Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Kenny did sessions for Willie in New York, yeah. A lot of the same
session guys were on Atlantic and King R&B sessions.

Oh, Fortune is the great almost mythical Detroit treasure trove. If
Fortune didn't exist, we would have had to invent it. The woulda,
shoulda been a contender label that Berry Gordy tried to buy several
times over.

He tried to buy up their biggest star, Nolan Strong, but Nolan was too
dependent on the Browns, who owned the label. Jack and Devora Brown,
ran the place on a shoestring, out of first a house, then a narrow
storefront with a dirt floor studio in the back.

But there was something mystical about those records, a sound no other
label could match.

They would rent time by the hour for kids to come in and make
records...if the kid sounded promising --as Nolan Strong did -- they
would offer to record him for free.

A L.A. lawyer contacted me a few years ago, asking if I knew where
Sheldon Brown was -- the son, who owns the rights to the catalog.
There's never been legitimate CD releases of the Fortune
catalog...Sheldon thought he would get what Berry Gordy got when he
sold Motown. Try again! So he didn't cut a deal with anybody.
  

    
p.s. Last I knew, the mysterious Sheldon Brown was in L.A. When he was
still in metro Detroit, he wouldn't meet with me face to face, but
talked on the phone. He once did a drop at a Kinko's, left a photo for
me there. He used to be seen riding his bike around Royal Oak.
  

    
Dang. As long as the tapes are safe...

So...back to the book for a minute...how little *was* Little Willie
when he started singing in public?
  

    
<18> that unknown tune was straight ahead r&b.  Not even a faint
resonance to hippie anthems.

I remember the Detroit jazz scene as being more than the Jones
Brothers.  Baker's Keyboard Lounge brought in national acts, but people
like Marcus Belgrave and Wendall Harrison and the Tribe were going
strong at that time.  Charles Mingus came to town and played an old
hotel that some entrepreneur types with trust funds were trying to get
off the ground.  The first thing out of Mingus's mouth was : "The only
way I get to play with Marcus Belgrave is to come to Detroit because he
won't leave town anymore." Then there were the guys who later became
known as the Funk Brothers who played jazz gigs.

In the 40's and 50's  before they left Detroit, you had Betty Carter,
Wardell Gray, Milt Buckner, Howard McGee, Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan,
Louis Hayes, Paul Chambers, Yusef Latiff, and Milt Jackson.
  

    
david--is this the song you're looking for--don't pat me on the back and
call me brother by John Kasandra.  it's from 1968--
<http://youtu.be/SOsOS_F-vI8>
  

    
Oh, man, that name is familiar... 

I'm sure I had tha album. But who was he?
  

    
john kasandra was the alter ego of John W Anderson.  Here is some info about
the album that don't pat me on the back is on:

<http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=m5w5g4mdws>
  

    
He wrote the bobby bland song, Ain't Nothing You can Do.  Here is a tiny bit
of additional info about him:
<http://stepfatherofsoul.blogspot.com/2006/02/soul-of-movement-whats-under-
natural.html>
  

    
Patrick, I will forever be in your debt.  Thanks!  That's the tune.
  

    
you're welcome!  but it's the miracle of the vast, ever expanding online
database that is absorbing all particles of extant information at an
exponentially increasing rate---i don't think it would have been possible to
track down the name of the song even 5 years ago unless you happened to
either stumble across the album/single or asked someone who had just
stumbled across the album/single.
  

    
Wow, so John Kasandra it is...

Ed, Willie was only 6 when he started singing with his sister Mable
and brothers in the United Five.

I believe Marcus Belgrave had a very strong smoke allergy so he
couldn't play in clubs for the longest time, either, so you'd see him
outdoors at the Detroit Jazz Festival, or not at all.

A lot of what I know about the Detroit jazz scene, I know from talking
to the various Funk brothers. They were hilariously dismissive of many
of the Motown stars they worked with. Beans Bowles was particularly
hard on Diana Ross -- I thought overly so. It's not as if she was Sarah
Vaughan, but she could sing in her girlish way.
  

    
I've been lucky enough to beat Joe Messina's house when he has jam
sessions with friends. He remembers very few specific Motown songs he's
on, because he never cared about pop songs. He cares about jazz. 
The drill is, they noodle around on various standards, while Joe
intersperses the playing with terrible jokes.
When I asked him once if he was one of the guitars in the intro to the
Spinners' "It's a Shame," he said "Do you like it?" I said yeah! He
said, "Then it's me!"
  

    
So did any of these dittyboppers play with Willie? Or did he hew his
career in a different way?
  

