COLUMNS

Homage to Fred Smith

2006-02-11T00:17:53Z

Homage to Fred Smith

By John Sinclair

When Wayne Kramer's wife Marjorie called to tell me Fred Smith had passed away, I felt the way so many music-lovers must have felt: What a sad thing to lose a man of such immense talents so prematurely, before he could be granted his just due in the annals of American popular music, and certainly before he could gain any of the rewards which should have been accorded him for his part in helping shape the music of the past 25 years.

Fred and I were once fairly close. Before I was manager of the MC-5 I was comrades with Rob Tyner for a year, and after I started working with the band Wayne and I grew particularly close--a friendship that was revived in the late 1970s and continues to this day.

I never shared the same type of relationship with Fred, who was somewhat of a homebody even in the 60s, when he was married to Sigrid Dobat and generally stayed pretty close to her side in private life.

Working with the band as intensively as I did for almost two years, from September 1967 till July 1969, however, drew all of us close together in many ways--even closer than most bands and their management at that time, because I was engaged with the band as a friend and mentor as well as a fellow player who typically joined the 5 on tenor saxophone for the closing number, "Black To Comm."

(A prime example of our musical interaction circa 1968 can be heard on a new CD release, The American Ruse, on Alive!/Total Energy Records.

The constant attacks on the MC-5 by the police and other authorities in the course of simply trying to play our gigs also bonded us together in unique and beautifully positive ways--sort of like what they say about people at war who go through combat together.

The courage and heart constantly exhibited by the cats in the band when faced with some pretty frightening scenes was always an inspiration to me and spurred me on to do things I never would have attempted otherwise.

Of course this turned out for the worst for me when I was incarcerated July 25, 1969 on a 9-1/2-to-10-year sentence without appeal bond for the crime of possessing two joints of marijuana. By that time the band and I had grown apart and they were in the process of discharging me as their manager; after I went to prison they cut me loose altogether and left me there to do my time without any support from them other than an occasional appearance at the countless benefits that were organized on my behalf by my more faithful friends.

Consequently I had little impetus to resume any sort of relationship with the band or its members after I was released from prison on December 13, 1971. The MC-5 broke up shortly thereafter, and it was only after Wayne had done some time himself that he and I were able to get back together as friends--I thought probably because now he could feel what I had gone through when I was locked up so long.

But I was never friends again with Rob, who had gotten into the habit of giving interviews in which he habitually denied that we had ever shared a common worldview, or Fred, who seemed to have disappeared into the suburbs of Detroit after his marriage to Patti Smith and basically never reappeared on the Motor City scene, of which I remained an active part in several capacities until my departure for New Orleans in the summer of 1991.

Still their passing saddens me, because--despite my personal acrimony--I have no trouble recognizing and continuing to appreciate their gigantic contributions to the form and content of the music of our time, and I'll never forget the wonderful times we had together when that music was being made. They're like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane to me: nothing that's been done in the wake of their immense achievement has even begun to approach the majesty of their sound, their stage show, their fearless determination during the two years we were together to have their say and make their music no matter what obstacles were thrown up in front of their reckless advance upon the hearts and minds of the youth of America.

In Fred's case I remember most warmly one spectacular occasion when he demonstrated the extent of his concern and care for me without regard for his own safety; as a result there will always be a place in my heart for this brave and immensely gifted man.

I was being unjustly attacked by several police officers and private guards at a teen club outside of Pontiac, Michigan when Fred came to my rescue and tried to knock these several miscreant law officers off my back while they were whaling on me with nightsticks and shooting me in the face with mace.

I thought it might be instructive--as well as entertaining--to reprint here the original account of this incident, which was written up by me, printed and distributed as an MC-5 press release (!) by our collective, Trans-Love Energies, and printed as the fifth installment in a series of columns I was writing under the title Rock & Roll Dope for the Fifth Estate, an underground newspaper published in Detroit.

This account appeared in the August 1-14, 1968 issue and is a fairly typical (!) example of the kinds of things that happened to us, and of the way we were wont to respond. It was later printed in my book, Guitar Army.

--New Orleans
1995

(c) 1995, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

Rock & Roll Dope #5

Poet-MC5 manager John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police, the Oakland County Sheriff's Department, and the Michigan State Police while performing at a teen-club in Oakland County last Tuesday, July 23rd.

The two victims of police terrorism were charged with "assault and battery on a police officer" and are presently free on $2,500 bond pending their pre-trial examination September 12th. The charge is a high misdemeanor and carries a maximum two-year sentence.

The scene took place at the Loft, a converted barn in Leonard, Michigan, where the MC5 had been contracted to play a dance job. What follows is Sinclair's account of the incident:

We had worked at the Loft twice before in the past month or so and never had any trouble out there, just great crowds of high-energy kids, you know? But the clubowner had bounced two checks on us for a total of almost $400, and we were going to take him to court and also try to get his place closed down by the musicians' union, because he had beat a bunch of other bands around here too.

This dude, Harold Boumer his name is, called our booking agent and told him that he wanted to settle everything with the bands he had ripped off, and he set up this date for us to go out there the 23rd and play again in exchange for all the money he owed us plus 40% of the gate for that night. We didn't want to hang him up anyway--we just wanted to get our money, and we dig playing out there because the kids are so far out. So we agreed to the deal and drove out there the night of the 23rd.

When we arrived, and before we could even get out of the van, we were confronted by this rent-a-pig named Capt. Kenneth Osborne and told that he didn't want us to play "that song with motherfucker in it." I told him that he didn't have anything to do with our show, and that if he wanted to say anything to us he could say it through the manager, because we worked for him and not for some rent-a-cop, right? This pig had given me some shit the last time we were there anyway, about moving the equipment out faster or something, and I didn't wanna talk to him at all.

When we went inside, Boumer ran up to me and apologized for Osborne's actions. I told him that we would just as soon turn around and go back home if there was gonna be any funny shit, because we were giving this dude a break in the first place and we didn't have to stand for any of his pig's madness.

Boumer said never mind Osborne, just play the gig and I'll pay you your money afterwards. Well, we were supposed to get it all in front, but he only had $100 and he said he'd give us all the money that came in that night, because he had a full house and he knew he'd have all the money by the end of the night.

So I took the $100 and the band went on stage to kick 'em out. The 5 smoked through the first three tunes ["Ramblin' Rose," "Kick Out The Jams" and "Come Together"] and were really flyin', but this chomp Osborne had the house announcer stop the show "because of obscenity."

We asked the people if we should stop, explaining that we had come to play for them and we'd let them decide what we should do. They told us to keep on playing, but we decided to play one more thing and then go right into "Black to Comm" so we could get out of there in case this pig started any shit. We didn't wanna stop right there because we didn't wanna leave the people with nothing, you know, but on the other hand we knew this fool was crazy and we wanted to get outa there as soon as we could.

Meanwhile the rent-a-pigs apparently called the Oakland County Sheriff's Department and told them there was a "riot" going on because we wouldn't stop playing and were "inciting the kids to violence."

That was a bunch of bullshit, because what we actually told them was that there were a bunch of crooks running this place and they should never come back because the owners were cheating the bands and pulling funny shit all the time, right?

Anyway, Osborne and his flunkies blockaded all the exits to the place so nobody could get out--evidently they figured they'd better have a riot situation when the real pigs got there or else they wouldn't look so good, you know?

I had the equipment dudes pack up all the shit and take it out to the van, and got the band changed and all the guitars and shit packed up and sent them downstairs to wait for me. I didn't know that the doors were shut off or anything, I was up there checking the stage area to make sure all the equipment was taken care of and checking the dressing room and all the stuff you have to do before you leave, so you won't leave anything behind, you dig?

I'm standing by the stage when this dude Boumer comes up to talk to me. We sit down on the edge of the stage, and he apologizes again for the police and asks me to bring the equipment back up so we can play another set and he won't have to give the kids their money back!

What? I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I told Boumer he was stone crazy if he thought we'd stick around that madhouse for another minute--we wanted our money and if he didn't want to pay it right there we'd see his ass in court. I also told him that we were going to put the word out on him to all the bands in the area, and that I was going to get the musicians' union to shut the place down for good--not just because he beat us out of the money, but because he couldn't control his police and he was cheating all the people who went there.

Boumer kept talking, mumbling on about a second set and dodging the money issue, when all of a sudden the rent-a-pigs and a bunch of uniformed police in riot gear appeared at the top of the stairs and started marching over to where we were sitting. Osborne was in the lead, and he came up to me and started oinking in my face.

"Sinclair, get out of here!" Osborne grunted. I asked him what the fuck he was talking about, looking at Boumer expecting him to explain what was happening. Osborne oinked again: "I told you to get out of here--now!" I told him I couldn't possibly leave until I got the money.

Osborne and his partner snatched me by the arms and yanked me up, but I broke free for a minute and smashed him in the face. Then the whole force jumped on me and beat me down to the ground. Osborne squatted on top of me and kept hitting me in the face while the other porkers were smashing me with nightsticks, blackjacks, fists and booted feet while I tried to cover up my head and genitals.

During the melee an Oakland County pig, Donald Gilbert, badge number 81, squirted me in the face with MACE, and another pig handcuffed me.

There were still about 100-150 kids on the dance floor standing around in horror as this bloody scene flashed into action in front of their eyes. They were just as dumbfounded as I was, and it all happened so fast that it must've been hard to believe that it was really happening.

Girls were screaming and crying, everybody was trying to figure out what was happening, and by this time the pigs were beating on Fred Smith, who had run up from downstairs to help me when he heard all the noise.

Fred leaped into the pile of pigs who were beating on me, but two of them pulled him off and beat his ass with clubs. They subdued both of us, got us handcuffed and dragged us over into the corner before they started clearing the room.

A bunch of sisters, righteous MC5 addicts who came to all our gigs, came over and started wiping the blood off of us, but the pigs grabbed them and pushed them down the stairs. One sister had a camera and I told her to get pictures of this shit, but the pigs spotted her and grabbed her camera and broke it before they pushed her down the stairs too.

They beat up quite a few kids and shoved everybody else out of the place, finally letting the doors be opened so people could leave.

They took me & Fred and put us in the car and started for the county jail in Pontiac, with about 15 cars full of kids following them all the way. One kid tried to set the place on fire he was so mad!

When we got to the jail they booked us on charges of assault and battery on a police officer, but when Osborne tried to sign the arrest warrant the desk sergeant told him that he wasn't a police officer and couldn't legally arrest us.

So one of the Oakland County pigs stepped up and said he'd sign it--that was Gilbert, the one who MACEd me, right? All these kids were milling around outside, but the deputies all went outside and started threatening them, so they yelled up to us one more time and then pulled up.

