Posts tagged Detroit
Soul Station Feature: Joe L. Carter
Soul Station Feature: Joe L. Carter

Please Mr. Foreman

"I don't mind working, but I do mind dying!" In the late 1960s that became a slogan and a line of protest in Detroit, and in many ways it was adopted from a great blues by Joe L. Carter. Carter recorded as Joe-L (or Joe L.) and he had several 45s on small Detroit labels in the late 1960s. Please Mr. Foreman (on the Classic label run by Rudy Robinson) was one of them and if not the best, certainly the one which attracted the most local attention. In 1971 he worked with Willie Mitchell and had two more releases; one of those four sides was even a re-recording of Please Mr Foreman.

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RadioDJ PiSoul Station Feature, Rudy Robinson, Willie Mitchell, Detroit
Soul Station Feature: Bohannon
Soul Station Feature: Bohannon

Truck Stop

Hamilton Bohannon grew up in GA and went to college there all the while working as a drummer. He was recruited to join the touring band of Stevie Wonder and thus he moved to Detroit in 1967. Eventually he led a band that backed other artists as was billed as Bohannon & The Motown Sound. He did not move to California when Motown essentially fled Detroit. He started his own band and went after a unique guitar based, dance-funk style. Initially he had Ray Parker, Jr and Dennis Coffey playing on his records. In 1974 he had his first hit, but only in the UK. Into the early 1980s, his music was consistently in the r&b charts, though he had only one big hit, Let's Start The Dance, in 1978. I love his insistent beat and all those guitars, many of them very fly and wah-wah. Sometimes the dancers have other instrumentation, as on this 1974 number, which has harmonica. It was a B-side to a track from his first album released the previous year. Be prepared to move.

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RadioDJ PiHamilton Bohannon, Detroit