book’s page on Facebook to receive more timely announcements.
Our next event is scheduled for Jan. 19, from 3 to 7 p.m., at Club Canton, Michigan’s oldest country bar. We’re very excited to announce Behind The Times will play a set on the hardwood dance floor, then open it up for musicians to jam. A buffet will be available, too. More info to come.
Gibson Guitars declared 2013 as the Year of Les Paul, so here is a jaw-dropping discovery with a Detroit connection to the famous guitarist and Mary Ford early in their careers.
As the singer closed a set of pop tunes sprinkled with country-western hits, she noticed a sharply-dressed older man striding confidently toward her from a center table. For the next several nights, Mary Ford, her husband guitarist Les Paul, and their bassist, were to call a Detroit restaurant lounge their home, performing as the Les Paul Trio. As the gentleman waved down the singer, he revealed expensive cufflinks on his shirtsleeves while inviting her and her husband to join him and his wife at his table.
Les Paul had recorded instrumental hits for Capitol Records since 1948, including pop standards such as “Lover” and “Nola” featuring groundbreaking multiple (overdubbed) guitar tracks. With Ford singing, the couple scored their first top ten vocal hit in early 1951 with the country-western song “Tennessee Waltz” (shut out of the number one spot by Patti Page‘s version for Mercury Records). They had more in store for ’51, including the number one “How High The Moon.” It is likely they met Detroit composer/publisher/record label owner Lou Parker before then.
At Parker’s table, Paul and Ford dined at his expense. Parker and his wife returned night after night, eventually persuading the musicians to visit his office at the Music Hall building on Madison Street. During their booking in Detroit, the trio recorded two of Parker’s songs. Although unconfirmed, it sounds as though Paul overdubbed his guitar, producing two guitar parts trading solos. As with her Capitol recordings, Ford sang with her mouth very close to the microphone.
Listen to: The Humdingers – Remember Me
In late 1951, Parker issued a disk of the Les Paul Trio’s Detroit recordings on his Citation label, calling the performers The Humdingers. The record received an above-average score from Billboard magazine on December 29. As was the case with other productions on Citation (often due to less than adequate promotion), the record didn’t sell well.
In 1953, Detroit guitarist Al Allen met Lou Parker at a recording session for cowboy singer Bob Quinn. Among other songs, they were scheduled to cut “The Things You Used To Say,” which appeared on The Humdingers disk. Parker casually mentioned that Les Paul and Mary Ford also cut the song for him. Allen, a longtime and devoted fan of Paul’s, questioned Parker further, and he brought him a copy of The Humdingers record. (As far as we know, Parker did not issue Quinn’s version of the song.)
Listen to: The Humdingers – The Things You Used To Say
We don’t know if Parker hired Les Paul and Mary Ford to make demonstration recordings, or if they understood Parker intended to issue a commercial record. In any case, after their string of major hits in 1951, Les Paul and Mary Ford probably didn’t make recordings such as these while contracted to Capitol Records again.
Postscript
Around the same time as Les Paul and Mary Ford, Detroit country act Roy Hall and the Cohutta Mountain Boys recorded three records for Citation, under the alias “The Eagles.” Detroit bandleader Jack Luker (who used his own name) made two with members of the Cohutta Mountain Boys. The Cohutta Mountain Boys’ and Al Allen’s stories appear in the book “Detroit Country Music – Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies” from University of Michigan Press.
Fifty-two years ago, a Flint musician who served as a guiding light to countless students – as bright as a Lake Michigan lighthouse beacon – passed away at his home, aged 50 years. Steel guitar players from Michigan owe a historical debt to the masterful teachings doled out by Russell B. Waters at the Flint Honolulu Conservatory of Music and Dance during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Players well-known in steel guitar circles, such as Chuck Rich, Terry Bethel, Chuck Adams, Jim Baker, and Chuck Hatfield, all took instruction from Waters before starting careers that led to greater recognition.
Born 1911 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Waters moved to Flint, Michigan, around 1927. [1] In 1934, he began teaching at the original Honolulu Conservatory (begun in 1926 in Flint, Honolulu Conservatory franchises appeared all over the United States through the 1970s). Proficient in several string instruments, Waters played with the Honolulu Ambassadors, specializing in Hawaiian music, in nightclubs and probably on radio. By the late 1940s, Waters hosted his students on WTAC radio Flint.
Chuck Rich said, “Russ Waters … had a radio show at noon on WTAC in Flint. … Russ would have his students on there. It’d be Terry [Bethel] and me, and Chuck Adams and Jim Baker, and we’d play the theme song. Then we’d all gather around [and play].” The boys played instrumental music, trading steel guitars for standard guitars and string basses with each tune, during the program. “It was just a big jam session all day long, after the radio [show]. And then there’d be things through the week … It was a good learning process,” he said. [2]
Terry Bethel clarified the group of teen-aged and pre-teen students played Moose lodges and other social halls, as well as supermarket openings, corporate functions, and at car dealerships in the Flint region. [3]
Jim Baker remembered Waters as a kind and patient man who gave much of himself to help his students succeed. His wife Sudie offered, “Russ Waters once said, ‘If I never did anything else in my life, at least I turned out a good bunch of steel guitarists.'” [4]
During the late 1940s and 1950s, Waters played steel guitar in “Smiling” Max Henderson‘s group. Henderson emceed TV and radio in Detroit and Flint, and wrote a column for the C&W magazine Rustic Rhythm. Waters can be heard playing tasteful licks on Henderson’s early 1950s recordings for Serenade Records.