When we got to court to be arraigned the next morning some other pig's name was on one of the warrants too. We pleaded not guilty and our people posted $2,500 bond for each of us, which was the highest bond the judge could set, you dig?

We're gonna fight this as hard as we can, and then we're gonna sue all these creeps. These fascist dogs are trying to stomp all of us out--DON'T LET THEM DO IT!

(c) 1968, 1972, 1995 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Guitar Army excerpt reprinted by permission of the author.

In Memory of Kenneth V. Cockrel

2006-02-10T23:35:02Z

In Memory of Kenneth V. Cockrel
(November 5, 1938-April 25, 1989)

By John Sinclair

The sudden and unanticipated death of Kenny Cockrel by a massive heart attack April 25th brought Detroit unprecedented heartache and grief.

Cut down from within at perhaps the height of his considerable powers as a champion of the people and spokesman for human and economic rights, Ken Cockrel's death left us for the first time in 25 years without the hope that he would some day lead our city into the 21st century through the force of his penetrating social analysis and fearless personal integrity.

The memorial service held for Ken at Rackham Auditorium in the Cultural Center on Saturday, April 29th, brought together hundreds of Ken's friends and followers to comfort one anothcr and listen to a moving procession of eulogies, including tributes from Mayor Young, Governor Blanchard, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Dennis Archer, Rev. Nicholas Hood and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton as well as Kenny's brothcr Sye, son Ken Jr., co-workers Mike Hamlin and Deborah Gaskin, and ace comrade-in-arms Justic Ravitz.

Compositions by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington were offered by a group of Kenny's musical friends, including Donald Walden, Phil Lasley, Kenny Cox, Jeribu Shahid and Roy Brooks. A particularly touching tribute was a brief videotape edited from hours of newsreel footage which showed Ken speaking at and on various stages of his public life, setting it out for the people in the way only Kenny Cockrel could.

On the Friday afternoon before the service I received a phone call from playwright Ron Milner, in Los Angeles on business. He'd composed a tribute to our late comrade that he wanted me to read for him at Rackham. I took it down over the phone, and Shahida Mausi arranged for it to be read the next morning.

Friday night I read Ron's piece between the acts at a poetry session at the Union Street Gallery, and Melba Boyd suddenly appeared to deliver a poem she'd composed for Ken, which she asked me to read for her at the memorial service.

Thus I came to have the honor and privilege of representing Detroit's literary community in delivering our collective eulogy to our fallen comrade, Kenneth Vern Cockrel. The pieces by Ron Milner and Melba Boyd are printed here along with the Obituary which first appeared in the program distributed at the memorial service at Rackham Auditorium.

We offer them to you as an infintesimally small token of our love and respect for this powerful brother who for so long offered us a huge measure of hope for the future. --Detroit, Fall 1989

OBITUARY

Detroit lost some of its luster Tuesday, April 25, 1989. Former City Councilman Kenneth V. Cockrel, one of our brightest and most vibrant stars, died late that evening at the age of 50.

Known for his brilliant intellect, sharp wit and quick tongue, Ken touched the lives of Detroiters in every quarter of this city.

After his honorable discharge from the Air Force in 1959, he attended Wayne State University, earning his BA in 1964 and his JD in 1967.

After his graduation from law school, Ken continuously and consistently gained and focused the public spotlight on critical social issues through his leadership in such left and progressive movements as the Black Workers Congress, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the anti-STRESS campaign. He provided skillful and colorful representation of such politically significant clients as James Johnson, Hayward Brown and Madeline Fletcher.

In 1977, he was elected to the Detrolt City Council where his powerful contributions led to a redefinition of problems and issues, the impact of which has not yet been fully measured.

In 1982, he returned to private practice, once again bringing his love and energy to this city and his fellow citizens through his practice of law. Since 1988, he has been a partner in the law firm of Sommers, Schwartz, Silver and Schwartz, P.C.

Recently he had been mentioned as an exciting prospect for Mayor of Detroit. But, more than any of his great achievements, he will be remembered by family, friends, acquaintances and adversaries alike, as a man of integrity who fought for what he believed in and inspired others to do the same.

Ken is survived by his wife, Sheila Murphy-Cockrel; his son Kenneth Vern Jr.; his daughter Katherine Victoria; his former wife, Carol L. Cockrel; his uncle and aunt, Golden and Beatrice Kennedy, who raised him; brothers, Sye and Jesse; and sisters, Novella and Dr. Shirley Cockrel Akpulonu.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The family of the late Kenneth V. Cockrel acknowledges with sincere appreciation the many comforting messages, floral tributes and other expressions of kindness evidenced at this time in thought and deed.

Contributions may be made in memory of Kenneth V. Cockrel to the Wayne State University Fund, 5475 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202. Donations should be specified to benefit WDET, Wayne State University's Minority Law Scholarship Fund, or the WSU Journalism Institute for Minorities.

(c) 1989, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

A Conversation with Doug Hammond: Coming Back to Detroit

2006-02-10T09:29:12Z

Coming Back to Detroit
A Conversation with Doug Hammond

By John Sinclair

Percussionist/composer Doug Hammond recently returned to Detroit from a long European sojourn in order to renew his musical roots and form an ensemble of adventurous Motor City creative musicians to perform his ever-growing book of original compositions.

Doug and I sat down with a tape recorder one day last March and renewed our acquaintance, which had begun almost 25 years ago at the Detroit Artists Workshop. A second session was held just before Doug returned to Germany in early September for a season of teaching and performing in Europe.

He'll be back in Detroit again in the spring to continue working and recording with his new quartet, Mo' Folks, comprising violinist Regina Carter, guitarist Patrick LaNier and bassist Jeribu Shahid. The tape of our conversations was painstakingly transcribed by Perri Giovannucci and begins when I asked Doug about his origins and how he happened to settle in Detroit in 1965:

Doug Hammond: I'm originally from Tampa, Florida. While I was in high school, I used to go from Tampa to Miami on the weekends to jam--eight hours on the bus! I'd leave after school let out and get to Miami about 10:00 o'clock at night--everything started around 10:00 and went until 4:00 am.

I was a young, shy guy. I think I had been with a woman once in my life or something like that, I was so shy. But I could play drums. And guys in Florida always said, if you're gonna go to New York, first go to Detroit because that's the training ground.

In the South I worked with Little Johnnie Taylor, Earl Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson. I loved the blues, and jazz also. I was the regular drummer with Earl Hooker. I played with Barney "Google" Lewis, who was B.B. King's baritone saxophone player for about 20 years. He had a big band in Tampa with hip arrangements by Henry Boozier. I always had gigs, even when I was in high school.

I looked at playing as craftsmanship--first I had to get my craft together to work, and I figured as I got better at my craft then I could decide what I really wanted to do with it.

My father and mother turned me on to jazz, and they would do, like, a salsa dance--they were the best dancers in Tampa. I would hear Charlie Parker when I was a child, on the strip. All up and down the strip there was music. One day I was listening to Billy Eckstine or somebody, and I asked my father, "What's that?" And he said, "Now, if you don't like it, just listen to it. Listen before you open your mouth." But I was stunned, thinking it was fantastic.

My band director in school was a composer and trumpet player--he was known nationally as a composer of marches. He said, "Look, if you're gonna play music, the first thing is, don't get married too soon. The next thing is, don't make choices about what you want to play. Play music. Play music for a living until you develop your craft so good that people will come to you. And then you'll be with those musicians who're as good as you are. Then, try to get with the ones who are better than you, and keep going." I've never forgotten that.

So when I went to Miami I had already prepared by playing with all these people--Barney Google and them. After that I went back to Tampa and worked around with the guys there. A year later, I was traveling in the South to Savannah, Georgia, and the group was doing some kind of funky gig. I had this uncle in Detroit. I'd never met the guy, he was a funeral director, a very conservative guy, but I called him and said, Look, Uncle, I want to come to Detroit, and I want you to send me some money so I can get there. I want to live in Detroit.

And he said, "Okay, son," just like that. When I got here I got a job as an upholsterer, but then I went around to different clubs and started working. I would work with the different Motown artists on their gigs, as their drummer. Also I would sit in with different people around town, and my name got around.

The first job I had in Detroit was at Odom's Cave with Malvin McCray, and then I started working with Harold McKinney and James Hankins, the bass player. I worked with people like Donald Byrd and Betty Carter and Spanky Wilson. I had a regular gig at the Playboy Club for two months a year--the one that's not there any more. I played the London Chop House with Bob Pierson. I was on the gig when they opened the Pontchartrain for the jazz series there, with Kirk Lightsey and Gino Biondo.

Then I went on the road with Smokey Robinson. Kirk Lightsey was working with O.C. Smith, and we were on the road together. He was in Baltimore and I was in Washington, DC, and he called me and said, "Look, my drummer split and I want you to do a gig." He took me out of Detroit completely, and I went to California for about six months, worked six months with Smokey and six months with O.C. Smith.

When I first came to Detroit, one of the most interesting things that happened tome was affiliating with the Detroit Artists Workshop, in terms of, as a musician, sitting there being quiet and listening to these great drummers like Danny Spencer and Ronnie Johnson. The 1 first week I got here, somebody took me to the Artists' Workshop, so l would always go to the Workshop after that.

I began to hang out there a bit, and after a while I worked with Charles Moore and Kirk Lightsey. We did some things with a double quartet--the other piano player was Stanley Cowell, Ronnie Johnson and myself on drums, Ron Brooks and another bass player, I think it was John Dana, and Joseph Jarman on reeds. That was one of the most vibrant periods in that whole scene.

I sought out the Artists Workshop because even when l was in Florida doing all those blues things, some of my favorites were--I loved Coltrane, I loved Miles, but my favorites were Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Monk and Mingus. So I sought out that element. I would be playing rhythm & blues, and blues gigs, and bebop at Odom's Cave--I didn't align myself with any one set but would be playing everything.

l worked with Little Sonny and James Jamerson at that time, and I also worked with a great bass player, Ernie Farrow. He was one of my teachers in terms of timing--perfect timing. He would tell me, "Never get too excited." I always listened to him as a bass player, and to Will Austin, and also [pianist] BooBoo Turner. These were the cats who trained me.

I came here to study, and when I came here I wanted to extend my studies privately. I studied with Clarence Sherrill. We made some kind of agreement--he was teaching at the Metro-Arts Complex on Selden and I was in the program there, so I agreed to be in his workshop playing stock arrangements if he would teach me some basic harmony. I had done some studying in harmony already, but I wanted to extend it.

I studied with [saxophonist] Leon Henderson. I studied with [pianist] Stanley Cowell--Stanley would come in from the U of M in Ann Arbor and deal with all these African rhythms. I said, "Look, Stanley, can I get in on some of that?" And he said, "Why not? Come on." Boom.

