We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
- Cash On Delivery/Cash Upon Pickup Available
About Detroit Blues 1938-1954
Folks came to Detroit from states east and south drawn by the promise of work in car plants or steel mills. They brought their music with them. Detroit never achieved the fame and reputation of nearby Chicago and there are two principal factors. First, Detroit was a union town and untutored musicians had little chance of joining a musicians' union; the second was that until the late 1950s there were no major record labels in town, just a network of small independents. As James 'Rabbit' Johnson put it, That always been the problem with Detroit . . . local cat got a record out and many people don't even know about it! The Frazier family - brothers Calvin and Lonnie, and their parents, arrived in Detroit from Memphis sometime in 1936. The family probably originated in Arkansas, where Calvin said he'd been born in 1915. All the family played at least one instrument. Calvin and Johnny moved into blues. Johnny played a mean bass fiddle and Calvin a mean guitar. But they were damn poor singers and they knew I could sing like hell. We would walk the streets and play for handouts all hours of the night. Said Johnny Shines.Later he hitched up with Sampson Pittman and the pair, with pianist Sonny Glissom were remembered by washboard player/drummer James 'Peck' Curtis: I was with them, he told David Evans. We broadcasted out of Blytheville in 1935, on the radio station up there, KLCN. Calvin also met Robert Johnson around this time in Helena, Arkansas and, with Shines, played and perhaps traveled with him. From his 1938 recordings, recorded by Alan Lomax, particularly She's A Double-Crossin' Woman, it's certain that Johnson had a profound effect on Frazier's style of playing. Calvin later claimed Johnson invited him to one of his recording sessions but that he'd ended up in a Memphis hospital after being injured, and his brother Johnny killed, by the latter's father-in-law. Not everybody here has such a compelling story - but they all make some great music.