Around 1955, Waters purchased the Honolulu Conservatory and continued teaching. When he left behind family and friends on January 16, 1962, Waters had taught music in Flint for 27 years.
Russ Waters’ former students Jim Baker, Chuck Rich, and Terry Bethel all played in Casey Clark’s Lazy Ranch Boys in Detroit. You can read about it in the book, “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.” On Tuesday, March 4, 2014, Craig Maki and Keith Cady will present an overview of 20th century country music in Detroit, as well as an in-depth examination of the history and personnel of the Lazy Ranch Boys, at the Livonia Public Library Civic Center Branch. See you there!
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Notes
- Russell B. Waters obituary, January 1962. Source: Newspaper clipping courtesy Jim Baker
- Chuck Rich interviewed by Keith Cady in 2002.
- Terry Bethel interviewed by Keith Cady in 2003.
- Jim and Sudie Baker interviewed by Keith Cady and Craig Maki in 2007.
I was born to be a bluegrass picker and I really don’t know why I done that [rock’n’roll sessions in Detroit]. [Jack Brown] liked my singin’ and he called in a voice lady to train my voice a little bit. He told me, “Now go in there and sing just like you always sing.” I sang high and low … and she said, “I can’t teach him nothin’! He knows more about it than I do.” — Jimmy Lee Williams [1]
When Jimmy Lee Williams took a job in an auto factory in 1955, he was known among country musicians for playing mandolin with the Stanley Brothers, Mac Wiseman, and the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. In Detroit, his friends called him “Big Jim Williams” due to his tall stature, but decades later, the name on his records for Michigan’s Fortune and Clix labels made him famous around the world as “Jimmy Lee.”
* * * *
Born on Leap Day, 1932, in Wythe County, Virginia, near the Tennessee border, Williams listened to the region’s string band music on his grandparents’ battery-powered radio, and it inspired him to learn fiddle, mandolin and guitar. His cousin Paul Humphrey (a.k.a. Paul Williams) lived a mile up the road, and the boys often got together to pick and sing. After winning a talent contest at their high school in 1949, WMEV radio host Cousin Zeke hired Williams and Humphrey to perform at his station, located one county over in Marion, Virginia. Late in 1950, the boys rode a bus north to Bluefield, West Virginia, where Ezra Cline was holding auditions for his Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. When Cline asked what they called their act, the boys replied, “The Williams Brothers.” According to Humphrey: “We were on WHIS [radio]. It was 5,000 watts … which was pretty good. … We was on there every morning. Jimmy and Paul, the Williams Brothers, and Ezra Cline and the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. We did that almost two years. [Then] Jimmy went to work with Mac Wiseman. [The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers] had already auditioned for RCA-Victor and got the contract. That’s why it hurt so bad when Jimmy left, ’cause we had some stuff worked up.” [2]
Wiseman held a show at Bluefield’s Glenwood Park, and Williams replaced Ted Mullins on mandolin a few days after Wiseman’s appearance. Williams performed and recorded (for Dot Records) with Wiseman’s Country Boys until 1952, when he joined the Stanley Brothers (Carter and Ralph) at WCYB radio in Bristol, Tennessee. Besides working the road and radio, the Stanley Brothers cut several sides for Mercury Records while Williams was on board.
Halfway rock’n’roll
In 1955, Williams tired of traveling with the Stanley Brothers and called his brother, who worked for General Motors’ Cadillac factory in Detroit. With his wife and young son, Williams moved to Michigan and started work the morning after he arrived. Outside of the factory, he looked for opportunities to pick with local musicians and jammed with Jimmy Martin, the York Brothers, Frank Wakefield, Ford Nix, Bill Napier [3] and others, but didn’t join any groups.
One day in 1956, Williams met Fortune Records owner Jack Brown and cut a record for the label. Shortly after that session (possibly later that year, or in early 1957), Williams cut another two songs and handed that tape to John Henson of Troy, Michigan, for the earliest-known record issued on his Clix label.
Earlier that year, East Tennessee native Buster Turner cut an unorthodox bluegrass record with electric guitar for Brown (“That Old Heartbreak Express,” Fortune 187) in Detroit. [4] A few weeks later, Brown issued Williams’ first solo record, which sounded like bluegrass musicians playing rhythm and blues. Williams said the musicians he recorded with — at both sessions — were unknown to him, and the music on his records surprised his friends.