So I studied with him. I studied with David Durrah. And some things I studied with Charles Moore--not so much music, but like, something that would make me go past my thoughts. He introduced me to some things I didn't know about. And I actually studied with these people.

One of the high points of my career in Detroit was in a cooperative group called Focus Novi. Some of the music I did with Focus Novi, I've never gotten to that complete of a level anywhere else. Focus Novi was Patrick LaNier [trombone & guitar], William Wiggins [reeds], John Dana [bass], James "Blood" Ulmer [electric guitar], and myself on drums.

I heard Patrick LaNier one day at Kirk Lightsey's house when Pat was 18 and going into the Army, and I waited for him to come out. Blood and I was doing something together, and John Dana committed himself to that. This was after CJQ [the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, a pioneering modern cooperative group based in Detroit that made two albums for Blue Note Records and then developed the Strata Records/Gallery collaborative], and we decided that we needed another good group in town because there was too much weight on the CJQ.

It was a great experience. We rehearsed for six months, five days a week, before we did our first gig. Patrick LaNier came up with the name, Focus Novi. 8ecause it was not just a group, it was kind of a form of theatre. I had always been a poet--when I was 15 I was doing poetry for the newspapers in Tampa. I was a little shy about performing and speaking in public, but Patrick brought me out of all that. He said, "Man, don't deny any of your talents." So we started doing, like, staged presentations with art, and producing our own concerts.

We founded a base of operations called DCMA--Detroit Creative Musicians Association. When we started we had Rosetta Hines [WCHD--now WJZZ jazz radio personality], [tenor saxophonist] Hank Hence and [drummer] James Brown. This organization was like a collective of musicians and supporters of the music.

We started the DCMA in 1967 on 12th Street, just after the riots, in a little storefront joint that was the only place on 12th Street that white folks would come to. When we were doing our programs there it'd be about half Black and half white. We moved from there and made an agreement with Bruce Millan at the Detroit Repertory Theatre on Woodrow Wilson, and we started doing our concert series there every two weeks for quite a while.

In 1968 we got a place at 285 East Ferry in the Cultural Center, where we would hire two groups a night, two nights a week for about a year. We had enough people coming there to support both groups, and never sold any alcohol--we had a little wine, but we gave it away mostly.

Focus Novi always seemed to make money. Focus Novi played all kinds of styles to accomodate gigs, but we always played originals. We played at Cranbrook, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, we produced concerts at Community Arts Auditorium at Wayne State and produced and made our own posters--Bruce Millan had shown us how to make our posters. We worked very closely with Bruce Millan--he was very nice. We started doing these festivals--all the bigger things we could do, we would, and sometimes with the CJQ.

Thinking about it now, it was 1965 when I came here, so I was here about five years. Seemed like 10! At that time, when the groups from New York would come through Detroit, they would attend some of our concerts at the DCMA and at 285 East Ferry, especially when the CJQ or Focus Novi would be playing.

But whatever the program was, they were amazed at what was going on, because New York at that time was going through kind of a down period. They said this was the most interesting thing that was happening on the whole scene. And amazingly, it never really got any press.

So I used Detroit as a study, in a sense, to prepare to go to New York City. I had prepared so much that when I got to New York it got to be a problem, because I could do so much--I had already developed a style. So, having developed a style, l couldn't come through the ranks.

When I first went to New York in 1968, I was there a week and started playing with Sonny Rollins, because he wanted to play free and I was one of the guys who could play free. He eventually fired me because all the drummers were there saying, "What you doin' with this young guy?"

So I left New York and came back to Detroit. That was still in 1968. Then I joined O.C. Smith, went to California, quit O.C., got married and stayed in California about six months. I went back to New York in 1970 and worked a steady gig at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem with Blood Ulmer and John Dana--six days a week for five months. We would hire George Adams, Tyrone Washington, Kiane Zawadi, a few other guys. And then that ended one night after about five months. 0ne night I went in to work and they said, lt's over."

So I left New York again and went back to California, where David Durrah got me a grant at this college in Oakland where all the so-called revolutionaries were at. While I was there I produced my first record, Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen, with David Durrah and a bunch of guys from the Bay Area.

I stayed in Oakland for about five months, and then I got an NEA grant for percussion ensemble composition. That took me back to New York, and after I was there for about three months, Charles Mingus hired me for his band. He never saw me play--the trumpet player, Ronald Hampton, recommended me. He was staying at my house, and I was rehearsing a 10-piece ensemble that was playing my music, and I asked him if he would play the trumpet part one day. He did, and he said, "Man, I like that! You should have a gig! I'm gonna talk to Mingus right away. And the next week I was on the gig.

I came in and never even did a rehearsal with the band--I played the book, and Mingus said he'd never had anyone play the book like that. But I already knew all his music, just from listening to it. It was the same way with Sonny Rollins. So I worked with Mingus for five months in 1973, and for the next two years, whenever Danny Richmond didn't want to come up from where he was staying down South to make the gigs with Mingus, I would work them in New York or Boston. I was the auxiliary drum.

After that I worked with Arthur Blythe and Sonny Fortune and Lonnie Liston Smith--there were so many people I was working with that it's all a little blurry now. We had a percussion ensemble, Ed Blackwell and Roger Blank [former Sun Ra drummer] and [bassist] Ronnie Boykins. We formed a little organization and did some concerts at the Village Gate, where we had a jazz group and also an ensemble that played music I had been composing that wasn't improvised at all. John Blake, Akua Dixon, Maxine Roach, Eddie Henderson, John Stubblefield, Ray Anderson, Ronnie Boykins, and Stanley Cowell were on that. Plus there was another group with Sonny Fortune, Marvin Blackmon, l don't remember all the people in that group, but there were three [groups] in all, and the concerts sold out completely.

When I was working with Mingus I had a l0-piece thing happening at Sam Rivers' studio, and Mingus heard a tape of that one day while we were on the road and said, "Man! What was that music I heard? That was some bad stuff!" And I said, "Well, that's my ensemble." All the older cats--Rahsaan, Tommy Flanagan, Mingus, Max Roach--they always encouraged me.

I did a concert at Amherst College once, where Max was teaching, with a group which I had written a lot of music for. And Max said, "Wow! This is great! This was when Max was teaching and not playing really, and Max said, "You know what, seeing a young composer like this, a drummer doing his thing, doing so much writing, is so inspiring.... Seeing a young guy doing this stuff--I think I'm gonna start playing again." And that's when he started.

Shortly after that I started making records again and putting them out on the Idibib label. I did a duet record with Karen Joseph, and the second record we did was the one that introduced Angela Bofill, with Cecil McBee on bass, Alex Foster, Karen Joseph, Hubert Eaves.

Then I had a group to record with [alto saxophonist] Steve Coleman, Muneer Abdul Fataah on cello, and quite a few other people. When I was in New York I would always work gigs and then use my money to produce records and put them out. That was always very important to me, plus it was a way to help keep the flow of money happening in order to pay my musicians. Sometimes what I would make on the records I would supplement the gig money with so the group could keep working and building an audience for our music.

Around this time I went to Europe with Howard Johnson and a group he called Substructure--tuba, guitar, bass and drums. When we got there he had an assignment at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland to be the musical director for Etta James's band, and then he got me the job to play with the band backing up the package that toured around Europe--Etta James, Lowell Fulson and Marian Williams. I got exposed to a lot of different situations and met a lot of people who became good friends and also made quite a few good business contacts in Europe.

After that I worked around Europe with [clarinetist] Tony Scott and a trio, and I did some things with a Dutch flute player who had this big assignment with a group doing a television broadcast with a symphony orchestra. [Saxophonist] Charlie Mariano was part of that project too. I lived in Germany for quite some time, and I taught for a while in the Jazz Center in Denmark, where I had the opportunity to be teaching with Thad Jones.

I taught in some of the music schools in Germany, and then I got an assignment at the Center for New Music in Cologne, where we had a percussion ensemble that was pretty popular.

During all this time I was writing a lot of music and trying to get it played. I started getting some assignments as a composer, to write music for different ensembles, theatre projects, string groups, and also was playing solo concerts of my own music and doing workshops.

I've got now over 1000 compositions I've been writing, and I started publishing them in little books that I can sell to raise money and get my music out where it can be performed. But I found that when I was in Europe, I could be there and work there, but I couldn't produce any records like I can here--the price is too high, and there's the legal ramifications. I did these books because I can print 2000 of them and bring them back and forth over the different borders legally.

The beauty of being in Europe is that I had the peace of mind to do stuff I had wanted to do, but working in Europe, I couldn't find the musicians who could continuously deal with the culture of this country and make the music continuously progress. There was always a level of halt. They understand the music of today, but to implement it takes some years and also requires exposure to the cultural conditions that produce the music. Because musicians don't write about something in their heads--they write about what's around them.

I was always frustrated there in terms of getting musicians who could deal with the music. I worked with Steve Coleman when I could get him to come to Europe, but then last year I heard Geri Allen's group on their European tour and I said, Wow! What a group!" Just seeing this young, talented group from Detroit made me decide to move back to the States, and to come back to Detroit.

I thought, "Why should I go back to New York? With what I've gone through just trying to survive in New York? I could bring talent from Detroit--rather than them going to New York and take the beatings, they could get some international recognition this way, and I would have people to play my music who would inspire me and really make it happen."

So now that I've done all that, I feel like l've got one of the best groups I could possibly have. Basically the plan for the group is to take our record--which we did this summer at Wendell Harrison's studio, a record titled We People--take it over there with me when I go back to teach this fall so they can hear what this group is about.

Then, to tour Europe, to play in the States, and even to enlarge the group and bring in some young talent from New York, even some of the older guys I've worked with who are open to doing some new things, and do some special projects like that.

I'd like to compose things for different members and also do multi-media projects with poetry, dance, so-called classical musicians. In Detroit we have this stronghold of talent that is almost sitting dormant, and we're in a perfect position for an exchange between our local talent and young musicians in New York, Canada and Europe. Because everybody needs it.

I've got enough different things happening in Germany and Switzerland now to where I can go over there six months of the year and teach, do workshops, get my music performed, publish my compositions and continue to develop an audience for my music. Then I'll be able to bring the group from Detroit over there and put the music out properly, the way it's supposed to be heard, and get them some exposure in Europe too. They need to hear this music over there!

--Detroit
March 1989

(c) 1989, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

Artists Call: Detroit Poets Protest Gustafson Assault at DIA Opening

2006-02-10T08:52:18Z

Artists Call
Detroit Poets Protest Gustafson Assault at DIA Opening

By John Sinclair

An ad-hoc group of Detroit poets, editors, painters, community arts activists and supporters of the arts gathered on the steps of the Rackham Building across from the Farnsworth entrance of the Detroit Institute of Arts on March 24, 1990 to voice their outrage at the bloody eviction of poet Jim Gustafson following his performance at the Alternative Press exhibit opening March 3rd.

