High octane, turbo, high performance, super charged MITCH RYDER & The
Detroit Wheels didn't need to hail from the Motor City for those
adjectives to be tossed their way, but it was certainly appropriate that
they called Motown home. It was Mitch and The Wheels who served as the
musical bridge between the Motown soul factory and the high energy, take
no prisoners rock 'n' roll that would roar out of Detroit via Iggy
& The Stooges, MC5, Ted Nugent and Bob Seger.
With Ryder, it wasn't attitude or public outrage or politics that generated
the charge you could simply hear it in the music. Ryder hit during the
mid-'60s when AM radio was going through a golden era courtesy of
Motown, Stax, the British Invasion, Aretha, JB, and any number of garage
band one-hit wonders. But no one on the radio then could match Mitch
and company for pure visceral excitement, no one else could make the
hair stand up on the back of your neck and a wild-eyed gleam creep into
your eyes because you just know that SOMETHING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.
The
explosive quality was there from the very start. Listen to the way the
chords introducing "Jenny Take A Ride" are chomping at the bit to swoop
down into the double-time mid-section, or how John Badanjek's thundering
bass drum trigger's the ecstatic roll that kicks off "Devil With A Blue
Dress On". And the Wheels must have known what they had witness the
confidence-even cockiness-of telegraphing their punch forever on "Little
Latin Lupe Lu", building expectations to fever pitch before hammering
down the riff with Jim McCarty's lead lick trailing behind. And nailing
it big time. One punch, KO, Mike Tyson-style.
The records worked because they
perfectly captured the kinetic frenzy of the live performances that had
been the group's stock in trade since they first joined forces in
Detroit early in 1964. Born William Levise, Jr., Ryder was performing as
Billy Lee in a high school band called Tempest before turning heads in a
black Detroit soul club called the Village. At 17, he was skilled
enough to record an R&B single ("That's The Way It's Going To
Be/Fool For You") for the Detroit gospel label Carrie in 1962 and to
start making gigs fronting The Peps, a black vocal trio.
Levise
was appearing with The Peps at the Village early in 1964 when he ran
across a group that included McCarty, bassist Earl Elliot, and Badanjek.
Together with rhythm guitarist Joe Kubert, they joined forces as Billy
Lee & The Rivieras and by mid-summer had attracted a fanatical local
following that caught the ear of Motor City DJ Bob Prince. Prince began
booking Lee & The Rivieras as an opening act at a club/casino north
of Detroit, but their live performances were so potent that the
unrecorded group was soon headlining over major Motown artists. Prince
then arranged for The Rivieras to record a tape in Badanjek's basement,
and that demo brought 4 Seasons producer Bob Crewe to a Detroit
performance where The Rivieras opened for The Dave Clark Five. They
torched the hometown audience for 90 minutes, Crewe was hooked, and in
February, 1965, the five Detroit teenagers relocated to New York City
and bided their time for a few months playing Greenwich Village clubs
for survival money.
The
name was the first to go (a conflict with The Rivieras who recorded
"California Sun"), hence the legendary story of Lee/Levise flipping
through the Manhattan phone directory and coming across the name Mitch
Ryder. The Rivieras became The Detroit Wheels and album cover photos of
the band on top of oil cans or surrounded by discarded tires punched the
automotive image home.
What
followed was a wild two-year ride trough the starmaking machinery of
the record industry that brought them fame but no fortune and tore the
group apart in the process. Not that the first Mitch Ryder & The
Detroit Wheels single, "I Need Help", exactly set the charts afire. That
waited until late 1965 when "Jenny Take A Ride!" climbed to #10 as The
Wheels welded Chuck Willis' "C.C. Rider" to Little Richard's "Jenny,
Jenny", and cannily tossed in an advertisement for their live show along
the way (check how the backing vocals change to "See Mitch Ryder"
during the second verse). "Little Latin Lupe Lu" cemented their
commercial appeal when it reached #17 and set the general outline of the
band's most popular sound- an R&B standard or two revved up,
Wheels-style, with Mitch's peerless soul shouting ripping away over the
top.
That
approach bordered on becoming a formula, particularly after "Break
Out", the first attempt at a bigger, brassier sound, only made it to #62
and the ballad "Takin' All I Can Get" barely cracked the Top 100. Late
in 1966, the "Devil With A Blue Dress On" & "Good Golly Miss Molly"
medleys exploded over the airwaves and indelibly stamped the high energy
Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels sound on anyone within an earshot
as they hit #4 on the charts.