At the Fortune studio, located in a seedy section of Third Street, Williams set aside his mandolin for a flattop guitar, and recorded his songs “You Ain’t No Good For Me” and “Sad And Lonely.” Drenched in tape echo, both songs featured electric guitar and a snare drum. In the previous two years, rock’n’roll records steadily gained ground in popularity, and some country musicians, usually with encouragement from their record companies, experimented with the trend. In 1954, Elvis Presley’s first record included a remake of bluegrass monarch Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” with a boogie beat, and rockabilly musician Charlie Feathers, Presley’s neighbor in Memphis, Tennessee, once declared that the rockabilly style was a combination of bluegrass and “cotton patch blues.” [5]
“I knew rock’n’roll was goin’ real big,” said Williams. “I said, ‘Well, mine’s halfway rock’n’roll … and I don’t know what the rest of it is!’ I had a big ol’ guitar with leather wrapped around, and I had my name wrote on it (Jimmy Lee). That record played pretty good there, in Royal Oak [on WEXL radio]. One of the announcers (I think he was pulling my leg a little bit) said, ‘Hey man, that sounds a whole lot like Elvis!’ But I got better sense than that. I just cut the record, and on the side I was pickin’ bluegrass. I never did try to do anything with it.”
In October 1956, a record reviewer at Detroit’s Teen Life newspaper wrote the following: “Another recording artist joining the Elvis Presley gold rush is Jimmy Lee on Fortune. Jimmy is a little high for Elvis. He hits some real high soprano notes that sound like Nolan Strong.” [6]
In lyrics and feeling, his songs express emotions related to separation and isolation, feelings that he may have experienced when he left the Stanley Brothers and moved from the South to work within the confines of a Detroit factory. Compared to mainstream music of 1956, Williams’ performances sound introspective and dark. Williams’ vocal begins low and hits the ceiling during the refrain of “You Ain’t No Good For Me.” The song presents a dialog between a man and a woman (all sung by Williams), with her defiant response to his menacing verses sung as the high part in the refrain.
Second verse:
If you don’t want a lickin’ better sit right down,
Stop that lookin’ at me with that fra-ha-hown
Refrain:
[low] Baby
[high] I-I-I-I don’t wanna
[low] Baby, you ain’t no good for me [7]
Listen to the entire song here.
While his Fortune disk received little attention, the Clix record fared worse. However, it represents an imaginative exploration of rock’s combinatorial possibilities, being one of the first mixed-race rock’n’roll sessions in town. A black vocal group backed Williams and his bluegrass vocal style, along with saxophone, drums, electric guitar, bass, and piano. [8]
One song, “She’s Gone,” features a danceable, uptempo beat, but Williams begins with a startling wail of despair. The refrain ends with, “I’ll never see my darling / She left me all alone.” [9] Listen to the song here.
The flip side, “Baby, Baby, Baby” is a slow blues with a desperate, pleading delivery by Williams trying to convince his woman to return to him. He sings softly, but with a nervous energy that sounds barely contained.
From here to yonder
After the sortie into rock’n’roll, Williams continued building Cadillac cars and picking bluegrass. Then his life took another abrupt turn: “My health got real bad and a preacher came to visit me at the hospital there, in River Rouge. He invited me to come to his church. I told him I didn’t have good enough clothes. He said, ‘You don’t have to worry about that. Just come on.’ I went to his church and gloriously got saved. From that I started writing songs, and went from here to yonder,” said Williams.
Williams listened regularly to country disk jockey and musician Red Ellis on WHRV radio Ann Arbor. One afternoon Ellis aired a Stanley Brothers record on which Williams had played mandolin, so Williams gave him a call. Soon after, the two men teamed up to play and write religious music. From 1958 to 1961, they performed all over Southeast Michigan. With Ford Nix on banjo and Bob Stiltner on bass (who Williams met during his time with the Stanley Brothers), the group recorded more than 30 songs for Starday Records, issued on several extended-play singles and two albums. They also cut singles for local labels such as Pathway, and Happy Hearts.
Williams said he “tore the sheet with brother Ellis” in 1961, and moved back to Bluefield. “I felt the callin’ to go out and preach,” he said. He started a group called Jimmy Williams and the Shady Valley Boys at WHIS radio. From there, he began his evangelistic work. Eventually Williams moved his family to Florida, but he returned to Michigan and cut a couple of high-energy bluegrass gospel albums with Ellis in the early 1970s for Jessup Records of Jackson, Michigan.
By now, Williams’ solo efforts for Fortune and Clix have reached the ears of rock’n’roll and rockabilly music fans around the world. While those records seemed full of raw, emotional yearnings for better times, Jimmy Lee Williams spent his later life communicating spiritual joy with a contagious fervor in his performances, which he kept up until his passing in 2012.
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Notes
- Jimmy Lee Williams interviewed by Keith Cady in 2002.
- Paul Williams interviewed by Keith Cady in 2002. After the Williams Brothers episode, Paul Humphrey was known as Paul Williams for the rest of his career.
- Bill Napier moved to Detroit in 1954 and played mandolin with Curly Dan Holcomb (he later formed an act with his wife: Curly Dan and Wilma Ann) while working in the auto industry. Williams suggested that Napier try out for the Stanley Brothers band, and four months after his first audition, Napier joined them for a spell that lasted until 1960. He went on to work with several others, including Charlie Moore during the 1960s. Napier died in 2000.