The protest was the result of a series of community meetings called to investigate the assault on Gustafson by three or more DIA guards who forcibly ejected the poet after he had burst into song while walking from the reception area at the north end of the building to the exit doors opening onto Farnsworth--now known among local artists as the "Gustafson Exit."

While museum authorities claimed that Gustafson purposely smashed the glass in one of the exit doors as the guards were routinely escorting him out of the museum, eyewitnesses attest that Gustafson was forcibly thrust through the glass door by the guards, resulting in severe cuts and bruises to the poet's hands, face, arms and torso.

The highly agitated guards then confronted the remaining guests, who were leaving the Alternative Press/OMAP opening in an orderly fashion, and belligerently ordered them out of the building.

No effort was made by museum personnel to assist Gustafson nor to secure medical attention for his wounds. He was driven to Detroit Receiving Hospital by Detroit Council of the Arts Deputy Director James Hart and subsequently underwent treatment there before being released the following day.

Offering their verse and comments at the Artists Call reading March 24th in support of Gustafson and against the brutality visited upon him by the museum guards were (in order of appearance): Sherry Hendrick, Ralph & Allen Franklin with Stephen Goodfellow, Trinidad Sanchez Jr., Glen Mannisto, Dennis Teichman, Mark Grafe, Chris Monhollen, Robert Thibodeau, Sam Mills, Shahaarazeta Natalenge, Rob Tyner, Derek Miller, Roberto Warren, Bob "Righteous" Rudnick, Mick Vranich, Melba Joyce Boyd, and John Sinclair with saxophonist Johnny Evans.

A leaflet announcing the event under the title Artists Call was supplemented by printed statements from several members of Detroit's artistic community, including Frank Bach, David Clements, Perri Giovannucci, Jim Hart, Glen Mannisto, Michael Mikolowski, Derek Miller, Chris Monhollen, Trinidad Sanchez, Paul Schwarz, Dennis Teichman, Deborah King, Mick Vranich and Sherri Hendrick.

The following poems and statements are excerpted from the Artists Call document and the March 24th reading opposite the Gustafson Exit:

Our celebration of art and poetry in and beyond this community was shattered March 3 with more than a few dreams accompanying Jim Gustafson through a plate glass door. Outside that door a pile of glass and a trail of blood. The blood trail began at the feet of one or more frustrated museum guards enjoying an ability and license to cause fear and injury. Well, guys, I'm sure you'd enjoy horsing around in Angola or the Middle East, much better pay too, although a little more risk involved than that in pushing a harmless drunk around.

Aah, a toast to Samuel Sachs who, from his lofty position, could offer no consolation whatsoever to the hurt suffered. Sammy baby, I'm afraid you've soiled yourself and this isn't the type of stain you'll readily wash out The trail of blood ended with Jim who, doctors say, will eventually recover but what of the vague dreams that become art?

--Michael Mikolowski

Guards are employed on behalf of the DIA to protect the art and property of the museum. During the incident on March 3rd, Mr. Gustafson was in no way threatening the property of the DIA, therefore, the security guards' action was premature and unnecessary.

The general lack of respect for an artist who was invited to perform at the DIA is most disturbing. I had assumed that all guests were treated equally should they become inebriated during a museum function. In the past, I had attended such functions as Under the Stars and had witnessed a totally different approach to the guests who had too much to drink and were loud and disruptive. It is totally unacceptable to this community that the security procedures change dependent on the social/economic status of the DIA guests.

In addition, I was appalled at the total disregard for the injured poet after the incident and by the guards' lack of remorse/concern or attempts to administer first aid. Their reaction can be likened to a bouncer throwing a person out of their establishment. In the past, the DIA's environment demanded more respect and, for lack of a better word, class. It is unfortunate that these employees do not utilize various crisis intervention techniques to de-escalate such situations instead of using the primitive, barbaric responses which are to "throw the person out."

In order to ensure similar inhuman situations are not repeated, I am petitioning that the DIA conduct a full investigation into the matter. The focus of this investigation should not be to place blame but to clarify policy/procedure in the future.

All guards should be informed as to who the museum performers are for each function. The guards are a visible part of the museum team and I would think sharing information with them would go a long way to improve employee morale and help provide the security staff with a level of respect.

Although the guards are employees of the City of Detroit, I would hope the DIA would have some influence regarding proper training, to include:
* crisis intervention techniques
* de-escalation techniques
* general history of the museum
* function of the museum
* cultural sensitivity training
* regular review of emergency procedures

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that if the security guards have a situation that could be volatile, that they immediately inform the sponsors of that particular function. There were many guests present who could have helped de-escalate the situation and avoided the serious injuries that occurred.

--Christine Monhollen

The museum must show that it is aware that an incident such as this should never have occurred and will under no circumstances be repeated. Either the museum must be willing to admit that it is not able to insure the safety of its guests, so that all visitors may in the future prepare for any injury that may befall them there; or, the museum must show a willingness to bear responsibility for the incident, to admlt that a mistake was made, to bear the consequences of that mistake, be those financial or perhaps to suspend the individual guards, and, most importantly, to profess a willingness to change.

--Derek Miller

DIA 3.3.90

i said to sadiq
when you leave
the soul of this city
the raggedy concrete paths
crack apart behind you
but you never leave the soul
you carry it with you
where ever you go.
he said the tidal wave
of all the evil we've done
is roaring across paradise.

you sit so quietly
but the raging under the surface
of your flesh is there
so you flick on the radio
to block it out
the voice is talking
about all the torture
everywhere the starvation
the war games the captives
in their own homes
while the machine is mowing down
the life around you.

we walk out onto the street
covered with broken glass
we move to the side
lean against the marble wall
and watch the children
dance in the blood
still wet in puddles
on the sidewalk
when their feet are wet
they march off
making bold footprints.

hay don't act up
you with that poem
in your heart
cut it out
goes like this
move in on the strays
before a word is said
don't look that way
keep the camera off
the ones whose address
is a cardboard box
get those people out of here now
take them out of the picture
we don't want to see their sores.

but the voices live
below the surface of the headlines
all the ink can't silence them
you can feel them rise
wash away the divide signs
posted in our path
by the ones
who generate the hate
keep the greed wheels
turning.
all the evil
we've done
is roaring across paradise
the children just thought
the blood was part
of the celebration.

--mick vranich

The DIA's conduct regarding the incident with poet Jim Gustafson is disgraceful. That museum security officers should commit a violent act upon any person is inexcusable. It is particularly grevious that Gustafson was subjected to such hostility during an opening reception at which he was a featured guest.

Furthermore, many of us feel that this incident is indicative of the contempt the DIA holds for the local arts community. DIA security officers involved in this incident should be reprimanded, an official apology to Gustafson should be issued, and at the very least, the DIA staff should reexamine its attitudes and actions towards the community of artists that thrives in Detroit in spite of the little support it receives from the art institute.

--Perri Giovannucci

"Bird Gets The Worm"
after Charlie Parker

The forcible ejection by museum guards
of the poet Jim Gustafson
through the glass doors of the Detroit Institute of Arts
on March 3, 1990,

& the violent manner
in which it was accomplished
are totally repugnant acts
which cannot be accepted or condoned--

& the subsequent denial
by DIA Director Samuel "Sad" Sachs
of responsibility for this dreadful assault on Gustafson
is an even more bitter pill to swallow.

Not only was Gustafson
an invited guest of the DIA
&, in effect, an exhibiting art
ist at the Alternative Press show opening that day,

but the crime against propriety
for which he was punished
by this vicious physical assault
in no way threatened or disrupted

the actual good order
of the occasion, and in no way called for
the inhumane & brutal treatment
he was forced to suffer

at the hands of an arrogant gang
of assaultive museum guards.
They were wrong,
Sachs is wrong,

the whole ugly Incident
is rotten to the core. If we sing,
we must not be beaten. If we must leave,
we must not be given the bum's rush.

If we are to take our rightful part
in the life of the museum,
which exists to house our art work,
we must be treated with dignity

& offered at least the courtesy
of an apology, & the promise
that so long as the museum shall stand,
we will never again be treated like dogs

or suffer even the threat
of physical assault. The offensive guards
must be reprimanded, & the policies which govern them
must be brought into line with the respect we deserve.

Further, affiant
sayeth not.

--John Sinclair
Harmonie Park
March 12, 1990

I did not see what happened at the "Gustafson Exit." But there was an awful lot of blood in my City car after he got out at the hospital.

Newspaper stories to the contrary, it does not make sense to me that a single flabby human could have propelled himself with such force through "unbreakable" museum security glass--even a poet, who, as we all know, are notorious for the amount of explosive air they bottle up.

Sometimes, as we know, the explosive air comes out in song. Drunk or sober this is the long standing tradition of the troubadour. Sometimes, while the song is appropriate, the place, sadly, is not. It will not do for a living poet of the tradition of song to vent air, to sing amongst the precious dead objects of a museum. This was an inappropriate act--inappropriate live art. It attracted the bums-rush from the authorities.

Would that he had flashed a Founders Society membership card; would that he had been a big ticket holder at a gala overfilled with scotch; would that he did not appear a hairy bum, a venter of songs. Then the authorities would, I think, have quietly called him a cab.

--Jim Hart

(c) 1990, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

LaMonte Hamilton: In Memoriam

2006-02-10T04:22:06Z

LaMonte Hamilton
In Memoriam

By J.P. Lutcher & John Sinclair

LaMonte Robert Hamilton, a distinguished jazz saxophonist, passed away at Grace Hospital Friday, September 21, 1990. The saxophonist died of heart failure in the hospital bed to which he had been confined for the past 10 days.

Mr. Hamilton was born in Detroit on February 1, 1923, to a musical family. His mother played violin; his father was a saxophonist and pianist; a sister played piano. He attended McMichael School and Northwestern High School, where he was a classmate of such Detroit jazz notables as bassist James 'Beans' Richardson; Hamilton's "main man," saxophonist John 'Moon' Mullins; and drummer Lawrence 'Jacktown' Jackson. He attended West Virginia State College in Charleston, W.Va.

During his long and illustrious career, Mr. Hamilton worked with some of the greatest names in jazz, including a wartime stint with the Jay McShann Orchestra. He performed with Wardell Gray, Gene Ammons, Ray Charles, the King Kolax Orchestra, Barry Harris, Roy Brooks and countless others.

After a period of relative obscurity, LaMonte emerged as a major musical force on the Detroit jazz scene in the 1970s, contributing his remarkable saxophonics to the Marcus Belgrave Quintet. Mr. Hamilton was also a featured soloist with the New Detroit Jazz Ensemble; David Swain's Il-V-I Orchestra; a specially- assembled 'Kansas City 7' featuring Jay McShann, Candy Johnson, Marcus Belgrave and Jimmy Wilkins at Orchestra Hall; and with the Paradise Theatre Orchestra, a 12-piece band organized by the Detroit Jazz Center for Detroit Jazz Artists On Tour in 1979. In recent years he continued to perform with the Il-V-I Orchestra and was a featured soloist with the Graystone Jazz Museum Orchestra.