Which
was a shame, really, because the albums kept showing other dimensions
of Ryder's skills as an interpretive singer. Certainly, tracks like
"Shakin With Linda", "Shake A Tail Feather", "Just A Little Bit", and
"Sticks And Stones", fits The Wheels mold to a tee. But, "I Like It Like
That" spotlighted Ryder's ability to tone down for the kind of
slow-drag, New Orleans R&B that emphasized his smooth delivery and
immaculate phrasing. And he showed real signs as a midnight rambler
songwriter on "I Had It Made" (musically, a thinly veiled re-write of
James Brown's "Out Of Sight") and the intriguing "Baby Jane", which
sounds like a bizarre but happening cross of Sir Douglas Quintet and
Velvet Underground.
Early
in 1967, prototypical, riff-rockin "Sock It To Me-Baby!" became Ryder's
final Top 10 single, despite being banned on several stations for being
too sexually suggestive. The brassy "Too Many Fishes In The Sea" &
"Three Little Fishes" reverted to the medley formula, but it was the
final chart entry (at #24) for Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels
because Crewe's long running Svengali notions of (ahem) putting The
Wheels in motion back to Detroit and working with Ryder as a solo artist
were finally bearing fruit. After a final single (the first credited to
Mitch alone), pairing the syncopated "Joy" with the hard-riffing "I'd
Rather Go To Jail", Crewe packed Ryder off to Las Vegas with a big band
in tow.
Crewe
had big plans- wretchedly excessive plans since the What Now My Love
album released in mid-1967 may be the most god-awful piece of overblown
dreck ever associated with a major artist. Divorced from the power drive
of The Wheels, swamped by saccharine strings and pompous pretense
(poetry by Rod McKuen and music by Jaques Brel on a Mitch Ryder album,
for Chrissakes), the fact that Ryder somehow got the title track up to
#30 might rank as the most amazing feat of his singing career. It was
the final straw- Ryder bailed out of his contract with Crewe, who
promptly milked the last bit of mileage he could by slapping horn tracks
over the R&B tunes The Wheels had covered and putting out the Mitch
Ryder Sings The Hits album.
Instead of immediately returning to Detroit, Ryder took a down-home
detour to Memphis to record The Detroit-Memphis Experiment album with
Stax luminaries Booker T. & The MGs and The Memphis Horns for
Dot.Liner notes containing phrases like "After being raped by the music
machine that represents that heaven-on-earth , New York b/w Los Angeles"
and "Mitch Ryder is the sole creation of William Levise, Jr.", left
little doubt about his feelings over the Crewe experience.
It
was the only time Ryder recorded with a bona-fide soul band, "Liberty"
shows it was a two way exchange- Ryder's Detroit bred rock 'n' roll
energy goosed the musicians just as their innate funkiness moved Ryder's
singing in new directions. But fine, fine music didn't spell commercial
success, and Ryder returned home to a reunion with The Wheels drummer
John Badanjek in the short-lived super-group Detroit, which lasted just
long enough to record one monster of a heavy-duty rock 'n' roll album in
1971. "Long Neck Goose" updated the classic Wheels sound as Ryder digs
into the tune with a ferocious glee (listen to the screams he hurls off
as the song fades) but the climatic moment was "Rock N' Roll" (here in
its rarely heard 45 mix), kicked off by a mountainous guitar riff while
Badanjek bounced a cow-bell off your skull at regular intervals. It was
so powerful a performance that Lou Reed was quoted as saying that was
how the song was supposed to sound, and proved it by recruiting
guitarist Steve Hunter for his Rock N Roll Animal phase after Detroit
disintegrated.
An
embittered Ryder left the active performing scene then, heading to
Denver and working a day job for 5 years and honing his songwriting
skills at night. After returning to Detroit, he formed a band and
released the confessional, autobiographical How I Spent My Vacation and
then Naked But Not Dead on his own Seeds and Stems label. That helped
trigger a resurgence of European interest in Ryder and he released
several additional albums- Live Talkies, Got Change For A Million, and
Smart Ass -in the early '80s on the German Line label.
He
came back to a major American label for the John Cougar Mellencamp-
produced Never Kick A sleeping Dog in 1983, highlighted by a
world-weary, gritty version of Prince's "When You Were Mine" that cut
the original and all others to shreds. Single tracks- "Bow Wow Wow Wow"
for Was Not Was and a satirical take on Oliver North called "Good Golly
Ask Ollie" - are his only other domestic releases since then.
It
would be a mistake to consign Mitch
Ryder solely to the past- he's shown too much resilience to be
counted out. He is
currently enjoying another surge in European popularity and
continues to revisit for live performances. There's certainly nothing
nostalgic
about the charged music here- no one, but no one, ever kicked out
the rockin' R&B jams
better than Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels. The tragedy is
that mismanagement, and
show biz machinations sidetracked a great band and- the financial
inequity aside- quite
possibly prevented Mitch Ryder from tapping his full potential as a
singer. But all these
problems can't erase the indelible rush of The Detroit Wheels
shifting into over-drive
with that imitable, fiery voice flying over the top.