- In a 2001 interview, Buster Turner told Keith Cady about playing bluegrass music in Detroit. “We had an electric guitar added in, to play a little more country … slow dancing. Up there [in Detroit], you couldn’t hardly get a job in a bar where they had dancing, if you played bluegrass. But if you had an electric guitar … you could play a little slower music like ‘Tennessee Waltz’ and stuff. That’s the way it was back then, with bluegrass.”
- “Now let me tell you where rockabilly comes from. It comes from the cotton patch blues, and from bluegrass.” Charlie Feathers quoted by Ben Sandmel from his liner notes to the “Charlie Feathers” Elektra Nonesuch (American Explorers) 9 61147-2, 1991 compact disc.
- “Variety Key In New Crop Of R&R Tunes” Teen Life (Oct. 19, 1956) 3. Nolan Strong was the lead singer of a Detroit-based rhythm and blues vocal group called the Diablos, who also recorded for Fortune Records.
- “You Ain’t No Good For Me” (Jimmy Williams) Trianon Publications (Fortune 191, 1956)
- Detroit-based record collector Cappy Wortman once speculated that Williams’ Clix sides were made at the Fortune Records studio with the Five Dollars vocal group.
- “She’s Gone” (Jimmy Williams) True Tone Publishing (Clix 100, 1957)
- Bond, Marilyn, and S. R. Boland. The Birth of the Detroit Sound: 1940-1964. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2002.
After a lifetime of playing music in Detroit, Johnny Clem’s recollections form a winding trail through Detroit nightclubs, bars and lounges whose past existence is now only evidenced by photos and stories, such as the time he worked with bandleader Danny Richards at a barn dance staged in the legendary Graystone Ballroom during the 1950s, or when he recorded for Joe Von Battle in the back of Joe’s Record Shop on Hastings Street.
From Alabama to Detroit
Tiny Elkmont, Alabama, near the southern border of Tennessee, sits almost the same distance from Nashville to the north, and Birmingham to the south. The Delmore Brothers, renowned for making hillbilly blues and boogie woogie popular during the 1930s, were born there, as was Johnny Clem on September 7, 1929, the year that the Delmores started their act. A few years later, during the Great Depression, Clem’s father took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority, and moved the family to east Tennessee.
Clem’s friendly personality and ability to learn multiple musical instruments led him to sit in with many groups at a moment’s notice. In 1946, Clem picked electric guitar for the Golden West Cowgirls (Gladys and Ann) during early morning radio broadcasts at WROL Knoxville. He joined the U.S. Navy the following year, and after completing two years of service, moved to Detroit to work in Chrysler’s facilities on the east side of town. (Clem remained active in the navy for another six years.)
While living in a dense area of the city populated by thousands of people who had arrived from the South for work, Clem found loads of opportunities to play music in local bars. Jeff Durham, a guitarist, singer, and comedian, led a band at a nightclub on Jefferson Avenue and St. Jean, where Clem played his first Detroit gig, strumming a Hawaiian steel guitar in the group. “Jeff would do comedy, and put makeup on his face,” remembered Clem. “Then he shined a black light on himself, to make his face glow.” [1] Durham also had a reputation for finger style (or Travis) picking, as he had grown up in Muhlenburg, Kentucky, and had been acquainted with guitarists Mose Rager, Ike Everly, and Merle Travis. (Watch for an upcoming story about Jeff Durham and his brother Bob.)
An eager participant in country-western jamborees held at bars such as Ted’s Ten-Hi [you can see him in the group photo at the front of the chapter on Eddie Jackson in the “Detroit Country Music” book], Clem also taught himself how to play piano. “I never learned to read music, but I still got pretty good,” he said. “[Piano] became my main instrument for many years.”
According to Clem, his early gigs in Detroit included:
ca. 1950 — Al Dorman’s Bar, with Pioneer Playboys: Johnny, Chuck, Bill, and George Upton (14800 Mack, near Alter)
1950 — Caravan Gardens, with Eddie Jackson (Woodrow Wilson and Davison)
1951 — Torch Bar, with trio (East Jefferson Avenue, across from Hudson Motor Car facilities)
1951 — [Unknown club], with Waldo Walker (East Jefferson Avenue and Kitchener)
1952-53 — Torch Bar, with Swannee Caldwell (bass) and Red Peterson (guitar) [2]
A tattle on Von Battle
In 1953, Clem worked briefly with African American record shop owner Joe Von Battle. In the back of Joe’s Record Shop at 3530 Hastings, Von Battle built a recording studio. Clem said he often visited a restaurant across the street from the shop, and he got to know Von Battle by running into him there. “After our gigs, after the clubs closed, the boys and I’d go to the Checker Bar-B-Q near Hastings Street,” said Clem. “I don’t remember how we met, but [Von Battle] wanted me to cut a country version of a song called, ‘Another Soldier Gone.’ Eventually, we visited the studio he had in the back of his shop and cut it. I sang and played piano on it. I don’t think it was released, but Joe gave me a dub of it on a record.”
From around 1948, Von Battle had been recording local blues, jazz, and gospel performers. He had just cut “Another Soldier Gone” by a vocal group called the Violinaires, issued on the Drummond label of Detroit, and he wanted to explore the idea of making a “crossover” record of it with Clem. At the time, record companies often directed their pop and country-western artists to remake popular rhythm and blues songs, and vice versa. While the artists and instrumental style of these records differed, the songs themselves often appeared on multiple charts.
