liner notes BS-109D

BS-109 DETROIT JUNIOR - TAKE OUT THE TIME
Liner notes by John Anthony Brisbin

Motion is a recurring theme in the life of Chicago blues pianist, Detroit Junior (That's
right. Read on.). Actually two kinds of motion: there's the accidental, near tragic kind, and
there's the being propelled out-of-town-by-women kind.
Check out the accidental kind: "When I was a kid, we stayed for about three years in a
little town called Pulaski, Illinois, not too far from Cairo. That's where I really learned about
country life. One time the wagon run away with me, comin' down Pulaski hill. Somethin' broke
under there and the horses was a-runaway. That old bit of wagon was goin' from side to side. It
was flyin' down there. Hee hee. When I got down to the bottom of the hill, people was wavin'
and goin' on. Finally, all the guys that was out there, they got it stopped. I coulda gotten killed,
but durin' that time it seemed like fun to me."
Try these even scarier examples: "After I got a car in '53, I would drive down to Flint and
Saginaw on weekends. I made more money playin' in the clubs there. That's when I had an
accident. I broke the windshield out with my head. I had glass all in my head. It's a wonder I
didn't get my eyes cut out... A week later I come out of the hospital. I was ridin' between
Pontiac and Flint with my friend Gene Seals. He was doin' about 95 miles an hour in a new
Mercury - he'd had it about six weeks. It was drizzlin' rain. He went to pass... two wheels went
this-a-way, two wheels went that-a-way and over we went - twice! It threw me and Gene out on
the shoulder of the highway which was good. The car exploded, burned. We woulda been dead.
Still, too much force on this shoulder, this hip. This ear was just hangin'. Some guy put his
coat over me. I thought I was dead then." But, of course, Detroit wasn't. His head bandaged up
like a turban, Junior auditioned at The Circle Club in Flint a few days later. He not only got the
job, he assembled his own house band - Little Junior Williams and the Blues Champs - and took
up a long residency backing up such visiting luminaries as Roscoe Gordon, Fats Domino and
John Lee Hooker.
Detroit Junior was born Emery Williams Jr in Haynes, Arkansas October 26, 1931. He
spent his formative years in the care of his maternal grandmother, Carrie Long, a prominent
preacher's wife. They lived first in Memphis and then, in rural Pulaski, Illinois. Mrs. Long was
strict and did the best she could, but in 1947, when the wild sixteen year old threatened to marry
his young girlfriend, she sent him off to his mother in Flint, Michigan to cool down. (See how
the other kind of motion is already cropping up?) More girl problems followed in Flint, of
course, but so did the influence of Junior's mother, Dora Belle "Doretha" Long. "My mother
was always doin' it different than my grandmother. She wanted me to play the blues. She began
to take me to house parties and to a couple of clubs. My mother was the cause of me being a
performer, period."
Working factory jobs by day and playing piano by night, he soon began doing floor
shows in Detroit, Flint and Pontiac with up and coming singers Jackie Wilson and Little Willie
John. At nineteen years old, he also married his first wife, Marian Jones. Detroit Junior's 1951
move to Cleveland was an exodus from Marian's meddling mother. (There's that other kind of
motion again.) A happy consequence of this move was that it put him square in the path of
Cleveland's thriving blues scene. At the famous Gleason's night club, he heard and got
encouragement from Amos Milburn and Charles Brown, two of the era's hottest stars. Eddie
Chamblee, Big Jay McNeely, Lynn Hope, Joe Liggins, Buddy and Ella Johnson, Eddie Boyd and
Lowell Fulson (with young Ray Charles on piano) were also part of the cavalcade through
Cleveland that impressed young Junior.
Marian convinced him to return to Pontiac to give life with her mother another try (There
it is again.) But the move proved disastrous; they divorced. An interesting footnote (literally): at
the hall where Junior met his second wife, Alice, he danced with her even though a piece of steel
had fallen and crushed his little toe in the Pontiac Motors factory that day. "Yeah, I was dancin'
with a bad toe - and a walkin' cane!" He soon married Alice. But her mother began to meddle
(with the insurance money Junior received for one of the two car accidents) and that caused yet
another exodus, this one to Chicago in 1955. "That mother-in-law problem really made my mind
up to leave Michigan...plus Eddie Boyd had come through Detroit awhile before and said, 'Hey,
man. You should go to Chicago, try to get recorded.' So my mother and I flew to
MidwayAirport in Chicago in one of them prop planes from American Airlines. We wanted to
see Chess."
