By corvax (199.29.22.28 - 199.29.22.28) on Thursday, October 04, 2001 - 10:36 pm:

David, I look forward to your piece on Martha Jean "the Queen". I have driven by, but not yet visited, the Chess studio. I an surprised that any of the streets you mentioned were significant, except for Western Avenue, a major commercial thoroughfare that stretches almost the whole length of the city (and was once its western boundary). Wacker Drive is a relatively short street that winds along the Chicago River in the heart of downtown. North Lake Shore Drive, as its name implies, is on the shore of Lake Michigan and is densely residential; McClurg Court is a very short street near the Michigan Ave. shopping district. Altho I hope to be able to be in Detroit when you are there some day, I hope you have the opportunity to come visit Chicago at some point--a quick 5 hour drive or 1 hour flight from the Motor City

By david, glasgow, scotland (62.252.128.4 - 62.252.128.4) on Thursday, October 04, 2001 - 08:47 pm:

hey corvax

i've never been to chicago but know a wee bit about the recording scene there too.

the recording scene was 'record row' on south michigan ave - apparently chess records now have a museum there (no.2120).

other significant sites were at mcclurg court/north lake shore/western and wacker.

do you know these streets well?

as for detroit dj's, i have nice pieces on frantic ernie durham and martha jean 'the queen' steinberg.

By corvax (199.29.22.28 - 199.29.22.28) on Thursday, October 04, 2001 - 08:17 pm:

"...and the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to aneasthetize the way that you feel" E. Costello

the state of US radio is the worst it's ever been, principally because of the gross consolidation of ownership of stations. a medium that should be ideal for exposing us to this classic indigenous music for the most part ignores it (maybe it's better on internet radio i've read about, but i'm not so tech savvy as to be connected to it and, any way, would like to be able to listen to it on my car radio, too) So called oldies stations include in their formulaic playlists the same old 20 Motown songs by the same 5 artists that were hits on white radio, disregarding the rest. it's interesting how segregated radio is now-- for example, the only bright spot here in Chicago is V103 (fm) geared to an older "urban" audience which plays a somewhat wider range of "dusties" (look-"white" and "black" radio stations don't even call old hits by the same name), especially Chicago radio hall of fame member Gentleman Herb Kent. Thanks for the opportunity to rant. Looking forward to reminiscences about classic Detroit dj's

By acooolcat (211.72.121.66 - 211.72.121.66) on Friday, October 19, 2001 - 02:22 am:

Corvax
Were you in Detroit during the 1960s?
I had the pleasure of talking to Jay Butler a few years ago. A real nice guy. He told me about when he first arrived in Detroit and how Motown took care of him.
When he used to DJ on a radio station in the south and had once written to Motown asking them for some records to play. He' got a curt reply saying that as their records were hits he could simply go and buy them at his local record store! Obviously he wasn't impressed. This story preceded him to Detroit and to make ammends Motown had a car pick him up from the studio after every session and someone took him to dinner.
I've also heard how record hops wre a substitute for payola, where performsers were obliged to appaear and lip sync to their record if they wanted it played on air. The DJ would also get a batch of promo copies to hand out too. Or sell?
Obviously payola had been curbed by then and most radio stations had become formatted, with program directors deciding which records would be played.
Many people have told me how Frantic Ernie would simply play a record if he liked it, often twice, back to back. But those days are long gone, unfortunately.

By corvax (199.29.22.28 - 199.29.22.28) on Monday, October 22, 2001 - 06:57 pm:

Mr. Cat, thanks for the great recollections. I started high school in 1970, so, altho I was in Detroit in the 60's, my experiences of it are primarily from the 70's (i moved to Chicago in 1981) like many kids of that era, I mostly listened to 'ABX, but miss an age of popular radio when it was possible to hear on a pop station artists like aretha/johnny cash/jimi hendrix/dylan/four tops/yardbirds/supremes/beatles/ccr in succession (of course i'm forgetting bubblegum pop and sappy ballads, but the variety of quality current music of different types on a single station was, in retrospect, amazing)

By acooolcat (211.78.0.219 - 211.78.0.219) on Thursday, November 22, 2001 - 01:26 pm:

The two soul oriented stations in Detroit were WJLB and WCHB, but they were both quite small in terms of wattage/range, and CKLW (in Windsor) was the station that could possibly break a local record nationally. Although it was a pop station a certain amount of "local" 45s were spun too. Someone told me that they wouldn't play a 45 that they thought didn't have adequate finacial backing to ensure sufficient qualtities could be pressed up to meet possible demand. Anyone heard about that?