Clem’s version of “Another Soldier Gone” wasn’t released commercially. But the memory of this small episode in Clem’s career provides us with one of the earliest accounts of black and white musicians collaborating in Detroit.
Astronaut of Detroit rock
When it came to music, Clem approached it with an open heart and mind, and his reputation kept him working. More bookings included the following with local bandleaders:
mid-1950s — Yale Bar with Luke Kelley (Warren at the John C. Lodge Freeway)
1955 — Dixie Belle, with Jack Luker (Vernor and McKinstry)
1956 — 3-JJJs, with Les York (Vernor and Clark)
Not surprisingly, Clem was an early adopter of rock’n’roll, which was popular in the city from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. One of his first rocking gigs was at the Shamrock Bar on Third Street and Selden, a rough area in 1957-59, but each musician (Sonny Croft – drums, vocals; Leon Chessire – lead guitar) earned $20 a night, which amounted to big bucks in those days.
After Casey Clark ceased production of the Lazy Ranch Boys Barn Dance in the union hall at 12101 Mack Avenue in 1957, Clem, vocalist Randy Sea and six other musicians worked dances there on weekends.
Clem’s next move was to play piano with vocalist Carl Parker. They had a steady gig at the Scenic Inn (Fort and Miami) with a man named Ted on saxophone around 1960, reportedly earning $300 per week. Then he joined Randy Sea, with Norm Sands on drums, and Leon Chessire on guitar at the Rose Bar (Vernor and Morell). Clem’s own band, Johnny and the Astronauts, worked Joe’s Bar at Jefferson and Chene, from around 1960-64, and for a while included guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Johnson, who later worked in Nashville with the Louvin Brothers, Leroy VanDyke, Jimmy Dickens and others, and spent four years on the “Grand Ole Opry” (Johnson died in 2014).
Clem also worked at Joe’s Bar with guitarist Bill Merritt, who played in town for many years. From there, Clem gigged at Ted’s 10-Hi on Jefferson and Fairview with Deano DelRay, and then to the O’Mack Bar (Mack and St. Jean) with Waldo Walker and Whitey Franklin. From about 1964-68, Clem worked the 509 Club downtown with Franklin and his brother Jimmy.
With Clem on piano, Carl Parker cut some recordings for which they didn’t find a commercial outlet. The recording presented with this story was made during a gig by guitarist Al Allen and the Sounds at Jerry’s Show Bar in 1960, and features Parker, with Clem on piano, sitting in with the band.
Listen to: Carl Parker with Johnny Clem (piano) and Al Allen (guitar)
Some country recordings were put on tape with Jay Preston for the Clix label, based in Troy, Michigan, which seem to be lost, as well as a session at Fortune Records in Detroit. Although Johnny Clem didn’t release records of his own, he made a contribution to the Detroit scene, like many others who shared space on local bandstands (for another example, see Happy Moore’s story). Through the decades, Clem worked with vocalist Danny Richards at the Red Robin on Jefferson Avenue and at the Hazel Park Eagles with Richards and guitarist Chuck Oakes. In 1978 Clem had a steady gig at Rose Lounge on West Vernor with bandleader Jimmy Kelley (Luke Kelley’s son). He played at the Clinton Gables Hotel on the Clinton River near downtown Mount Clemens, with Tony Gee and the Continentals during the 1970s, as well as Castaways near 23 Mile and VanDyke with Jay Preston and guitarist Dave Morgan.
During the 1990s, Clem moved just north of Palm Beach, Florida, and entertained crowds of retirees “as much as I could stand it,” he said with a chuckle. As of this writing, Clem is back in Michigan to be near family, and retired from entertaining.
Update: Johnny Clem passed away June 3, 2018.
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Notes
- John Clem interviewed by Craig Maki in January 2016.
- Many nightclub owners booked extended contracts with bands for weeks of steady entertainment.
First published in 1985, “Bluegrass: A History” by Neil Rosenberg is almost 40 years old. Rosenberg suggested the Detroit-based Wayside Records label was the first business to advertise bluegrass as a category of music [1], with a small ad in the May 20, 1957, edition of Billboard magazine. [2]
Twins Wade (1929-2004) and Wiley (1929-1984) Birchfield, played around Bryson City, North Carolina, as the Birchfield Brothers (guitar and banjo, respectively) during the 1940s [3]. Wade moved to Detroit by the mid-1950s. He settled in an east side neighborhood of folks from the South, many of whom worked in nearby factories. In 1956, Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys (Earl Taylor and Sam Hutchins), based in Detroit at the time, recorded Wade Birchfield’s “Hit Parade Of Love” for Decca Records. The following year, Wade Birchfield issued a single record of the Birchfield Brothers [4], the first Wayside Records release. He followed it with recordings of Detroit’s Chain Mountain Boys, a band led by Marvin Cobb [5].