LaMonte had a great concern for the future of the music and spent many hours working with talented young musicians at the Jazz Development Workshop and in school workshops throughout the area.

Hamilton, known among his jazz peers as 'Larch,' was an immensely talented tenor saxophonist whose fluent, expressive, deeply swinging approach to the music left a lasting impression on fellow musicians and knowledgeable listeners wherever he played.

Close friend and jazz historian Willie Bolar perhaps best sums up the saxophonist with his verse, Reflections on 'Larch':

LaMonte, my Mentor from early on,
He & Moon had a certain style all their own.
Some in the neighborhood thought they were real gone
They both went on to high fame and acclaim
But playing their saxes was their favorite thing.
LaMonte had no regrets for things of the past
And a thriving, driving inspiration for the day.
He was grateful that his contributions
Were now accepted for pay--
Not necessarily monetary, but by
His peers of today.
He will be missed it's true
But Larch would probably say:
'I'm out of here--
It's up to you!'

LaMonte's memory was honored at a memorial service September 27th at Stinson Funeral Home on Meyers, where a musical offering was made by Marcus Belgrave, Herbie Williams, Earl Van Riper, Lawrence Williams, Charlie Gabriel and many others who had gathered to send off their beloved brother in the traditional manner.

Mr. Hamilton is survived by his wife, Ruth; one sister, Mrs. Evlalia Wilson; and several nieces and nephews. He is interred in Detroit Memorial Park.

--Detroit
October 1990

(c) 1990, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

Jazz in the Schools: Wendell Harrison & Rebirth Inc.

2006-02-10T04:11:17Z

Jazz in the Schools
Wendell Harrison & Rebirth Inc.

By John Sinclair

Detroit's public schools were once one of America's most prolific breeding grounds for world-class musical talent. During the 1940s and 50s an almost endless stream of top-quality jazz musicians poured out of the local school system to swell the flow of modern jazz throughout the world. Recent graduates of Cass Tech, Northern High, Miller High School, Northwestern High and other public schools serving the city's burgeoning African-American population went straight to New York and then international acclaim, gracing America's most popular working-bands from the Count Basie Orchestra to the Miles Davis Quintet.

The Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop, Cannonball Adderley's quintet and sextet, the J.J. Johnson Quartet, the John Coltrane Quartet and many less established units boasted Detroiters like Milt Jackson, Paul Chambers, Donald Byrd, Barry Harris, Yusef Lateef, Tommy Flanagan, Betty Carter, Kenny "Pancho" Hagood, Doug Watkins, Louis Hayes, Curtis Fuller, Billy Mitchell, Roy Brooks, Kiane Zawadi (Bernard McKinney), Charles McPherson, Lonnie Hillyer and literally scores of their neighbors and classmates.

This incredible spate of hard-swinging, technically-advanced, quick-thinking improvising jazz musicians was augmented by a tidal wave of rhythm-and-blues singers and instrumentalists which flooded the popular music scene throughout the 50s and 60s. Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, Aretha Franklin, Andre Williams, Nolan Strong & the Diablos, and the many minions of Motown Records were Detroit public school products. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas, the Temptations and countless other R&B artists spread the Sound of Detroit around the globe, making their public-school musical education pay off in the biggest possible way.

But suddenly, in the 1960s, the Detroit public school system began to fall victim to the process of massive disinvestment and dislocation which continues to cripple public education and other city services here today. Crucial arts educational programs were cut to the bone and then completely severed by the "human being lawnmower" of white flight as more than one million Detroit citizens of European descent left the city for the former pastures of suburbia, taking their tax dollars with them and leaving behind their abandoned homes and commercial buildings.

The public schools' music program, which had once produced skilled symphony musicians, swing-band sidemen, dance-band technicians and commercial music professionals as well as jazz artists and R&B stars, was soon reduced to an infintesimal shadow of its formerly gigantic stature.

For the past 25 years music in the schools has suffered a precipitous decline, and only where a handful of outstanding individuals--like Ernie Rodgers at Northwestern High or James Tatum at Mackenzie High School--have dedicated an incredible amount of personal attention and extracurricular time to providing first-rate musical instruction for their public school students can the glories of the system's past triumphs be glimpsed.

Even less attention is paid in the public school system of today to providing modern-day students with instruction in the history and development of the African-American musical tradition and its art music, commonly known as jazz.

Students today are remarkably ignorant of their musical heritage, particularly with respect to jazz, its evolution and essence. This is a serious deficiency which must be addressed by our educators at once unless yet another generation of Detroiters is to be denied its sense of history, cultural continuity and self-respect.

Jazz must be taken into the schools--the jazz tradition must be preserved and extended into the future. While the bulk of professional educators continues to sleep on this issue, several Detroit jazz artists and grass-roots arts organizations have taken the problem into their own hands and developed small but effective modes of instruction and training, secured funding, and taken their ensembles into the Detroit public schools in order to begin to provide students with the fundamentals of jazz education.

One ambitious grass-roots program "to acquaint young people with classical American jazz music" is the Jazz in Education project developed by Rebirth, Inc. and its Artistic Director, saxophonist/composer/bandleader Wendell Harrison.

Rebirth, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 1978 and dedicated to preserving and presenting American jazz music in performances, workshops, audio and video recordings. For more than 10 years Rebirth has carried on a remarkable range of jazz activities, including concert presentations, producing and releasing jazz records, publishing original compositions and jazz instructional materials, organizing tours, establishing recording facilities, and developing sophisticated promotional materials for its many activities.

"For the 1989 season," Wendell Harrison reports, "Rebirth's main focus has been to acquaint young people with classical American jazz music. Presentations are directed toward public high schools, middle schools and elementary schools in the Detroit metropolitan area in an effort to broaden their musical scope and awareness of jazz.

"More than any city in the world, Detroit has been a spawning ground for jazz artists of international repute. Rebirth's Jazz in Education program serves as an educational supplement to the public school curriculum, introducing youth to jazz music on a professional level and providing a reference for those presently studying the art."

During the 1988-89 school year Wendell Harrison and his ensemble performed concerts in many of the Detroit public schools: Central, Western, Northwestern, Redford, Pershing, Murray-Wright, Mackenzie and Martin Luther King High Schools; Cerveny Middle School; and Pulaski, Wilkins and Trix Elementary Schools.

Following the concerts, Wendell and the members of his ensemble--vibist Robert Pipho, keyboardist Pamela Wise, bassists Ralphe Armstrong or Jeribu Shahid and drummer Tom Starr--conducted workshops with the music students in each school, providing them with the opportunity to participate and interact with the professional artists.

"What we're doing is dealing with kids who are at the basic school marching band level--kids who have never improvised before," Harrison explains. "I take simple scales and get the students to play them the way you actually play: accenting the upbeat, swinging the scale. I'm introducing arpeggios to them, going into musical intervals, and making them aware of the basic techniques of improvising. They were all very enthusiastic about improvising--the first time they tried it they didn't know that you use the scales and arpeggios, and they just had a ball!

"You know, the word improvisation comes from the root word improve," Wendell points out. "Every time you play a melody, each time you try to improve upon the melody or the changes of the song, which is a pretty unique thing. That's what makes jazz more challenging than so-called 'classical' music, where your goal is to play the piece exactly as it appears in the score. Jazz is really about utilizing your intelligence and technique to take the given material to a new level, to give it an individual touch instead of playing the same thing all the time.

"I'd really like to see a lot more jazz musicians teaching jazz music in the schools," Wendell continues. "How can you teach it if you don't know how to play it? Instead of musicians trying to make a living playing in bars, let them take their rightful place in terms of teaching and sustaining this art form in the schools--coming up with textbooks, lesson plans and exercises to get the concept over to the students. Most jazz musicians have to go outside their own idiom in order to get work as musicians anyway. Why not let us perpetuate the idiom by doing what we to best and help sustain the art form by teaching it to young people in the schools?"

Financial support for Rebirth's Jazz in Education project came from the Detroit Council of the Arts, the Michigan Council for the Arts, Rebirth members, patrons and supporters. Other Rebirth, Inc. activities receive funding (in painfully modest amounts) from the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest Alliance, Gannett Foundation, Helen deRoy Foundation, Hiram Walker Allied Vintners, and the F. Lax Construction Company.

Rebirth, Inc. has also enjoyed considerable success marketing its excellent educational products, including two superb jazz instruction books compiled by Harrison "to teach young musicians the elusive skill of improvisation." The Be Boppers Method Book, written by Harrison "to help sustain the jazz tradition," contains musical exercises that Wendell learned in his student days from jazz great Barry Harris.

Harrison's second publication, Compositions in Odd Meters, is a songbook featuring compositions by Harrison, Pamela Wise, Harold McKinney and Eddie Harris. Through a tie-up with Jamey Aebersold Publishing, the nation's top distributor of jazz instructional materials, Harrison's books enjoy wide circulation and are fast becoming staples in music education throughout the country.

Wendell also continues to release his own music through Rebirth and its affiliate, Wenha Records. Both are successors to the historic Tribe Records collective, organized in the early 1970s by Harrison, Harold McKinney, Marcus Belgrave, Phil Ranelin and others. Wendell released three records on the Tribe label: An Evening with the Devil, Message from the Tribe, and Farewell to the Welfare, followed by Dreams of A Love Supreme and Organic Dreams on Wenha Records. Rebirth Records has engendered four more Wendell Harrison LPs: Reawakening (featuring Leon Thomas), Birth of a Fossil, "Wait" Broke the Wagon Down, and his most recent release, The Carniverous Lady.

The Rebirth complex on the near north side of Detroit now boasts its own recording studio, specializing in 1ive-to-two-track" digital as well as multi-track recording for Rebirth's in-house projects and an increasing number of community-based clients (Doug Hammond cut his latest Idibib LP at Rebirth Studios, for example). The Rebirth computer system is plugged into the creative process, too, kicking out musical scores, texts, promotional materials, mailing lists and labels, and a whole range of supportive services.

An informative and vastly entertaining videotape featuring Wendell Harrison performing with his band and interacting with students in the schools is now available on several Detroit-area cable systems. Produced by Chris Pitts for his Jazz Masters: Keepers of the Flame series, hosted by Jim Dulzo and announced by John Hardy, this program gives us a picture of the multi-talented Mr. Harrison from his earliest beginnings as a student of the great Barry Harris to his current activities as a performer, producer, educator and keeper of the jazz flame.

