For All The Bad Mama Jamas

Born in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood in 1952, Carl Carlton spent his childhood in a city that was on the verge of a new musical revolution.  When Motown was founded in 1959, the signature “Motown sound” soon became a model for what everyone aspired to sound like.  Carl Carlton began singing and recording in the Read More

Smooth Soul Vibrations

Eric and the Vikings added soulful flavor to the Detroit music scene via Soulhawk records in the late 1960s and 1970s.  The Soulhawk label was owned and operated by Richard “Popcorn” Wylie, who had been influential with Motown from the beginning and now operated as a producer, songwriter, and supporter of Northern Soul.  Members Eryke Read More

Having Big Fun on the Dance Floor with Inner City

Throwback Thursday on our site honors the originators and innovators who paved the way for other contemporary Detroit artists to explore their sound and vision, and thanks to true visionaries like Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, Detroit has a signature techno sound that has reverberated throughout the music world.  Kevin Saunderson met his Read More

The Just Brothers Give Us Northern Soul

Jimmy and Frank Bryant were two brothers from Detroit who worked as session musicians and created a dance-floor hit so groovy, it has been sampled over the years by the likes of British DJ hit-maker Norman Cook (known by most as Fatboy Slim) to create an iconic Northern Soul sound that people for decades have Read More

Freda Payne : Detroit Gold

Freda Payne was born in Detroit in 1942 with Motown soul in her genes — both Freda and her sister, former Supreme Scherrie Payne, were blessed with the gift of vocal prowess.  Freda Payne attended the Detroit Institute of Musical Arts when she was younger and grew up with the influence of female jazz vocalists.  Read More

Back To The 80s With Angry Red Planet

In the 1980s, in Michigan and elsewhere, the punk and hardcore music scenes were developing heavily thanks to a relentless group of bands who were forming and playing in any venue that would host their style of music. In 1981, Angry Red Planet was formed by brothers Tim and John Pakledinaz and Vince Delisi, and Read More

Bob Seger’s First Big Hit

The raspy-voiced renegade from Lincoln Park, Bob Seger, has a thousand tracks we could feature for Throwback Thursday on Detroit Sounds Like This, but we’ve chosen the first track off of his debut album for not only putting Bob Seger’s name on the map, but also for it’s energy, authenticity, and organ riffs.  The Bob Read More

A Psychedelic Classic by Tommy James and the Shondells

The 1968 sweeping psychedelic opus we’re going back to for this week’s Throwback Thursday is ‘Crimson and Clover,’ from a Michigan band who started off their careers singing snappy bubblegum hits which transitioned to influential psychedelic soul when the band took creative control over the sound of their music.  Tommy James and the Shondells are Read More