Chess didn't bite just then but Junior settled in Chicago for good in 1956. He had to
break into the scene by accepting an out of town gig from Chicago sax player J. T. Brown at The
Club 99 in Joliet, Il. Regular work with Brown at the legendary Squeeze Club followed. He
worked the Washburne Lounge with Eddie Taylor, Earring George Mayweather and Chicken
House Shorty as well and it wasn't too long before his own group including Eddie King, Little
Mac Simmons and Bob Anderson began a long stint at Pepper's Lounge.
In 1960 Mac Simmons brought Junior and the band to The Cadillac Baby Show Lounge
on 47th and Dearborn. Both cut singles for Cadillac Baby's small but doughty Bea and Baby
label. Junior's Money Tree b/w So Unhappy (B & B 111) enjoyed local success (and was
covered successfully by Little Milton some years later). It also got him stuck with the stage
name he's hated ever since. "We stayed up all night tryin' to think of your show name," Cadillac
Baby tried explaining to him after the records were already pressed and circulated with that
strange moniker. "Well, you'se a Junior and you'se from Detroit. From now on, you are known
as Detroit Junior!" Through the '60s and early '70s he knocked around most of Chicago's south
and west side taverns, playing with whatever band needed a pianist, solo at various piano bars, or
with bands he put together himself. 1966 novelty song about too much partying, Call My Job,
(b/w The Way I Feel, USA 814), was one of a handful of sides he cut for USA which enjoyed
success - ever more so when it was covered by Albert King. His 1971 Blues on Blues LP (an Al
Smith production reissued on Antilles in '77) Detroit Junior: Chicago Urban Blues opened him
up to younger white audiences, but it was his 1969-75 stint with the notoriously tough
taskmaster, Howlin' Wolf, that earned Junior his stripes as a Chicago bluesman. "Wolf put on a
heck of a show back then. He walked the bar and all that, turned his cap sideways and crawled.
He give the people entertainment for their money." 1980 recordings on volume six of Alligator's
Living Chicago Blues series are also worthy of note and marked the appearance of another of
Junior's fine novelty tunes, If I Hadn't Been High.
Happily, Detroit Junior hasn't gone through any windshields or hasn't had to cut loose
from any mothers-in-law since landing in Chicago 41 years ago. But there's a third kind of
motion for which he has a reputation. It's the kind where he hops around like a madman behind
the piano, where he drops to his knees still playing, where he crawls underneath it still tickling
the ivories and singing up a storm. Neither age nor the severe kidney failure he suffered three
years ago has slowed that motion. Matter of fact, he just destroyed audiences with it at the '97
Poconos Festival and the '97 Chicago Blues Festival - and continues to do so regularly at Andy's
and Blue Chicago on Clark, two of his Chicago haunts. Did he get that from Wolf? Nah. He
got it from clinging to his grandmother's coatsleeve going into Sweet Hope Baptist Church in
Memphis sixty years ago. "I enjoyed it when the minister really got down with it, jumpin' all
over the pulpit. Same thing in the blues field. Ya gotta do it with all your heart and soul. So
that's what I been doin' out here. That's what I'm known for."
On his first Blue Suit offering, the 1995 Turn Up The Heat, Junior re-cut Howlin'
Wolf's famed Killin' Floor to highlight that major part of his roots. The rest of the offerings
tapped his ability as "one of the finest and funniest composers in the blues" (Alligator's Bruce
Iglauer's words) and included a hilarious sequel to his If I Hadn't Been High called I Got High
Again.
On this latest cd Junior harkens back to even earlier roots, covering some of the major
musical forces who inspired him as they blew through Cleveland and Detroit when he was just
getting started on piano: Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Willie Mabon and his number one idol,
Amos Milburn. Check out his locomotive reading of Milburn's trademark Chicken Shack,
liberally seasoned by his own wit and phrasing. No less delectable are his own latest originals,
such as the treat your woman right treatise Take Out The Time. Musically Junior is as strong as
ever, pounding out merciless boogie woogies and spritely R & B melodies. He is braced by a
small, sympathetic combo, tasteful horns and sweet gospel vocals chiming in in just the right
places; and a surprise appearance by Detroit legend Eddie Burns on I Got High Last Night. This
cd conjures up the full, funny and intimate pleasure of a true blues piano bar, a popular place in
the urban nightscape. So step inside, pull up a stool, grab a drink and let one of the masters of
the form move you!

