Hastings Street Grease, Vol 1 BS-110D

	John Cohassey's liner notes are below, all photos are by John Rockwood

During the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit and Toledo shared a mutual relationship which saw Detroit blues artists appearing in Toledo nightclubs and concert  bills.  With this release Blues Suit Records maintains an important association between these two Great Lakes cities.  Taking its title from Detroit's most legendary street of African American culture, Hastings Street Grease , this compilation of Detroit bluesmen pays tribute to a by-gone era while providing a look at the city's current array of talent

From the turn of the century until its demise by urban renewal in the early 1960s, Hastings Street remained the center of business for Detroit's  east side community, made up largely of Jewish entrepreneurs and small black business owners.  Lined with two-story family-owned shops and corner taverns, Hastings teemed by

day with shoppers; at night it became transformed, into, what Hooker later described, as a "rough wide-open street." The Hastings Street district (not all the  music was confined to Hastings proper) included activity on such streets as Brady and Alfred streets, where, from the windows of house parties and blind pigs, could be heard rough-hewn blues music performed by Southern-born guitar  players who came north to work in the automobile plants. With the final demolition of the east side district around 1963, blues music moved, along  with displaced residents, to areas throughout the city, primarily the west side community around Twelfth Street.  At that time, the blues could be heard at such places such as the Club Carribee on Jefferson and the Apex Bar on  Oakland.  By the 1970s local and national blues acts were booked at venues like Phelps Lounge on Oakland, and Ethel's Cocktail Lounge on Mack.  This compilation features two generations of bluesmen, several  of whom were members of Detroit's post World War II blues scene.  Members of the post war blues era, Eddie Kirkland and Eddie Burns (both born in the South in 1928) migrated to Detroit during the 1940s where they, at various  times, before launching their solo careers, backed bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker.  Featured also is the guitar and vocal of Emmanual Young another musician who briefly accompanied Hooker in the 1950s.

Though the city had a number of corner taverns during the 1940s and 1950s which featured down home blues, numerous Detroit bluesmen found their  first jobs in the house party scene.  At these private occasions most musicians performed alone as solo or duo acts.  The solo performances by Howard Armstrong - former member the famed Depression era string  band of Howard, Bogan, and Armstrong - and bassist/guitarist Leon Horner recall the roots of Detroit blues solo guitar.  While Armstrong exhibits a Lightnin' Hopkins style blues, with vocals reminiscent of  Mississippi John Hurt, Horner's solo performance is representative of the rough-edged sound of many post war Detroit bluesmen who recorded in small back room studios around the city.

Detroit Piano Fats' selection, "Hastings Street Revisited," is a piano/rap number which takes it inspiration from Bob "Detroit Count" White's 1948  local hit "Hastings Street Opera."  Similar to Detroit Count's orginal (recorded in the back room-studio of Joe's Record Shop on Hastings) the spoken reminiscences offer memories of Hastings Street landmarks like  Castle Theater - "where cats chased rats across the stage" and singer Mamie Smith performed during the 1930s - the Three Star Bar, and the Rain-Bo Music Bar at Hastings and Adams. During the 1950s as Hastings featured rough down home blues, Arkansas-born Willie D. Warren arrived in Chicago.  In the Windy City Warren became the founder of the blues electric bass  and found himself apprenticed to bluesmen Freddie King and Otis Rush.  Since his arrival in the Detroit in 1975, Warren has become a mentor to numerous younger musicians.  Not long after making Detroit his home, Warren  met guitarist and former Chess recording artist Bobo Jenkins at Ethel's Cocktail, and subsequently became a regular in the city's blues scene.  Though he often performs standards, such as the featured cut "Everyday I Have  The Blues," Warren offers his own guitar approach, featuring sparsely phrased lines more reminiscent of  Warren's former friend and guitarist Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones, than the often-imitated King style. While Warren emerged a featured act in various in bands around the city, (eg. The Progressive Blues Band) during the early 1980s, Seward "Harmonica" Shah arrived on the scene, first sitting in at jam sessions  until becoming a featured solo and recording artist. In the closing selection, "I Walk Down Hastings Street," Eddie Kirkland laments, "I wish I could turn back the hand's of time."  With  Hastings Street surviving only in song and memory, this collection provides listeners with a glimpse into past and the importance of a street, its community, and the people who worked, danced, and sang to the music of the  blues.

			back to the Blue Suit home page