For more than a decade now Rebirth has continued to advance against all obstacles to become a vital force in the contemporary jazz community. Its Jazz in Education project is just one more of Rebirth's valuable contributions to the preservation and presentation of the art music of the African-American cultural tradition--commonly known as jazz.

--Detroit
Winter 1989-90

(c) 1990, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

Ron Milner & Project Revival

2006-02-10T03:43:51Z

Project Revival
Playwright Ron Milner Goes Back into the Public Schools

By John Sinclair

Detroit's premiere playwright, Ron Milner, a product of Southwestern High School, has experienced success on every level, from community-based theatrical productions to his recent Broadway smash, Don't Get God Started. But he has never abandoned his roots on Hastings Street, the erstwhile Main Street of Detroit's African-American community, where he grew up in the 1940s and 50s before moving on to international fame as one of America's foremost dramatists.

Throughout his career, starting at Detroit's Concept East Theatre in the early 60s, Milner has maintained a commitment to the community which nurtured him, returning repeatedly to work with young people in the Detroit public schools in an attempt to pass on his hard-gained knowledge and experience to new generations of struggling youth.

Ron Milner first gained national attention with the American Place Theatre production of his play Who's Got His Own in 1965. His powerful drama of street life, What the Wine-Sellers Buy, toured nationally in 1975 after runs at the New Federal Theatre in New York City, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and NY's Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 1973-74. Seasons Reasons, a dramatic musical, was staged by the National Black Touring Circuit in 1980, and Ron's Jazz-Set was named one of the Top Ten Best New Plays of 1979. His contemporary drama, Checkmates, was a Broadway hit in 1988 and toured nationally this year, following the success of his gospel musical, Don't Get God Started, which also toured the country after packing them in at Broadway's Longacre Theatre during the 1987-88 season.

One of Milner's favorite theatrical experiences, though, was the "special social documentary" Work: Don't Let Your Attitude Intrude, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor for the Detroit public school system in 1974 and utilized as a practical training program in the schools for the next three years. His youth-oriented production, Crack-Steppin' (1981), also involved Detroit public school students as cast members and played to high-school audiences during the 1981-82 season.

Now busy working on his script for an international dramatic tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., which will open next year in London before touring Europe with an all-star cast, Ron Milner is struggling to find time and raise money for a new youth program, Project Revival, designed to help high-school students deal with contemporary social problems by involving them in a dramatic production staged in the schools with student actors. The production will be followed by a two-hour counseling session in which the student actors and audience members will interact with professionally-trained counselors to explore the themes introduced in Milner's play.

I met with Ron Milner at the Detroit Council of the Arts recently and asked him to discuss Project Revival and his motivation for taking on this difficult project.

Ron Milner: About 12-14 years ago I did a thing called Work: Don't Let Your Attitude Intrude, which was about helping kids get past the cultural shocks so they could do interviews to get jobs--just basic things like being aware of the cultural differences between the inner-city youth and the average employer so these things will not stand in the way of being employable.

For example, coming in wearing a big hat--you have to be careful about wearing this big hat because it might denote certain negative things to the job interviewer, right? This piece ran for three years in the Detroit public school system and went all the way to Washington, DC--in fact, they did a CBS-TV "White Paper" show on this program in 1979.

So now, looking around at all the youth problems we have at present, it just seems like time to see if we can go back into the schools and have some effect again. I live here in Detroit, I live here in the world, and these young people are either a potential good or a potential danger unless somebody actually deals with them and their problems. Somebody has to come in and say, what about going through the front door instead of through the back window all the time, you know? It seems like the only person really dealing with the kids in the neighborhoods now is the dope man, and that just can't go on without some kind of response.

So I think it's time again for artists to come and make themselves accessible to the situation they find in their communities. I remember talking to Langston Hughes once and he said, we artists should be writing the economic textbooks so they would make sense to the young people. It would also provide us with jobs and make us useful to the community. [Laughs]

I feel that if artists see a situation we have some insight into, then we ought to be able to address that situation in a clarifying way, so that, in this case, if young people see a script or play that mirrors their reality, they can also see how different people deal with the same problems they're faced with.

It's all about value choices and self-esteem, basically--the values involved in to do or not to do, rather than the old construct of to be or not to be. To sell or not sell dope--why not, if the bottom line is simply dollar bills? If our society tells them the bottom line is dollar bills and the BMW, why spend eight years in college when they can spend eight months on the streets selling dope and get the rewards in dollars? So it has to be about something else. That can't be the bottom line--the bottom line has to have something to do with community respect and building for the future of the community.

As far as the practicalities of the project are concerned, we are really looking for underwriters from the business community, from the community leadership and all those screaming "Crime!"--we expect some of them to come forward and facilitate this project. With the school board being in the situation it's in, we don't expect to get much financial assistance from that sector. The main thing we're looking for is to get other people to come on in with the support the project needs--all the people, from neighborhood residents to major corporations, who depend in some way on the finished product of the public school system.

For Project Revival, we will use student actors, auditioning them from the high schools where the project will be operated. It's totally peers. Some of these kids are trained actors--well, they're not well-trained actors now, but that's clearly the road they're going to be on. Some of the other kids are first-time actors. In this kind of audition you watch a kid come in and think about how he would be viewed by the other kids. Some kids come in who have always been the "teacher's pet," always been involved in the arts, and the kids listen to them as well.

Then there's the kid with the cap on backwards and gym shoes untied. You need some of these kids too, because they represent the reality of the kids, the kind of person they're going to brush up against out there. And sometimes these are also the brightest kids in the group.

Often in the ghetto existence kids are trapped by their strengths rather than their weaknesses. Because a kid is not afraid he will wade right in and take whatever he can get. He's willing to pay for it, he's got the heart and the brain and the cleverness--he can create and run a structured organization in the streets, he can do a whole bunch of things. He can think on his feet. He can figure out systems. But he's taking the immediate road and there's a cage waiting for him at the end of it. Now if he's a little bit leery or a little bit frightened, he may draw back and think, "I'd better go to the library."

One kid's weakness saves him, another kid's strength traps him. All of these things are at play out there. It's difficult. That's why the artist can't go into the counseling room alone with the student--you have to have a trained counselor, and the counselor can't go in alone because he needs the artist to help him communicate with the kids.

Another thing this kind of show has to have is attractiveness. And attractiveness has to come in the form of music, rap, the certain costume that reads a certain thing--all these things attract the eye, and the ear follows. Sometimes it attracts the ear--when it gets into the music, then the mind follows. This is a much more difficult kind of thing to write than a Broadway show, because you have to deal with a whole different language and range of concerns and try to get across to people who are coming to your play from a very different place.

The greatest fear of these young guys out there is not what happens to them but what happens to their families because of them. So you have to get to these kinds of suggestions and these kinds of answers in the script, and then follow up on the script by having these same role-model actors step down from the stage and confront the students who made up their audience in the conference room for two hours afterwards. The actors have also been trained in counseling, and the professional counselors are there in the room with them, so the actors are able to help the students approach the counselors with their problems.

The students are able to talk with the actors, who are their peers--like, "I identify with what you were doing on the stage, my man, can I talk to you about it?" And the actor says, "Yeah, let's go into the conference room and talk. Plus, there's somebody here who knows more about it than I do. And not only can you talk to them now, but they have a situation set up where you can come and talk to them on a regular basis if need be.... When you can't find your uncle, and your father's not there, and all you can hear is your peers confirming what you already know--which you know is not the way--why don't you talk to these people, or why don't you call this person? These people are there in the community and some of them are being paid to listen to you, so go talk to them."

The person speaking here is someone the student's own age, someone who's come out of the student's own environment. You just saw him rapping to you on stage a minute ago--you can approach him like you aren't going to approach some foreign adult, you know?

So this is the concept for Project Revival now, and I guess it follows what I've always felt, because I got into theatre as soon as I realized it was three-dimensional. Nothing else in the literary arts is a three-dimensional form, nothing else seems to be in the oral tradition--poetry was oral to a certain extent, but the poets I heard were locked into one voice, and you had to have some kind of initiation into the language arts to be able to get to the poet anyway. In the theatre it was storytelling, so it was accessible right from the start. That's how I got into theatre in the first place.

Every now and then you have to remember where you came from. You're sitting up on Broadway with Denzel Washington...you have these people in your cast: Denzel Washington, Paul Winfield, Ruby Dee, and it's so easy, and you're sitting there saying theatre is lovely, it's marvelous, and all that, and then you go back home to Day-twa, and you're sitting here in Day-twa, and you look out your window in Indian Village and you see these kids come by and you start hearing the things they're saying--what they're involved with--and they threaten your reality, and they are part of your reality, but you don't have any effect on them at all. They're not going to pay $60 to see a Broadway show--they don't even know you exist.

When I was coming up a role model for me was Gus Finney, who used to run the playground in our neighborhood, and then he eventually ran the Kronk Recreation Center. He was teaching softball, basketball and boxing, but he became a surrogate father for a lot of us from broken homes in those days. Gus Finney was such a stand-up, straight, play-by-the-rules, show-you-the-way-to-do-it kind of guy that he taught us much, much more than just playing sports.

There were a lot of Gus Finneys in the neighborhood then, but now people are afraid to be Gus Finneys because if they step out there, you know, what are you getting yourself involved in? You can't talk to other people's kids any more, because people get kind of nervous about that. But they're either going to be your kids or your enemy--that's what you've got to deal with, and that's one aspect of it.

Somebody asked me a couple of years ago, "Ron, you were doing this kind of thing in the 60s and now you're doing that"--i.e., staging plays on Broadway. And it dawned on me that what I wanted to do with my work was what Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes did: go everywhere the culture goes. When the culture has a nice Sunday school, then I would like to have a Sunday school play. I'd like to go everywhere, take some pictures, and every now and then toss out a valentine--something very, very sweet. It can't be all laughter and it can't be all glumness--people don't survive that way.

--Detroit
1989

Special thanks to Patricia Sinclair for her transcription of the interview.

(c) 1989, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

LAST NITE A RECORD SAVED MY LIFE

2006-02-10T03:17:50Z

Last Nite a Record Saved My Life 

By John Sinclair

Truth be told, I can t really think of a night when a record didn t save my life, because recordings have been saving my life and what I have of my sanity since I was a little kid of about 10 or 11 years old in a little bitty farm town in Michigan and heard the sounds of One Mint Julep by The Clovers oozing out of the radio in my bedroom.

Tonight it's Charlie Parker with Strings doing the trick, and thinking back on the nearly 20,000 nights I ve survived since my youthful days (including more than 1,000 nights in prison), ever buoyed by the great recordings beyond number that have brought endless joy to my life, it's still possible to single out one particular night and one certain record that helped save me from missing out on the past 15 years of marital bliss I ve enjoyed with the love of my life, my wife Penny.