Back to Take Out The Time
Back to the Blue Suit catalog page




		BS-109 DETROIT JUNIOR - TAKE OUT THE TIME Liner notes by John Anthony Brisbin

Motion is a recurring theme in the life of Chicago blues pianist, Detroit Junior (That's right. Read on.). Actually two kinds of motion: there's the accidental, near tragic kind, and there's the being propelled out-of-town-by-women kind. Check out the accidental kind: "When I was a kid, we stayed for about three years in a little town called Pulaski, Illinois, not too far from Cairo. That's where I really learned about country life. One time the wagon run away with me, comin' down Pulaski hill. Somethin' broke under there and the horses was a-runaway. That old bit of wagon was goin' from side to side. It was flyin' down there. Hee hee. When I got down to the bottom of the hill, people was wavin' and goin' on. Finally, all the guys that was out there, they got it stopped. I coulda gotten killed, but durin' that time it seemed like fun to me." Try these even scarier examples: "After I got a car in '53, I would drive down to Flint and Saginaw on weekends. I made more money playin' in the clubs there. That's when I had an accident. I broke the windshield out with my head. I had glass all in my head. It's a wonder I didn't get my eyes cut out... A week later I come out of the hospital. I was ridin' between Pontiac and Flint with my friend Gene Seals. He was doin' about 95 miles an hour in a new Mercury - he'd had it about six weeks. It was drizzlin' rain. He went to pass... two wheels went this-a-way, two wheels went that-a-way and over we went - twice! It threw me and Gene out on the shoulder of the highway which was good. The car exploded, burned. We woulda been dead. Still, too much force on this shoulder, this hip. This ear was just hangin'. Some guy put his coat over me. I thought I was dead then." But, of course, Detroit wasn't. His head bandaged up like a turban, Junior auditioned at The Circle Club in Flint a few days later. He not only got the job, he assembled his own house band - Little Junior Williams and the Blues Champs - and took up a long residency backing up such visiting luminaries as Roscoe Gordon, Fats Domino and John Lee Hooker. Detroit Junior was born Emery Williams Jr in Haynes, Arkansas October 26, 1931. He spent his formative years in the care of his maternal grandmother, Carrie Long, a prominent preacher's wife. They lived first in Memphis and then, in rural Pulaski, Illinois. Mrs. Long was strict and did the best she could, but in 1947, when the wild sixteen year old threatened to marry his young girlfriend, she sent him off to his mother in Flint, Michigan to cool down. (See how the other kind of motion is already cropping up?) More girl problems followed in Flint, of course, but so did the influence of Junior's mother, Dora Belle "Doretha" Long. "My mother was always doin' it different than my grandmother. She wanted me to play the blues. She began to take me to house parties and to a couple of clubs. My mother was the cause of me being a performer, period." Working factory jobs by day and playing piano by night, he soon began doing floor shows in Detroit, Flint and Pontiac with up and coming singers Jackie Wilson and Little Willie John. At nineteen years old, he also married his first wife, Marian Jones. Detroit Junior's 1951 move to Cleveland was an exodus from Marian's meddling mother. (There's that other kind of motion again.) A happy consequence of this move was that it put him square in the path of Cleveland's thriving blues scene. At the famous Gleason's night club, he heard and got encouragement from Amos Milburn and Charles Brown, two of the era's hottest stars. Eddie Chamblee, Big Jay McNeely, Lynn Hope, Joe Liggins, Buddy and Ella Johnson, Eddie Boyd and Lowell Fulson (with young Ray Charles on piano) were also part of the cavalcade through Cleveland that impressed young Junior. Marian convinced him to return to Pontiac to give life with her mother another try (There it is again.) But the move proved disastrous; they divorced. An interesting footnote (literally): at the hall where Junior met his second wife, Alice, he danced with her even though a piece of steel had fallen and crushed his little toe in the Pontiac Motors factory that day. "Yeah, I was dancin' with a bad toe - and a walkin' cane!" He soon married Alice. But her mother began to meddle (with the insurance money Junior received for one of the two car accidents) and that caused yet another exodus, this one to Chicago in 1955. "That mother-in-law problem really made my mind up to leave Michigan...plus Eddie Boyd had come through Detroit awhile before and said, 'Hey, man. You should go to Chicago, try to get recorded.' So my mother and I flew to MidwayAirport in Chicago in one of them prop planes from American Airlines. We