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Hastings Street Grease, Volume 2 |
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Blues
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Saturday, 31 December 2005 07:02 |
MOTOR CITY BLUES THROUGH THE AGES
By John Sinclair
Except for a couple of raggedy blocks straggling south from East Grand Boulevard, Detroit's Hastings Street is gone now. The Motor City's major African-American entertainment thoroughfare was gouged out in the late 1950s to make way for the Walter P. Chrysler Freeway, a federally-subsidized fast track laid down to facilitate the flight of the city's white population to the northeastern suburbs of Hazel Park, Warren, Ferndale, Royal Oak, Madison Heights and points north.
But for 20 years before that Hastings Street swung all the way from Paradise Valley downtown for 50 or 60 blocks north. The legend of Hastings Street was perhaps best told in a 1948 recording by The Detroit Count, a rough barrelhouse pianist who immortalized that pulsating scene by enumerating the many theatres, lounges, bars and rude nightspots which thrived along the length of the stroll in his two-part 78 rpm single on JVB Records titled "Hastings Street Opera."
Then there was the man they called the Mayor of Hastings Street, a dapper, diminuitive gentleman named Sunnie Wilson who painted a vivid portrait of Detroit in the 30s, 40s and 50s in his 1997 autobiography, TOAST OF THE TOWN, written with John Cohassey and published by Detroit's Wayne State University Press. Wilson was an intimate of the great Joe Louis and the popular proprietor of nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels serving African-American citizens in the racially segregated near east side neighborhood between Woodard Avenue and Hastings Street. He saw and heard it all, and his account is a valuable addition to the small body of literature which examines the city's history.
In its prime years Hastings Street throbbed with music, from the elemental blues of John Lee Hooker, Eddie Kirkland, Eddie Burns, Boogie Woogie Red, and Washboard Willie & His Super Suds of Rhythm to the swinging jazz of the Teddy Wilson Trio (with drummer J.C. Heard), Maurice King & His Wolverines (with vocalist LaVerne "Bea" Baker), Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams, T.J. Fowler, Todd Rhodes & His Toddlers, and the Matthew Rucker Orchestra.
Jazz stars like Charlie Parker, Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, and Cootie Williams played the Forest Club or the Flame Showbar as well as the Paradise Theatre on Woodward Avenue, sharing the stage with rhythm & blues recording stars like Dinah Washington, Wynonie Harris, Amos Milburn, B.B. King, and T-Bone Walker. Sonny Boy Williamson even spent a few months in Detroit in the earky 50s, playing with Calvin Frazier and Baby Boy Warren and providing inspiration to a young Aaron Willis, who gained national recognition some 15 years later as Little Sonny, "New King of the Blues Harmonica."
As Hastings Street began to disappear, a whole new generation of singers and musicians who grew up in or around the immediate vicinity emerged to extend its influence across the world, from Jackie Wilson, Andre Williams, Little Willie John, and Hank Ballard & The Midnighters in the 50s to the Motown Records stars who put Detroit on the map in the 60s: The Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles.
Aretha Franklin's father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, pastored the New Bethel Baptist Church on Hastings, where his sermons were recorded by Joe Von Battles and leased to Chess Records in Chicago. Aretha's first recordings were made there when she was 14 years old, and Joe's Hastings Street record store and JVB imprint were also home to bluesmen from One-String Sam, Detroit Count, and Will Hairston to fledgling guitarist Johnnie Bassett, one of the leaders of Detroit's blues renaissance of the 1990s.
After Hastings Street disappeared, the Motor City blues scene dwindled to a handful of bars in rough neighborhoods where stalwarts like Little Sonny, Washboard Willie, Boogie Woogie Red, and Little Mac Collins & the Partymakers continued to entertain their friends and patrons well outside the mainstream of modern entertainment. In the early 70s Little Sonny had a shot at blues stardom via several fine albums for Stax Records Enterprise imprint; a wild collection of Motor City blues artists was spotlighted at the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival; and bluesman Bobo Jenkins and deejay/entrepeneur Famous Coachman established a series of free Detroit Blues Festivals, a Detroit Blues Society, and a weekly blues radio program on WDET-FM, but these were at best shots in the darkness of American life in the 70s.
