Michigan Rock and Roll Legends

16/01/2025

11/01/2025

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2025/01/10/sam-moore-dies-at-89-sam-and-dave/77612270007/ Sad news. Sam Moore, of Sam & Dave fame, has passed away.

Sam Moore contributed to musical lore of the '60s as part of Sam & Dave with hits "Soul Man' and "Hold On, I'm Coming." He died Jan. 10 at 89.

28/12/2024

I highly recommend this oral biography of the MC5.

28/12/2024

https://michiganrockandrolllegends.com/blog/523-mc5-an-oral-biography-kicks-out-the-jams Read Dr. J's review of the excellent new MC5 book!

The Ultimate MC5 book has arrived! MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band is hands down the best account of the rise and fall of Detroit’s hardest rocking and most notorious band by a country mile.

27/12/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=938viZLyinI&list=PLA7uGnBobjw_DJm17T1X1Q3fMN0uZtorz&index=1 Check out our latest podcast episode featuring Johnny Burke.

His voice has been in your car, home, earbuds and at your favorite restaurant for over 40 years. Johnny Burke has been on air around the state of Michigan, s...

17/12/2024

Our annual list of the Best Albums of the Year!

https://michiganrockandrolllegends.com/blog/522-best-albums-of-2024-two-views 2024 was a great year for music; and my good friend Larry Van Cleve and I always look forward to sharing our annual lists of the releases that we felt stood out.

17/12/2024

https://michiganrockandrolllegends.com/blog/522-best-albums-of-2024-two-views 2024 was a great year for music; and my good friend Larry Van Cleve and I always look forward to sharing our annual lists of the releases that we felt stood out.

15/12/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmB7Bv9JO0U Dr. J’s Legendary Song of the Week for the MMHP989 podcast is “Jenny Take A Ride” by Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels. The band’s third single welded Chuck Willis’ “C. C. Rider” to Little Richard’s “Jenny, Jenny” and was the first of seven high energy chart hits by the group. They first came together in 1964 in Detroit as Billy Lee & The Rivieras with lead singer Billy Levise, lead guitarist Jim McCarty, drummer John Badanjek, bassist Earl Elliott, and rhythm guitarist Joey Kubert. By mid-summer they had attracted a fanatical local following. The band’s live performances were so potent that the unrecorded group was soon headlining over major Motown artists at clubs and casinos in the Detroit area. They changed their name to Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels after signing with Bob Crewe’s New Voice label. What followed was a wild two-year ride through the star-making machinery of the record industry that brought them fame, but not fortune, and tore the group apart in the process.

Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels make "Jenny Take a Ride" with "C.C. Rider"

08/12/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW9DDIfmDUk Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week is “Respect” by The Rationals. In an interview, lead singer Scott Morgan stated that the band worked out their version of “Respect” on the stage of Mother’s teen club in East Tawas. Jeep Holland did the arrangement on the recording which was produced by Les Cooley, and it was Holland’s idea for the instantly recognizable note at the beginning. Being from the Detroit area, the band grew up on Motown and R&B music, and it took just three tries in the studio to capture their classic version. The single was initially released on Holland’s A-Square label before he signed a deal for the band on Cameo where “Respect” peaked at # 92 on the Hot 100 in 1966. Jerry Wexler wanted the band to sign with Atlantic Records, but Jeep Holland apparently was unwilling to give up his control of the band’s recordings. In 1967, the Cameo label went out of business, and Aretha Franklin had a # 1 hit with her version of “Respect” on Atlantic.

When serious collectors compose lists of the top shoulda-been-bigger bands of the '60s, the Rationals are often among them. Coming out of the same Ann Arbor,...

01/12/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5udUHX48774 Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week is “Boom Boom” by John Lee Ho**er. It was John Lee’s only Hot 100 hit when it charted in 1962. Ho**er wrote “Boom Boom” during an extended engagement at the Apex Bar in Detroit the year before. He was always a little tardy for his performances, and he got the idea for the song from the female bartender at the Apex who would say to him “Boom Boom – you late again” on a nightly basis. Although Ho**er was primarily a solo performer or accompanied by only a second guitarist on his early recordings, he often recorded with a small band while on the Vee Jay label. On “Boom Boom,” Ho**er used several of Motown’s Funk Brothers including pianist Joe Hunter, bassist James Jamerson, drummer Benny Benjamin, and sax players Hank Crosby and Andrew “Mike” Terry. John Lee Ho**er is a featured performer on our video series chapter, We’re Gonna Rock. The video can be viewed on the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends website and at the Historical Museum of Bay County.

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupBoom Boom · John Lee Ho**erUrban Blues℗ A Geffen Records Release; ℗ 1967 UMG Recordings, Inc.Released on: 1967-03...

28/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pge7HbU__z0&list=PLA7uGnBobjw_DJm17T1X1Q3fMN0uZtorz Listen to Part 1 of our cool interview with MRRL Hall of Fame inductee Al Jacquez from Savage Grace.

Michigan Rock Vocal/bassist/songwriter legend Al Jacquez is no stranger to the music business. Straddling the comforts of positivity post-Savage Grace (which...

26/11/2024

Check out our lagest podcast with MRRL Hall of Fame inductee Al Jacquez from Savage Grace on Thursday.