Cobb’s record featured a young mandolinist from Dayton, Ohio, (born in Emory Gap, Tennessee) named Frank Wakefield. About a year or so later, Wakefield reappeared on a Wayside disc with Buster Turner, performing more remarkable music [6]. The instrumental “New Camptown Races” (with Cobb) and vocal “Leave Well Enough Alone” (with Turner) have since become bluegrass standards associated with the wildly inventive Wakefield.
The Chain Mountain Boys
“I came up there ’cause Jimmy Martin was up there,” said Wakefield, who arrived in Detroit around late 1955 or early 1956, after working with Red Allen in Dayton. “I went into where [Martin] was playing the first night. He already had a mandolin player, so he told me of another group called the Chain Mountain Boys,” he said. “I contacted them the next day, and I started working [with] the Chain Mountain Boys.” [7]
Guitarist and singer Marvin Cobb led the group, which included Herman Evans, bass; Carace Hutchins, banjo; Red Stanley, fiddle; or Jefferson Davis, fiddle. Cobb was from Barbourville, Kentucky. His family moved to Detroit in 1948, when he was about fifteen years old. “I had a brother-in-law that was really good on the guitar, and he started me out,” said Cobb. “Once I learned … I formed my own band. I was playing in bars when I was eighteen [years old].” [8]
Listen to: Chain Mountain Boys – Tell Me Why My Daddy (Don’t Come Home)
“I believe I started out at the Kerrigan’s Bar. And then I played at the Yale Bar. … This was right in Detroit. Somewhere near Warren and John C. Lodge, now. It used to be Hamilton Street,” he said. By the time Wakefield joined, the Chain Mountain Boys had established themselves at the All States Bar on Cass Avenue near Michigan Avenue, downtown. “It had a balcony that seated so many, and the first floor. And this place was usually packed. … They had to turn people away.”
“We had a banjo player, Carace Hutchins, one of the finest banjo players that there is,” said Cobb. “He had a brother named Sam that played with Jimmy Martin. … Carace was really the one that invented that bending of the strings. He put just regular screws into a peg and he put it on there, and it was the craziest thing you ever saw, but it worked. And he started turning them things and those strings started turnin’ and I said, ‘Whooo!’”
Wayside 105
Cobb said when the band practiced, friends and neighbors gathered to visit. “In my opinion, we practiced a lot. See, we would have an audience of twenty or thirty people just listening, either at my place, or we played at Carace’s place. He lived at that time on Sixth Street, I’m not sure,” he said. “A lot of times, I [sang] the lead and then I’d jump to tenor. You know, Frank would take the lead [for the refrain, as in “Tell Me Why My Daddy (Don’t Come Home)”]. Then Carace, he had a pretty nice voice. He’d, I guess you’d call it, ‘get right in there’.”
One day at a Chain Mountain Boys practice session, Wade Birchfield brought a tape recorder. “He put that on tape and said, ‘I’m gonna make a record of these, boys.’ We said, ‘Well, go ahead.’ So he did, and that one went pretty good for a while,” said Cobb.
After Birchfield issued the Chain Mountain Boys’ Wayside Records single, Wakefield left town with the Stanley Brothers. “So, what happened was, I hired Billy Napier to play with me,” said Cobb. “Ralph Stanley called me from Nashville … [or] somewhere down there. He said, ‘Marvin, you got Billy Napier playing with you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ He said, “How would you like to swap mandolin players?’ He said, ‘I can’t handle Frank. I can’t do a thing with him.’ I said, ‘Let me ask Billy, here.’ [Ralph Stanley] said, ‘He [Frank] wants to come back to you anyway. I think he’s gonna quit me. If you’ve got Billy Napier, I’ll just swap with ya.’ So, I went and asked Billy, ‘Do you wanna go with the Stanley Brothers? It’s more money, probably.’ He said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I said ‘It’s up to you, man.’ … So he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go with ’em.’ So they came to Detroit. They brought Frank back to me, and then they picked up Billy Napier.”
Here comes the wild man
Regarding Wakefield’s boundary-pushing technique, Cobb said, “Everybody liked it, they liked it real well. I guess maybe the Stanley Brothers didn’t like it. Probably got too far out on a limb for them. I loved it. … At that time, he would throw you off. … When he’d hit some of that, some guys couldn’t follow it. They’d quit, right in the middle of it. … But you could hear it on some of those old tapes we did. He’d get in there and really do some wild stuff. A lot of times, if he was gonna do a solo, I’d say, ‘Here comes the wild man! Step back!’ … And I knew that Frank was one of the finest mandolin players I ever heard. Even back then, when we was playing. I believe he was just as good then as Bill Monroe. … And after that, he went on his own style, and went out into left field and mastered it.”
Listen to: Chain Mountain Boys – New Camptown Races
The Chain Mountain Boys broke up towards the end of 1957, and Cobb started performing straight country music in Detroit with a young Randy Sea. [9] “What happened was Frank didn’t like to see me go out of town or go on vacation,” said Cobb. “I mean, I had to play with him, you know, night after night. … I went out of town for just a couple nights, and I got this guy to play for me, Bill Swain. And Frank was mad ’cause I left, and he got limburger cheese and put it on Bill Swain. The fight was on! [laughs] I came back to Detroit and I didn’t have no band! [laughs] They’d all gone their separate ways. … And the [bar owner] there, he didn’t even get another band. He said, ‘Aw, we’ll just wait ’til Marvin gets back and see what happens.’ So I came back and found out about it. I just laughed. Frank was … a practical joker, ain’t no doubt about it.”
