Newbee member here after 20 years on Soulful Detroit Forum -Checking it out

[Robb_K]

Hi Folks! After being on Soulful Detroit Forum for 20 years, I was referred to come here by our illustrious leader, Ralph Terrana, and a few others, because we have lost many of our colleagues who grew up loving '50s and '60s Detroit music, and had stayed deeply involved in it. Sadly, many of them have passed on. But, we have also lost several of them to Facebook and Instagram.

So, I have come here to see if I can communicate with Detroiters who are highly knowledgeable about Detroit's music industry, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. But I'm also interested in the 1940s, and the early 1970s. I'm sort of a high-level amateur Chicago and Detroit Music Historian. I have a lot of questions about the 1960s that I can no longer get answered on Soulful Detroit Forum. We used to have many posters who had been in the industry back in the classic period who were members who answered questions about what went on back then. But, naturally, if they were already in their mid 20's or over, when we were pre-teens and early teenagers, many of them will be gone, or too old to spend precious time on a forum.

I spent my early years in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where they played mostly really "hicky" C&W music on the radio. But, I first heard the 1930s and '40s Jazz and Blues that my Dutch parents loved. We used to visit family in Chicago during Christmas and part of Summer vacations. My uncles had stores on The South Side, so I got to hear a lot of R&B, Blues, and later, Soul Music. I started very young, in 1953, collecting records [[mainly while we visited Chicago), until we relocated there in 1959. After getting my driver's license, in 1963, I started driving to Detroit 1 or 2 Saturdays each month, to look for Detroit records, mainly because of Motown, but also, increasingly because of other small Soul labels, which I later learned had ex-Motowners for producers, arrangers, and who used moonlighting Motown musicians on their recordings. I did that regularly through 1966, and sporadically, when visiting Chicago during '67-71, while I attended UCLA. After Motown moved to L.A., I worked as a consultant to them, on projects to release previously unreleased cuts [["From The Vaults" and- my work was later used on "Motown 25" LP Series in 1984).

I noticed that there is a Detroit Sports Subforum here, but seems to be no Detroit Music Subforum. I'm afraid my posts asking people specific esoteric questions about the details what went on in Detroit 50-60 years ago will get buried quickly in the hundreds of threads in this too-general forum category.

I think this is more of an introduction post, which is already too long to start asking detailed questions about very obscure Detroit producers, arrangers, record company owners, songwriters, musicians, or singers from 60 years ago.

Lowell informed me that a "Detroit Music Subforum" - analogous to the "Detroit Sports Subforum" will not be formed simply by request, as Soulful Detroit Forum is already available for that purpose. One would only be formed, IF there were so many threads about "Detroit Music", that they would be "choking" the "Discuss Detroit" forum. And even then, I fear that we would just be told to "move our discussions over to SDF".

So, if any of you members interested in discussing the details of "the nuts and bolts" of the music industry in Detroit during the 1950s through 1970s [[Classical Period) would like to start a "Detroit Music Group" on this forum, discussing the producers, arrangers, record company owners, songwriters, musicians, singers and singing groups, nightclubs and other venues, recording studios, record pressing plants, record distributing companies, artist agents, etc., please start the group yourself, or direct me as to how I could start one.

[Steve]

Try the Michigan Music History group on Facebook.