24/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI5WyhTEwW0Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week is “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes. No singing group was hotter than The Supremes in 1966. “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” became the trio’s eighth # 1 single when it topped the charts for two weeks in November. The song’s signature guitar part originated from a Morse code-like radio sound effect, typically used before a news announcement, which caught Lamont Dozier’s ear. He later collaborated with Brian and Eddie Holland to integrate the idea into a song. Many elements of the recording, including the guitars, the drums, and Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard’s vocals were multitracked, a production technique that was established and popularized by Holland-Dozier-Holland and other premier producers of the 1960s. H-D-H recorded “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” in eight sessions with The Supremes and The Funk Brothers before settling on a version deemed suitable for release. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the MRRL HOF in 2015.

17/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huKbLK5aC6Q Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week is “No More Mr. Nice Guy” by Alice Cooper. Released as the third single from the band’s # 1 album, “Billion Dollar Babies,” the song was written as a response to the negative press the band had been receiving, some of which had been directed at Alice’s father who was a minister. Strangely enough, “No More Mr. Nice Guy” was a bigger hit in Great Britain, reaching # 10, than in the U.S. where it peaked at # 25. The song has had an interesting history over the years. “No More Mr. Nice Guy” was played in the classic stoner film Dazed and Confused. The scene from the movie was later parodied on the Family Guy TV show in the episode titled Jungle Love. The song was later re-recorded by Alice Cooper and used in the video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and also used in The Simpsons’ episode Love Is A Many Strangled Thing. In addition, Cooper made a cameo appearance while performing the song in the film adaptation of the TV series Dark Shadows.

HD

10/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VHLYXaVaU Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week inductee from the MRRL HOF is “Mainstreet” by Bob Seger. “Mainstreet” was the second 45 released from Seger’s hit album, “Night Moves”. It marked the first time that Seger released a ballad as the a-side of one of his singles; and like the album’s title track, which was his first Top Ten hit, “Mainstreet” was based on places and events in his early life. Seger has stated that the street he was singing about was Ann Street, just off Main Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he grew up. There was a pool hall on Ann where they had girls dancing in the window and R&B bands playing on the weekends. In a 1994 interview in the Detroit Free Press, Seger spoke about the song “Mainstreet” with writer Gary Graff: “Again, that’s going back to the “Night Moves” situation where I was writing about my high school years in Ann Arbor and what it was like – the discovery, the total naivete and fresh-faced openness that I went through. It was sort of an entire awakening of my life; before that, I was kind of a quiet, lonesome kid.”

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupMainstreet · Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet BandNight Moves℗ 1976 Hideout Records & Distributors, Inc., under excl...

03/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwEUXNS-k2s Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week is “Bad Time” by Grand Funk. The band’s last big single came from a particularly painful chapter in Mark Farner’s life that resulted in his seeking a divorce from his first wife in 1974. According to his biography, From Grand Funk To Grace, while she sat crying in the kitchen, Farner sat at the piano in the living room of their home and composed what become the hit song “Bad Time”. It was the second single released from Grand Funk’s ninth studio album, “All the Girls in the World Beware!!!” Sounding more pop than most of their previous releases, “Bad Time” became the band’s fourth single to reach the Top Ten, but it was also Grand Funk’s last Top 40 hit in the U.S.

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupBad Time (Remastered 2002) · Grand Funk RailroadAll The Girls In The World Beware!!!℗ A Capitol Records Release; ...

01/11/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP3trZ6d_1Y&list=PLA7uGnBobjw_DJm17T1X1Q3fMN0uZtorz&index=1 Check out Part 1 of our our latest podcast episode with renowned record man, Mel Kanar.

Mel Kanar was the supplier. He knew the bands, the songs, the CEO and the DJ's. What music fans don't know is how large of a roll he played on charting early...

27/10/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGV6LVmzN1c Dr. J’s Legendary Michigan Song of the Week is “Rock & Roll” by Detroit featuring Mitch Ryder. “Rock ‘N Roll” was written by Lou Reed and included on “Loaded”, his last studio album with the Velvet Underground. Mitch Ryder’s version of the song with his band Detroit was kicked off with a big guitar riff by Steve Hunter and prominent cowbell compliments of former Detroit Wheels’ drummer Johnny Badanjek. Lou Reed was impressed by the powerful performance and was quoted as saying that was how the song was supposed to sound. After Detroit broke up, Reed recruited Hunter for his Rock N Roll Animal tour and two live albums. Following a nasty parting of the ways with Bob Crewe, Mitch Ryder returned to Detroit and took on Barry Kramer, publisher of Creem magazine, as his manager. Kramer’s plan was to reunite the Detroit Wheels but he was only able to recruit Badanjek and guitarist Joey Kubert. The band then changed gears and morphed into Detroit but was plagued with numerous personnel changes, disagreements, and rampant drug abuse. The band managed to produce an excellent album titled “Detroit”, but it fell through the cracks along with its two great singles, “Long Neck Goose” and especially the radio friendly “Rock ‘N Roll’. Despite sounding like a major hit, “Rock ‘N Roll” never found its audience and failed to reach the Hot 100, peaking at # 107 in early 1972.

Mitch Ryder's great version of Lou Reed's Rock'n Roll. Awesome guitar solo.