    
Susan, I read your book and enjoyed it a great deal. I have friends and
family in Detroit, and I go back there at least once a year to walk and
drive around and learn the city's history. I've barely begun to visit all
the Detroit musical luminaries' graves at Woodlawn Cemetery on Woodward
Avenue--I did pay tribute to Jackie Wilson's grave in Westlawn Cemetery in
Wayne. I don't recall reading where Little Willie John is buried--did you
not say in your book?

I think it's a huge pity that there is no video footage of LWJ in
performance visible today except that short clip from "Route 66"--what
episode is that from, so I can do further research and view it?
  

    
Frako,
I do know where Willie's buried and you know, I looked back and you're
right, I don't mention it in the book. I talked about his funeral at
New Bethel Baptist Church, Rev. C.L. Franklin officiating, how he was
laid out at the Cantrell Funeral home, but then got all caught up in
describing the post-funeral scene, etc.

Willie is at what is called Detroit Memorial Park East although it's
technically in Warren. Florence Ballard of the Supremes is also there.
I actually did a pretty cool interactive story for the Detroit News
last year, where I give locations for many musicians' gravesites in and
around Detroit. 

http://www.detnews.com/article/20101111/SPECIAL01/101110001/

Go there, click on "Detroit Memorial Park" and then on Willie's name
and a photo of his grave and everything comes up. 

Woodlawn alone has many Motown folks, and there are others scattered
around town...Nolan Strong of the Diablos is also out where Jackie
Wilson is, at Westlawn.
  

    
Oh and the Route 66 episode is called "Give the Old Cat a Tender
Mouse," and it aired Dec. 21, 1962. It's very short so don't expect
much, but it is him, wearing a short band jacket, playing the claves as
if his life depended on it, in a nightclub scene based in Memphis.
  

    
Ed, do you mean which of the Funk Brothers played with Willie?

Joe Hunter played keyboards behind him quite a lot, because Joe toured
with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and back when Willie had no
band, the Midnighters backed him up. Joe was also a family friend. He
knew Willie's sister Delores very well. 

Of the others, Uriel Jones was in Moore School (for Detroit public
school kids who acted up) at the same time as Willie, and knew him.

I bet Earl van Dyke played with Willie at some point, especially later
in the '60s when Willie was playing club gigs at places like Phelps
Lounge, and Earl was very active in the clubs then. Earl passed some
time ago of course, and I didn't explore that thread.
  

    
I was actually wondering about any of the Detroit jazz guys, not just
the Funk Brothers. 

One of the amazing things about the book is that, around the edges, so
many of these people all knew each other. There's that picture of
Willie onstage with all those dancers, three of whom married stars --
one of whom was Willie himself! But it does seem like Detroit musicians
were a large group who stuck together and seem to have avoided a lot
of the cliquishness you find in scenes like this (ie, Memphis). Or am I
just dealing with rose-colored glasses here?
  

    
What I like about the Detroit musicians too are, the
cross-pollination, they all knew each other from the clubs, and many of
the jazz guys would do R&B gigs...

I know more of those types (R&B guys with a facility for jazz) who
played with Willie, guys like Joe Weaver, who told me the co'hn likker
story, and blues guitarist Johnnie Bassett, who started out with Willie
in the Warfield Theater, as teenagers. Johnnie is on Mack Ave.
Records, gigs a lot and goes back and forth between jazz and blues...
  

    
Although, of course, it was Paul Williams, and the Hucklebuck, that
got Willie out of Detroit...
  

    
There was a Paul Williams in the Temptations, too. Different guy, I
assume. 
  

    
Otis Blackwell pitched Fever to Henry Glover at during a routine visit and
Willie did not like it at first.  Did willie ever meet Otis, did he ever
have any sort of relationship with him?

Otis Blackwell has always been an interesting figure to me--he wrote so many
of the greatest hits of early rock and yet he remains somewhat obscure.  Or
at least he seems pretty obscure to me, given the amount of success he had.
  

    
Ed -- yes, two different Paul Williamses ...the News just had a sad
story about the fighting between Motown's Paul Williams' heirs over the
Motown royalties he gets. He left a lot of kids and it's surprising
how much does flow in, year to year. So the Temptations got paid.

Yes Otis Blackwell and Willie knew each other well...Willie did some
other songs by Otis and they co-wrote some...
  

    
p.s. I wish I'd gotten to talk to Otis B about Willie, that would hae
been great.
  

    
Listening to Otis Blackwell play "Paralyzed" just now made me realize
that rockabilly is based on boogie woogie piano with vocals that match
the syncopation of the backing.  So simple, and it took me forty years
to figure it out!