Find out more about Frank Wakefield and Buster Turner in part two.
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Notes
- Neil V. Rosenberg. “Bluegrass: A History.” Rev. pbk. ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005) 114, 124.
- Billboard (May 20, 1957. Vol. 69, No. 21) 148.
- John Burchfield interviewed by Craig Maki, 2013.
- “Goin’ Down The Road” backed with “Flower Blooming In The Wildwood” by Birchfield Brothers and Ray Johnson (Wayside W-100)
- “New Camptown Races” b/w “Tell Me Why My Daddy (Don’t Come Home)” by Marvin Cobb and Frank Wakefield with the Chain Mountain Boys (Wayside W-105)
- “Leave Well Enough Alone” b/w “You’re The One” by Frank Wakefield and Buster Turner (Wayside W-150)
- Frank Wakefield interviewed by Keith Cady in 2001.
- Marvin Cobb interviewed by Keith Cady in 2002.
- Randy Sea, a.k.a. Stanley Smith, fronted a group called the Valiants during the early 1960s in Detroit. Sea is a brother of Detroit bluegrass bandleader Wendy Smith.
Harold Thomason Harry Thomas Odom was born in Paris, Tennessee, November 8, 1923. A gifted guitarist, his take off (or lead) playing on records was comparable to the best western swing pickers on recordings. He learned his licks from local jazz guitarist Bob Mitchell, playing jazz standards and country throughout his career. Although he played guitar in Detroit for more than three decades (1940s through 1970s), younger generations recognized Odom for his vocal on a risqué novelty called “She Won’t Turn Over For Me,” which first appeared as a jukebox single on Fortune Records subsidiary Renown, performed by Floyd Compton’s Western Troubadours in 1951 (see discography next week). The lyrics of the song described either a disagreeable automobile or woman. The track was included on Fortune’s “The Original Skeets McDonald’s Tattooed Lady And Others” album (circa 1960). In 2001, when this interview was done at his apartment in Detroit, Odom had suffered a stroke and no longer played guitar. He died September 18, 2010. The following features excerpts from a lengthier conversation. [1]
[Recording begins as Tommy Odom recalls working with Detroit bandleader Jack Luker at the West Fort Tavern, during the late 1940s.]
… Jack Luker, he played there, played rhythm. I played with so many different guys. I remember one night … I sat down on a stool – back then they didn’t make me stand up and I could play better sittin’ down – I pulled my hat down [over his eyes] and I’d been off for about two or three days. I thought, well, I’ll just rest my eyes for a couple of minutes, you know, and I fell forward on the dance floor, right on my head. [laughs] But Jackie … said, “What the hell’s the matter with you? You drunk? I’ll fire you!” Boy, he was mad. I took the rest of the night off. The next day he come over and said, “I need somebody to play the guitar. Are you gonna be sober tonight?” [laughs] …
How did you get interested in music?
My dad played banjo and fiddle. They tried to get him to play in Nashville, but he wouldn’t go. We had a big farm there. He come to Detroit, came up here to work. Then my mother moved up, and she brought me. I remember when she brang me up here. I lived over off of Jefferson, off some street. I went to Ammon [sp?] school, went to Gillis School, and then they found out – this was during the Depression, 1933 – they found out my dad had a hundred-and-sixty-acre farm in Tennessee, so they cut us off and give us forty dollars to go down to Tennessee.
He bought a Jersey cow for us kids. That was me, Johnny B., and Lewis, and Joe, and Jerry – no there wasn’t no Jerry then. He wasn’t born ’til ’41. … I cut timber with a cross saw down there ’til I got big enough and went to CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camp. That’s when I was seventeen. Then my uncle, he told me I could get a job at White Castle® [hamburgers, in Detroit].
Where was the CCC camp?
Cookeville, Tennessee. … There’s another guy from Cookeville, he used to play on Eight Mile. Boy, he was a good guitar player. I can’t remember his name, and he played there before I met [jazz guitarist] Bob Mitchell. Boy, he really could play the guitar. Now, Eddie Jackson, when he got out of the navy [1947], I was playing at the West Fort Tavern when he come in. …
Who were some of your influences growing up, for playing guitar?
