Detroit with Mitch Ryder

Best Rock Albums You’ve Never Heard #1

Released on US label Paramount Records in 1971 with little or no promotion, Detroit with Mitch Ryder is a genuine candidate for one of the best rock albums you’ve never heard.

An early production by recording engineer Bob Ezrin, who would later produce Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Alice Cooper, this is the only studio album from the short lived band built around singer Mitch Ryder (William Levise Jr), whose run of mid-sixties hits with the Detroit Wheels including Jenny Take A Ride and Devil With A Blue Dress On had long since dried up.

The musicians in the band were former Detroit Wheel drummer Johnny ‘The Bee’ Badenjek, bassist W.R. Cook, conga player ‘Dirty’ Ed Okalski, guitarist Brett Tuggle (with Mark Manko four tracks), pianist and organist Harry Phillips and the band’s secret weapon, a young Steve Hunter (The Deacon) on guitar, who would go on to play with with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel.

The repertoire is rock & roll with a good selection of covers. There’s Ron Davies’ It Ain’t Easy that David Bowie also covered on Ziggy Stardust, The Velvet Underground’s Rock & Roll, The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter (added to the CD and later vinyl issues), Chuck Berry’s Let It Rock, Wilson Pickett’s (with The Falcons) I Found A Love and some strong original songs, especially the storming opener Long Neck Goose written by Ryder and Ezrin.

The sound of this record is wonderful. Dated, certainly, but in a good way. It’s from the pre-synth and pre-digital era with real instrument sounds free of trickery or effects and an excellent mix. Everything rocks and most importantly, swings like crazy with no unnecessary heaviosity, each track has a groove and a tempo that fits.

The playing by everyone is strong, the rhythm section tight and fully committed, with the main instrumental focus on Hunter, whose superb Gibson ’59 Les Paul TV double-cutaway guitar tone and bluesy playing takes a starring support role to Ryder. His arrangement skills are excellent too, his powerful riff reworking of Rock & Roll so impressed Lou Reed that he hired Hunter for his live band along with his guitar partner Dick Wagner from Alice Cooper.

Ryder sings his heart out, he’s soulful, bluesy and always in the groove with none of the histrionics and posturing common with the era. He lets out a rising scream on Rock & Roll that’s blood curdling, and his performance on I Found A Love is powerful and intense. And if the original wasn’t so well known, his version of Gimme Shelter might just have been the definitive one.

Even the cover art is excellent, by the prolific Stanley Mouse (Grateful Dead). The only negative is the wafer thin vinyl of the original pressings, but later reissues and digital versions have righted that.

After fifty years this album keeps demanding to be played, why not give it a shot?

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My weekly jazz radio show Jazz On The Beach has now reached double figures, so it seems I’ll keep doing this for a while. The show goes out live every Wednesday from 10pm - Midnight on Deal Radio or catch up on Mixcloud and so far there have been mercifully few live on-air malfunctions, either technically or down to pilot error.

I made 20 J.O.T.B. mugs just to see if anybody wanted one, and they all went in a few hours via the show’s Facebook group page. I’ll do a second run early next year with some small changes (let’s keep each series collectable!), so if you’d like one please let me know.

Here’s Jazz On The Beach #10 from 1st December