More than a decade would elapse before a new crop of Detroit bluesmen would emerge from the gloom of the city's post-industrial landscape. The advent of the 1990s brought to light well-seasoned veterans like Eddie Burns, Louis Mr. Bo Collins, and Sir Mack Rice, whose music was documented by a fledgling little record label in Toledo called Blue Suit Records. Another intrepid local label, Blues Factory Records, issued intriguing albums featuring previously unrecorded Motor City bluesmen like the Butler Twins, Willie D. Warren, Harmonica Shah, Uncle Jessie White, and Johnny Yard Dog Jones (who went on to make an excellent CD, Ain t Gonna Worry, for Chicago's Earwig label and won the city's first Handy Award in the process).
Now guitarist Johnnie Bassett, who got his start on Hastings Street, is issuing albums on a variety of labels and touring the world to wide acclaim. Vocalists Alberta Adams and Joe Weaver, fellow Hastings Street survivors, are following closely in Johnnie's footsteps, and blues from Detroit is beginning to be heard wherever music lovers congregate.
One of the most hopeful documents of the turn-of-the-century Motor City blues scene was issued earlier this year by John Rockwood and Bob Seeman of Blue Suit Records, which continues to lead the way in providing an outlet for what's happening today. Hastings Street Grease: Detroit Blues Is Alive, Volume One presented music by eight vital modern bluesmen with deep roots in the Hastings Street era, including Eddie Kirkland, Piano Fats, Eddie Burns, Willie D. Warren, Harmonica Shah, Emmanuel Young and Leon Horner. On Hastings Street Revisited (Part 1) Detroit Piano Fats shares his memories of the old stomping grounds with Harmonica Shah, and Kirkland looks back in sorrow on I Walk Down Hastings Street.
Yet the raw energy and drive of the Detroit blues remains intact throughout, as fresh and exciting as ever, almost as if the musicians had come straight to the recording studio from their gigs at some of the little joints on Hastings. There's nothing of nostalgia here, nor the hokey kind of tribute album ambience that's so popular with the big-label blues producers of today. This is the low-down Detroit blues at its most elemental, and it's as precise and effective as a JVB 78.
Now Blue Suit brings forth Detroit Blues Is Alive, Volume 2, a second generous helping of modern-day Motor City sounds gathered from the same relaxed, sympathetic sessions that produced the first Hastings Street Grease collection. Piano Fats takes Harmonica Shah way back in the day on Hastings Street Revisited (Part 2) and goes Strolling Through Paradise Valley, the downtown entertainment mecca from which the music spread north along Hastings.
Emmannuel Young and Leon Horner pay tribute to Detroit blues giant John Lee Hooker with I m in the Mood and Boogie Chillen, respectively, while Harmonica Shah salutes Jimmy Reed on Have Mercy, Mr. Reed and contributes the chilling Motor City anthem Bring Me My Shotgun. Willie D. Warren adds a new dimension to the Memphis Slim favorite simply by pointing out that Everyday We Have The Blues and then reveals What Goes On in the Dark with a special dedication to Shah.
Eddie Kirkland, the Hastings Street bluesman who began his career 50 years ago backing up John Lee Hooker, continues his contemporary resurgence with a pair of strong tracks in Going Back to the Backwoods and the ominous There's Got To Be Some Changes Made. Eddie Burns is in typically fine form on a live treatment of When I Get Drunk, the dynamic Griswold brothers, Art & Roman, of Toledo, Ohio, romp and stomp on a great live cut titled Daddy, Daddy, and the venerable Uncle Jessie White's distinctive approach is nicely showcased on the classic Bad Luck Is Falling.
Hastings Street may have been laid to rest lo these 40 years ago, but its sound and spirit live on in the performances recorded here and in the music of the Detroit bluesmen who have managed to survive the cruel vicissitudes of time and social deterioration to keep on moving forward, all the way into the 21st century. That's definitely something Detroit can be proud of, anbd it's all right here on this compact disc. Put on your bibs and tuckers, ladies and g s, and dig into these musical ham hocks and chitlins cooked to funky perfection with plenty of that old-time Hastings Street Grease.
New Orleans
July 2, 1999
(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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