It was in the summer of 1988 and I was living alone in the compact apartment I had built into the back of the 3rd-floor loft in downtown Detroit where I shared an office with Frank & Peggy Bach and Gary Grimshaw. Penny and I had separated the previous summer during a painful period when I was suffering a particularly debilitating round of existential depression, but I couldn t get her off my mind no matter how hard I tried.

We had been struggling since 1979 to maintain a loving relationship and had already split up and reconciled four times before we called it quits in 1987. I spent many nights alone in my room during that year of separation obsessed with my thoughts of her and what had gone so wrong with us.

I ve been in love with the woman ever since the first time I laid eyes on her, but my idiotic unfaithfulness and insensitivity had systematically undermined her trust in my intentions, and I just couldn t figure out if there was enough love left between the two of us to try to put our lives back together again to stay.

Records were still LPs then, and I was playing an album by Allen Toussaint titled Southern Nights while I attempted to sort through the emotionally conflicted confusion of my thoughts. Then one of Allen's most lovely compositions came through the speakers, a beautifully soulful ballad called What Do You Want the Girl to Do, and as I listened I realized that he was trying to tell me something very important: All the woman wanted to do was love me, it was as simple as that, but it was up to me to make it possible for that love to survive.

I played the song over and over again that night while it successively moved me to make up my mind about our potential future together and finally accept responsibility for my own central role in the creation and insane nurturing of our difficulties. By the time I turned in early the next morning, I had made the difficult decision to pursue every possible course of reconciliation and, if successful, to irreversibly alter the form and practice of my devotion to the woman I knew I loved for life.

So I pressed my courtship over the next several weeks, professing my love and need for her and even proposing marriage in a poem called i surrender, dear which magically helped produce the desired effect. We were back together by the fall, and we married one another for good on the bright first day of 1989, celebrating our vows of fidelity and connubial bliss to the sounds of Al Green singing Let's Stay Together on the sound system and the incomparable Kenny Pancho Hagood offering a live performance of the ballad he had first sung in 1947 as the theme song of the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra: I Waited for You.

Detroit
November 17, 2003

(c) 2003, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

Celebrating Detroit

2006-02-10T03:10:58Z

Editor's Note: Celebrating Detroit
City Arts Quarterly
Fall/Winter 1989-1990

By John Sinclair

Welcome to the long-awaited Spring/Summer/Fall 1989 issue--take your pick--of City Arts Quarterly. We've been held up for several months by forces beyond our control, but finally we're out again with this mammoth Special Issue which contains material collected over the past eight or nine months since the publication of our Writing In the City issue last February.

While we started without a particular theme for this issue, so much of the material that came in was focused on the city itself that the title Celebrating Detroit suddenly appeared at the top of one of the many drafts of the Table of Contents which guide us through the course of preparing an issue for publication.

Incidentally, much of this material was unsolicited--it came in through the mail or was dropped off at the front desk. William Shelly's "Memories of Detroit," the poems from Down By LAW, Dennis Shea, Marc Sanchez, Pat. Medicine, Robert L. Purdue, and the contributions by old friends David Swain and Jim Gallert were pleasant surprises indeed, and they fell right into place with what was already happening.

Of course, it is our intention with every issue to celebrate Detroit by showcasing our resident artists and their creative activities, including the best writing we can garner from Detroit's vast community of accomplished poets, fiction writers and journalists. Our city is alive with creativity in every shape and form, now more than ever, and our mission at City Arts Quarterly is to bring the work of Detroit's finest painters, sculptors, poets, musicians, dancers, photographers, actors, playwrights and other active artists to your attention.

Art in Detroit is created and made public only through the most serious sort of struggle--not just the battle to articulate and communicate a personal vision with intelligence and skill which is the burden of every artist everywhere, but the vicissitudes of everyday life in a desperate, out-of-work, post-industrial city which everyone but the people who live and work here has long ago given up on and abandoned.

While the usual practice is to blame the victim for its afflictions, the fact is that Detroit has suffered the loss of more than 200,000 jobs and half its former population of two million people since the dawn of the suburban era. The people whose lives are depicted on television and in our popular culture--you know, regular Americans--left the city for dead 20 years ago and try to go about their business as if the rest of us aren't worth bothering with.

We've been written off the books of the consumer society, but we just won't go away--we only keep digging in deeper and fighting back more vigorously with whatever crude weapons we can get our hands on. That's what makes our art so vital and alive, that it's created out of adversity and pain, shaped by the grinding edge of underclass reality, brought to life in spite of the economic and physical violence which threatens our very survival at every turn.

We continue to celebrate Detroit because this is where we are--this is our home, and we're glad to be here, thank you, still fighting and kicking for life!

--Detroit
Fall 1990

(c) 1990, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.

The Photographs of Leni Sinclair

2006-02-10T02:46:22Z

The Photographs of Leni Sinclair

Introduction by John Sinclair

I take some pride in the photographic achievement of Leni Sinclair, a great deal of pleasure, and the thrill, in the case of this gathering of her work, to be flooded with memories and emotions experienced many long years ago yet as fresh and exciting as the images she has captured and brought into print.

I met Magdalene Arndt in 1964. She had fled her native East Germany and came to Detroit, where she had been studying geography at Wayne State University and taking pictures for the fun of it. Magdalene (or Leni, as her family called her) was an avid jazz lover and a political and cultural activist who had attended the founding conference of Students for a Democratic Society in Port Huron in 1962 and was a member of the avant-garde Red Door Gallery on Second Avenue with Robin Eichele, Martine Algier, Carl Schurer, George Tysh, Charles Moore and others.

I had just matriculated at WSU as a graduate student in American Literature and was staying in the front basement apartment at 4625 Second Avenue. Leni was living next door in the apartment building on the northwest corner of Second and Prentis. We fell in love in the winter of 1964-65, not long after the founding of the Detroit Artists Workshop at 1252 West Forest, and were married on June 12, 1965. Our daughter Marion Sunny Sinclair was born May 4, 1967, and Celia Sanchez Mao Sinclair on January 17, 1970, at which time I was incarcerated in the state prison at Marquette in the Upper Peninsula. We separated in the Spring of 1977 but have continued to share in the care of our daughters and to work on many projects together.

Leni began her serious work in photography by shooting her friends in action at the Red Door Gallery and the Detroit Artists Workshop and soon could be seen carrying her camera with her everywhere she went. Her life trajectory carried her into the epicenter of the action in Detroit in the mid-1960s, and she had the good sense and presence of mind to capture on film just about everything she witnessed from her unique vantage point right in the very middle of what was happening.

The photographs selected for this collection give us a picture of energy in action as events unfolded, the people's movement surged, significant musicians played and audiences went wild in Detroit, Ann Arbor and environs during the 60s and 70s. This was a time of intense social change and immense cultural excitement which is now part of our collective history and will never return. But you can see some of what it was like in the photographs of Leni Sinclair, and the appearance of this catalog of her work is definitely something to be celebrated. Enjoy!

--New Orleans
March 25/April 3, 1999

Photo Captions:

Red Door Gallery
The Red Door Gallery, on Second Avenue just south of Prentis, was the forerunner of the Detroit Artists Workshop and provided an important focal point for the wave of artistic and cultural energy which was just beginning to swell in 1963-64. Pictured are Red Door activists George Tysh, Alan Stone, Robin Eichele and Martine Algier.

Charles Moore
The central figure in the musical ferment at the Detroit Artists Workshop was trumpet player Charles Moore, a native of Sheffield, Alabama and leader of the Detroit Contemporary 5. Charles moved in with me at 4625 Second Avenue in the Spring of 1964, and we were nearly inseparable companions for the next two years. In 1996 he put together and led the horn section for my recording date with Wayne Kramer, released by Alive Records as Full Circle.

Albert Ayler
Saxophonist Albert Ayler was in the forefront of the jazz revolution of the early 1960s and one of our musical idols. Around Christmas of 1965 Leni, Charles Moore, my brother David and I made a pilgrimage to Cleveland to meet Albert and his brother Donald, who were there visiting their parents for the holidays.

John Coltrane
The great saxophonist John Coltrane was God to us. We would travel to New York City or Chicago to see him play, or spend long hours with the John Coltrane Quartet at Detroit's Minor Key or Drome Bar on the west side. John Coltrane--Live Like Him!

Elvin Jones
A native of Pontiac, Michigan, Elvin Jones was the drummer with the John Coltrane Quartet and provided an incredibly powerful and endlessly inventive energy source for the most exciting improvisational ensemble of all time.

Thelonious Monk
One night in January 1967 at Cobo Hall we witnessed an incredible event where Thelonious Monk was re-united with John Coltrane for part of the evening's concert when Jimmy Garrison and Rashied Ali got snowed in on the East Coast somewhere and Monk's rhythm section filled in for them. Monk, whose fierce individualism and idiosyncratic antics were a source of constant inspiration, came out to spell Alice Coltrane on the piano bench for a couple of numbers and everybody went nuts.

Rob Tyner under strobe light
This is what it looked like at the Grande Ballroom when Rob Tyner sang with the MC-5 in the winter of 1966-67. Gary Grimshaw made a great Grande poster using this image, and Leni printed up the photo as a gorgeous poster from Pisces Eyes Productions.

Grateful Dead
When the Grateful Dead came to Detroit on their first national tour in 1967, I hung out with their managers, Rock Scully & Danny Rifkin, who inspired me to have the nerve to try to manage the MC-5. Later, when I got out of prison in December 1971, the Grateful Dead was playing at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor for two nights before a packed crowd of total freeks. I had never seen so many weirdos in one place like that before--there simply weren't that many freeks around when I had been incarcerated in July 1969.

MC-5 [all the usual shots]
Between September 1967 and July 1969 I had the privilege of working with the MC-5 as their manager and, on "Black to Comm," their tenor saxophonist. The MC-5 was the most exciting band I've ever seen, and I had the extreme pleasure of hearing them almost every time they played for nearly two years.

Fred Smith & John Sinclair in the Oakland County Jail
One night in the summer of 1968 I was assaulted, MACEd and beaten by six police officers and a rent-a-cop at an MC-5 performance at a place called The Loft in Oakland County. While I was down on my back with seven uniformed thugs flailing away at me with their nightsticks, Fred Smith came racing across the room, leapt into the air and pounced on the assailants in a heroic attempt to rescue me from harm. We were both charged with assaulting a police officer, but at our trial in the spring of 1969 I was convicted and Fred was acquitted.

Wayne Kramer with guitar & gun
Here's Wayne Kramer demonstrating the ideology of the White Panther Party: make the music and defend the people by any means necessary.

MC-5 on Zug Island
One bright day in the spring of 1969 we took the band to Zug Island to make some promotional photos. I wanted to pose the most powerful rock & roll band on the planet against the gigantic blast furnaces and raw mechanical landscape of the biggest industrial complex in the world.