wanted to see Chess." Chess didn't bite just then but Junior settled in Chicago for good in 1956. He had to break into the scene by accepting an out of town gig from Chicago sax player J. T. Brown at The Club 99 in Joliet, Il. Regular work with Brown at the legendary Squeeze Club followed. He worked the Washburne Lounge with Eddie Taylor, Earring George Mayweather and Chicken House Shorty as well and it wasn't too long before his own group including Eddie King, Little Mac Simmons and Bob Anderson began a long stint at Pepper's Lounge. In 1960 Mac Simmons brought Junior and the band to The Cadillac Baby Show Lounge on 47th and Dearborn. Both cut singles for Cadillac Baby's small but doughty Bea and Baby label. Junior's Money Tree b/w So Unhappy (B & B 111) enjoyed local success (and was covered successfully by Little Milton some years later). It also got him stuck with the stage name he's hated ever since. "We stayed up all night tryin' to think of your show name," Cadillac Baby tried explaining to him after the records were already pressed and circulated with that strange moniker. "Well, you'se a Junior and you'se from Detroit. From now on, you are known as Detroit Junior!" Through the '60s and early '70s he knocked around most of Chicago's south and west side taverns, playing with whatever band needed a pianist, solo at various piano bars, or with bands he put together himself. 1966 novelty song about too much partying, Call My Job, (b/w The Way I Feel, USA 814), was one of a handful of sides he cut for USA which enjoyed success - ever more so when it was covered by Albert King. His 1971 Blues on Blues LP (an Al Smith production reissued on Antilles in '77) Detroit Junior: Chicago Urban Blues opened him up to younger white audiences, but it was his 1969-75 stint with the notoriously tough taskmaster, Howlin' Wolf, that earned Junior his stripes as a Chicago bluesman. "Wolf put on a heck of a show back then. He walked the bar and all that, turned his cap sideways and crawled. He give the people entertainment for their money." 1980 recordings on volume six of Alligator's Living Chicago Blues series are also worthy of note and marked the appearance of another of Junior's fine novelty tunes, If I Hadn't Been High. Happily, Detroit Junior hasn't gone through any windshields or hasn't had to cut loose from any mothers-in-law since landing in Chicago 41 years ago. But there's a third kind of motion for which he has a reputation. It's the kind where he hops around like a madman behind the piano, where he drops to his knees still playing, where he crawls underneath it still tickling the ivories and singing up a storm. Neither age nor the severe kidney failure he suffered three years ago has slowed that motion. Matter of fact, he just destroyed audiences with it at the '97 Poconos Festival and the '97 Chicago Blues Festival - and continues to do so regularly at Andy's and Blue Chicago on Clark, two of his Chicago haunts. Did he get that from Wolf? Nah. He got it from clinging to his grandmother's coatsleeve going into Sweet Hope Baptist Church in Memphis sixty years ago. "I enjoyed it when the minister really got down with it, jumpin' all over the pulpit. Same thing in the blues field. Ya gotta do it with all your heart and soul. So that's what I been doin' out here. That's what I'm known for." On his first Blue Suit offering, the 1995 Turn Up The Heat, Junior re-cut Howlin' Wolf's famed Killin' Floor to highlight that major part of his roots. The rest of the offerings tapped his ability as "one of the finest and funniest composers in the blues" (Alligator's Bruce Iglauer's words) and included a hilarious sequel to his If I Hadn't Been High called I Got High Again. On this latest cd Junior harkens back to even earlier roots, covering some of the major musical forces who inspired him as they blew through Cleveland and Detroit when he was just getting started on piano: Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Willie Mabon and his number one idol, Amos Milburn. Check out his locomotive reading of Milburn's trademark Chicken Shack, liberally seasoned by his own wit and phrasing. No less delectable are his own latest originals, such as the treat your woman right treatise Take Out The Time. Musically Junior is as strong as ever, pounding out merciless boogie woogies and spritely R & B melodies. He is braced by a small, sympathetic combo, tasteful horns and sweet gospel vocals chiming in in just the right places; and a surprise appearance by Detroit legend Eddie Burns on I Got High Last Night. This cd conjures up the full, funny and intimate pleasure of a true blues piano bar, a popular place in the urban nightscape. So step inside, pull up a stool, grab a drink and let one of the masters of the form move you!

	Back to Take Out The Time Back to the Blue Suit catalog page