My uncle, he played. Both my uncles. Shelley, he gave it up. But Prince, he played in Detroit. He played steel guitar in the clubs. He could play take off, but he couldn’t play it like me. And the Delmore Brothers, they played in Nashville. … There was another guy in Nashville, and boy he had some licks. I used to try to copy them. But then when I got to Cookeville, I kept playing. And Chet Atkins was playing in Knoxville. …
I used to know a lot of musicians, but after I had that stroke, if you don’t mention their name, I can’t remember them. [Odom points to photo on his wall.] Like that girl, I can’t remember her name. I remember her brother’s name. They called him “Tarzan.” Ken Maynard, that cowboy in the movies, was their uncle. [2] I was living in East Detroit, and Tarzan come up here. He was wantin’ me to go to East Detroit ’cause she wanted to see me. But I wouldn’t go. I didn’t want to get married to nobody then. I’d get a gal for thirty days. … It was the law then, if you lived with someone for thirty days, you married her. But they changed that law. I’d move on out, then I’d move back in. [laughs] I know that woman mighta wanted to get married. … I liked her a lot. …
Listen to: Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mtn Boys, feat. Tommy Odom – Dirty Boogie
I don’t have a picture of my grandmother. I didn’t like her anyway. And she didn’t like me. I liked my other grandma, ’cause … she’d give me anything – pies, cakes, just anything. And my other grandma, she’d serve meals to all the men first, and the kids would have to sit in the corner and wait. And all that was left for the kids was just bones. So I wouldn’t go up there. One day, they was up there, and my dad said to my mom, “Where are Thomason?” and she said, “He got off miles ago.” They lived off, down four miles of roads. She said, “When we got to Mammy’s he jumped off [the wagon] and went there. He ain’t going to eat like hogs and pigs.” [laughs]
I was up there one time, and my dad and grandpa were in the big barn down there. They had hay in there. My grandpa, my dad, and some uncles of mine were hittin’ that jug. Me and some cousins of mine were peepin’ through the logs and we saw them hit the jug and put it back in there, cover it up with hay. So they went back up the hill to the house, and we went in there and we hit the jug. I guess I was about ten years old, then. [laughs] It hit, too, boy. That moonshine … I know, I helped my dad make it down there. It starts off real strong at 160 proof, and he cut it down to a hundred. But people down there didn’t know what they was gettin’. You’d get it and five minutes later my throat was raw.
When did you come to Michigan, after the [CCC] camp?
When I come to Detroit, I started at Fort and Green. That’s where the White Castle was. [3] Then I went to Avery and Holden. Then I went to between Eight and Nine Mile on Woodward – that one’s still there. Then I went to that one, when they built it on Eight Mile and Gratiot. When they opened it up, the manager come over and let me go there. I remember there was Travis Goodwin, he was from Mississippi; Charlie something, he was from Alabama; one guy from Texas. …
Who were some of the musicians you first started playing with when you came up here? About what year was it when you came up here from Cookeville?
I was seventeen, then [1941]. I went to the Hollywood [Inn] and the West Fort [Tavern], sat in and played with them. I had an ID and you didn’t have a picture on them. The police come into the West Fort one time and said, “How old are you?” I pulled [the ID card] out and showed it to them. I said, “By God, I’m 21.” “Oh.” The Police bought me a drink. [laughs] … I come to Detroit in the summer time, and my birthday was in November. …
Before I went into the army, there was modern [swing] bands in the Hollywood [Inn], you know. There was modern bands at the West Fort, too. All the country bands – even Bob Mitchell – they was all playin’ on Eight Mile, but it was all modern music. They’d play some country songs. …
I was nineteen when I went into the army. I stayed out for a year. I’d go to Tennessee. I’d send a letter down there and visit my mother, then come back. Then, finally they said, “No more jumpin’ around.” They got wise. They said, “Show up at Gratiot and Nine Mile Road.” So I stayed out for a year. I stayed out long enough, probably to save my life. Because everybody was killing. Guys was comin’ back from Guadalcanal and everything … legs shot off and arms. I know my buddy, Boots Hampton, he got back from Guadalcanal, and he’d been shot up and everything. He was older. …
How did you first meet Roy Hall?
I think he come into the West Fort and got a job when I was playing. I was playing guitar there and he come into the bar, and the owner gave him a job playing piano. From there, he went out to the Caravan, and all over. I know he was playing at Port Huron. I went up to Port Huron with him and played up there some. …
Listen to: Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mtn Boys, feat. Tommy Odom – Okee Doaks
Last time I seen him, he was playing down in Nashville. He come up here on the weekend and he was driving that guy’s car … He had a lot of records …
Webb Pierce?
Not Webb Pierce. Wait a minute! That’s who it was. Yeah, he was driving his car. … I know he had “Webb Pierce” on the side of it. We was playing on Fort Street – me and Christine. [4] He wouldn’t have a drink in there. He said, “Come on with me.” We went across the street and had … I guess half a dozen shots. He wouldn’t have but one shot. He said, “I gotta drive.” He owed me [fifty dollars], so he said, “Here’s thirty dollars.” I was so broke I said, “I’ll take the thirty dollars – just forget the twenty.” I never seen anymore of him. He went back down to Nashville. And when I heard any more about him, I heard he died. [5]
Click here to read part two, which includes a Tommy Odom discography; and Odom reflects on the many Detroit nightclubs he played, and musicians he knew, including Bob Mitchell, and Frankie Brumbalough.
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Notes
- Tommy Odom interviewed by Keith Cady and Craig Maki in 2001.
- “Tarzan” also was the name of Ken Maynard’s horse.
- Now the site of legendary Motz’s Burgers.
- Christine [surname unknown] played a cocktail drum.
- Roy Hall died in 1984. Hall’s story is included in the book “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