Trans-Love tribe on the roof of the Detroit Artists Workshop
Leni took this picture of our Trans-Love tribe on the roof of the Artists' Workshop one early spring morning in 1967. Most of us had been up all night on LSD and the rest were dragged out of their beds for the photo opportunity.

Abbie Hoffman
The endlessly imaginative and dynamic Abbie Hoffman was a great inspiration to us as we groped for a way to express our hatred of the capitalist system and its racism, cultural repression and war-mongering ways--without abandoning our sense of humor.

Timothy Leary
The great prophet of LSD and consciousness expansion was a wonderful person and always a tremendous inspiration. When the MC-5 was on the West Coast in the spring of 1969 we visited Tim & Rosemary Leary at their home in the Berkeley Hills where we sweated through an acid trip while the Learys slyly crept upstairs to fuck.

Jimi Hendrix
The real God of the electric guitar was Jimi Hendrix, and he was worshipped without reservation by the MC-5, who included several of his songs in their playbook: "Manic Depression," "Foxy Lady," "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire" and others were learned off the records as soon as they were released. The MC-5 opened for Jimi at the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit in March 1968; the action photo on the back sleeve of the "Looking at You" 45 was shot at that concert.

Black Panther Demonstration
Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and the brothers and sisters of the Black Panther Party blew our minds with the beauty of their analysis and the strength of their commitment to freedom and social change. In October 1968, as we prepared to make the first MC-5 recording "live" at the Grande Ballroom, the band and the rest of our commune decided to operate thereafter as the White Panther Party in order to demonstrate our support and enlist our fans and followers in the "white mother-country youth community" to join us in the revolutionary struggle led by the Black Panthers.

White Panther tribe in front of 1520 Hill Street
Here's the whole gang at White Panther Headquarters in Ann Arbor, missing only those members who were "underground" or in prison when this picture was taken.

John & Sunny Sinclair (1969)
The birth of my first daughter, Marion Sunny Sinclair, in Detroit on May 4, 1967 was one of the highest points of my life. We were extremely close during her first two years before I was taken to prison in the summer of 1969. My younger daughter, Celia Sanchez Mao Sinclair, was born January 17, 1970, six months are I had been locked up on a 9-1/2-to-10-year sentence for possession of two joints. Celia was almost two and Sunny 4-1/2 when I was released from confinement on December 13, 1971. I also have two beautiful step-daughters: Krishna Tyson, born in 1970, and Chonita Michaels, a Leap Year baby born February 29, 1972. Their mother, the former Patricia Brown, and I have been together since November 1979; we married on January 1, 1989 and moved to New Orleans in July 1991.

Sun Ra
The great philosopher of modern music and unrestricted space travel for all humans dwelt in the center of our musical cosmos for many a year. I first brought Sun Ra & His Arkestra to Detroit to perform with the MC-5 and the Magic Veil Light Show at Community Arts Auditorium on the WSU campus in the spring of 1967. We brought them back in the spring of 1969 for a month-long residency in the house next door to ours on Hill Street in Ann Arbor; this time they played the Grande Ballroom, the Ann Arbor Armory and other local venues with the MC-5 and co-headlined (with Chuck Berry & the 5) the First Detroit Rock & Roll Revival at the Michigan State Fairgrounds on Memorial Day weekend. After I got out of prison Sun Ra & the Arkestra were featured at all three Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals; my recordings of these shows are finally being released on Total Energy Records, starting with their 1972 performance.

Iggy
I first met Jim Osterberg in the winter of 1966-67 at Bob Koester's Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, where young James was studying the art of blues drumming with Sam Lay, S.P. Leary and others. When he returned to Ann Arbor, where he had played drums with the Prime Movers Blues Band, he recruited Ron and Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander to provide the music for a brand-new performance unit that would make musical and cultural history: The Psychedelic Stooges. Iggy was an indescribably exciting force on stage, incredibly imaginative and wholly original. I attended their first series of appearances, helped get them booked into the Grande and elsewhere, and urged Danny Fields of Elektra Records to sign The Stooges to a recording contract. Their manager, Jimmy Silver, was a partner with my brother David and myself in our artists' management company, Trans-Love Productions, during 1968-69.

Ron Ashton
Guitarist Ron Asheton is a fantastic character who powered the Psychedelic Stooges, starred in the second edition of Destroy All Monsters, played roles in several weird locally-produced films, and often showed off his extensive collection of Nazi paraphernalia.

Bill Kunstler
The late civil-rights attorney William Kunstler was one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century and a fearless leader in the fight against political and cultural repression in the USA. Following his long court battle against Judge Julius Hoffman in defense of the Chicago 8, he and his colleague Lenny Weinglass agreed to represent Larry "Pun" Plamondon, Jack Forest and myself against federal charges that we had conspired to blow up the Ann Arbor CIA recruiting office in the Fall of 1968. The legal "dream team" headed by Kunstler & Weinglass included Detroit lawyers Hugh "Buck" Davis and others, master propagandist Ken Kelley, and White Panther Party Chief of Staff David Sinclair.

John & Yoko
John Lennon & Yoko Ono came to my rescue in the fall of 1971 while I was serving the third year of my prison sentence. Our friend Jerry Rubin convinced them to come to Ann Arbor to headline a benefit concert and rally at Crisler Arena on December 10, 1971. Inspired by a poem written on my behalf by my friend and mentor Ed Sanders, Lennon wrote a song for me--titled simply "John Sinclair"-- and sold out the 15,000 seats at the arena in just 8 minutes. After my release we got together several times to plan a left-wing tour of America headlined by John & Yoko that would have followed Richard Nixon around in the Summer of 1972, but pressure from the Immigration & Naturalization Service and the Nixon administration persuaded Lennon & Ono to curtail their political activities.

Miles Davis
One of my earliest jazz heroes, Miles Davis led me into a wonderful world of music and musicians starting in the fall of 1959 when I first heard his newly-released masterpiece, Kind of Blue, until this day my favorite album of all time. When we organized the first Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in September 1972, Miles Davis was my first choice to headline the event--and he did.

Ray Charles
I grew up listening to Ray Charles' great Atlantic Records 45 rpm singles like "I Got a Woman," "Lonely Avenue" and "What'd I Say," and I saw him with his great orchestra and the Rae-lettes at the IMA Auditorium in Flint, Michigan around 1958. I chose Ray Charles to headline the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, and we broadcast his performance that year (and the entire festival) "live" on 96 radio stations all across the USA.

Coleman Young
Coleman Alexander Young was one of my personal heroes during his 20-year reign as the first Black mayor of Detroit. As a State Senator from Detroit, Coleman had long supported my legal challenge to the constitutionality of Michigan's marijuana laws and often helped us in our efforts to gain my release from prison. When he announced his commitment as Mayor to gaining control of the Detroit Police Department, I felt it was safe to return to the city and moved back from Ann Arbor with my family in the spring of 1975.

Bob Marley
One of the greatest and most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bob Marley captivated our minds with his beautiful songs of freedom, redemption and the liberation of marijuana. I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Bob Marley and his powerful band of Wailers at Masonic Auditorium in Detroit around 1975-76.

Jimmy Carter
Coleman Young came out in support of Jimmy Carter almost as soon as he announced his presidential candidacy in 1975, and once he was elected he repaid Detroit's commitment with millions of dollars and federal support for Coleman's initiatives. I was active with the Allied Artists Association and the Detroit Jazz Center during the Carter years, garnering hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal and state grant monies for Detroit jazz artists and their projects until the dread Ronald Reagan took over in 1981.

Rosa Parks
The woman who touched off the modern civil rights revolution by refusing to move to the back of the bus in Birmingham, Alabama in December 1955 later moved to Detroit and worked as a staff member for Congressman John Conyers for many years. When the city rebuilt 12th Street, the initial site of the devastating 1967 Detroit riots, they renamed it Rosa Parks Boulevard in her honor.

Detroit Women for Peace
Detroit's progressive community played a leading role in the fight for social, racial and economic justice in America starting with the labor union struggles of the 1930s and continuing into the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Detroit Women for Peace was but one of the many local organizations which spoke out forcefully against the War in Vietnam and helped bring it to a conclusion.

Marvin Gaye
The Philosopher of Soul grew up in Washington, DC and came to Detroit with Harvey Fuqua, leader of the Moonglows--the greatest R&B vocal group of all time--in the early 1960s. He and Harvey married two of Berry Gordy's sisters and thus became original members of the Motown family. Marvin's social consciousness and fantastic singing gave voice to the sentiments of millions of Americans in songs like "What's Going On," "Inner City Blues" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)." His biography, Divided Soul by David Ritz, is a truly amazing story that should be read by all music lovers everywhere.

Della Reese
Della Reese is another great Detroit artist who came out of the glory days of Hastings Street to build a successful international career as a singer and actress. I remember listening to her early singles when I was a little kid in Davison, Michigan, in the early 1950s.

B.B. King
Our greatest living blues artist came off a sharecropping farm in Kilmichael, Mississippi to sing his songs and play his guitar for people all over the world, influencing a whole generation of guitarists in England and America in the process. B.B. King was a headliner (along with James Brown and Sun Ra) at the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival In Exile, staged across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.

Rolling Stones
From the beginning the Rolling Stones led the way in recognizing and paying homage to the African-American blues giants who had inspired them to take up their instruments: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. On their American tours, which always stopped in Detroit, the Stones introduced important Black artists like B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Ike & Tina Turner, and Prince to white audiences. Early on, when asked to play a popular TV music show, the Stones insisted that Howlin' Wolf must come with them, and they recorded one of their early albums at the Chess Records studio at 2120 Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Albert King
The gigantic bluesman out of Indianola, Mississippi was a big favorite with Detroit audiences of all descriptions, from the hippies at the Grande Ballroom to the hardcore east-side blues people at Ethel's Cocktail Lounge. He made a great recording of Sir Mack Rice's Motor City anthem, "Cadillac Assembly Line," and helped shape the musical consciousness of a whole generation of guitarists.

Aretha Franklin
The Queen of Soul grew up on Hastings Street under the wing of her famous father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, one of the nation's most popular African-American preachers. She started to soar as a teenage gospel singer in the mid- 50s and fully took flight a decade later when she came to dominate the popular music world with her brilliant recordings for Atlantic Records: "Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Do Right Woman" and scores more.

James Cotton
One of the last living originators of the modern electric blues, Cotton came out of Helena, Arkansas to record for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis and then rode to blues stardom as the harmonica specialist with the Muddy Waters Band on Chess Records. Cotton's popularity crossed over to rock audiences in the 60s and he thrilled many an audience at the Grande Ballroom on his frequent visits to Detroit.

--New Orleans
April 17, 1999

(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.