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2006
Recipient for Best Blues Society
2010 Headstone Projects Announced
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A Free Copy of Mr. Bo's "If Trouble Was Money"
(courtesy of Blue Suit Records)
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DBS Headstone Fundraiser Raffle
The Detroit Blues Society (DBS) has announced it’s annual headstone placement projects for 2010. This year’s fundraising and placements will be for Uncle Jessie White and Mr. Bo Collins. The DBS has received permissions and blessing from the families of both legends and the process has begun, in earnest, for 2010. As in past years, the effort will be spearheaded by DBS Board Member, Wolfgang Spider. Several fundraisers are being planned as well as the placement of collection buckets at all DBS events in 2010. He also performs all of the research into these endeavors.
The DBS proccess of properly and respectfully marking the graves of Detroit Blues Legends began in 1997 with the first DBS project of marking the grave of Son House, who spent his final years in Detroit. This activity was completed and subsequent placements have been done for Clarence and Curtis Butler (the Butler Twins) in 2007 and Calvin Frazier in 2009. The DBS was also involved in the marker placement for Big Maceo Merriweather in 2008, by Steve Salter of Western Michigan. These projects are vitally important to Blues lovers and historians alike. Proper recognition of deceased Detroit Blues greats is vital to teach history and to keep the nusic alive through rememberances.
Mr. Bo Collins
When Detroit blues artist Mr Bo recorded “If Trouble Was Money” on the Blue Suit label in February, 1995 it had been 20 years since he had recorded professionally. Highly regarded for a handful of 45s he had recorded for various Detroit labels during the '50s, '60s and '70s, his recording career had take a long hiatus while his live performing career continued to thrive. Louis Bo Collins was born on April 7, 1932 in Indianola, Mississippi; he moved north to Chicago in 1946 and settled in Detroit in the early 1950s. Befriended by Washboard Willie, his growing interest in performing the blues was encouraged, and he was soon playing house parties throughout Detroit, performing with the likes of John Lee Hooker, Eddie Burns and Little Sonny.
Under the name "Mr Bo," Collins began a recording career in 1959 which would eventually be responsible for some of the finest blues ever to come out of Detroit. The singles reveal a singer and guitarist influenced by B B King and T-bone Walker, but they also reveal an artist who created a blues style that was uniquely his own. Perhaps the most enduring recording from this period is "If Trouble Was Money," penned by his brother Little Mac Collins and covered by many since its 1966 release. This disc contains some of the best of Mr Bo's classic songs and some new original compositions. Backed by a strong band with which he had played the past several years, he used these sessions to lay down track after tarc of some of the finest music of his life. Sly, Mr Bo never lived to see “If Trouble Was Money” issued. On September 19, 1995 he succumbed to pneumonia at Detroit's Harper Hostipal. Only 63, Mr Bo's death brought to a close the career of one of Detroit's finest blues artists. The blues on "If Trouble Was Money" serve as a testament to the career of Louis Mr Bo Collins.
Uncle Jessie White
Jessie moved to Detroit in 1950 after spending his youth picking cotton in the fields of Mississippi and playing in local juke joints in Jackson. During the riots of 1967, when many blues and jazz clubs closed in Detroit, Uncle Jessie White and his family hosted weekend blues sessions that lasted throughout the night. The jam sessions were held on the weekends from Friday evening after work, until Monday morning - only stopping for the weekdays so that the musicians could go back to the assembly lines in Detroit's auto factories. Blues musicians, students of blues and curious neighbors came from miles around to witness and dance at the weekend long house parties on 29th Street. The sessions continued through 1971 and are well-known for the local and national talent that passed through to play at the famous house.
Jessie taught many Detroit musicians during those jam sessions and became a mentor and father figure to many more. Harmonica Shah called him “the real deal – one of a kind”. Ann Rabson of Saffire loved him dearly and would always make room for him on her shows in Detroit.
Jessie also traveled throughout Michigan, the United States and Germany, playing his music, leaving his warmth and charm wherever he went.
He played at many Detroit blues clubs such as at the famous former Soup Kitchen where he ran the weekly jam sessions. His 20-year-tenure ended in 2007 at the former Attic Bar in Hamtramck, where he led the famous Detroit 29th Street Blues band on the piano.
Jessie’s fans will never forget his home made ‘rig,’ which held his harmonica and microphone. Blues Factory records helped to record his music on CD in 1991, and his fans can still listen to his sweet singing for many years to come.
Uncle Jessie White, beloved family man and Detroit blues elder statesman, went home to be with the angels on January 29, 2008 at the age of 87.
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Media
Contacts:
Steve Allen/DBS PR -
steveallen@detroitbluessociety.org -
(248)-249-5287
Wolfgang Spider – DBS Project Coordinator -
spiderblues@sbcglobal.net -
734-455-5135
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Calvin Frazier Headstone Project
Obscure no
longer
Township man's
drive buys headstone for blues legend
By Matt Jachman • OBSERVER STAFF WRITER
• December 6, 2009
A legendary blues guitarist resting in obscurity in a local
cemetery for nearly four decades now has a proper gravestone thanks
to a Plymouth Township man and fellow supporters of the Detroit
Blues Society.
Calvin Frazier, who played alongside perhaps the world's best-known
bluesman, Robert Johnson, and settled in Detroit in the 1930s, was
buried in an unmarked grave at United Memorial Gardens in Salem
Township after his death in 1972. While he never achieved the fame
of Johnson or some of his other contemporaries, those who know the
music say Frazier left a distinct blues legacy.
“Unfortunately, some of these people give their soul to the music,
but they don't make a lot of money,” Lee Herberger of Plymouth
Township said during a visit to the Frazier gravesite
Tuesday.
Herberger, a bass player known in local blues circles as Wolfgang
Spider, headed the Detroit Blues Society's campaign to buy Frazier
a headstone. Some $1,600 was raised, and the stone of polished
granite was dedicated Nov. 21. Local blues musician the Rev. Robert
Jones, an ordained minister, blessed the stone.
“The blues community is amazing, how they come together to support
those in need,” Herberger said.
It wasn't the first time the DBS had purchased a headstone for a
blues musician's grave, Herberger said, and it's not likely to be
the last, as several prominent blues players are buried at area
cemeteries without markers.
Veteran Detroit jazz saxophonist George Benson couldn't make the
ceremony, but performed at one of the benefits for the headstone
fund.
Frazier and he were in a quintet, Benson said, that had a regular
gig at a Toledo club called Tate's in about 1950.
“We would just play some jazz the first part of the set, and Calvin
would come on and do his thing,” Benson said. Frazier would sing to
accompany his playing, Benson said.
Though Benson is primarily a jazz musician, he said he learned the
blues from Frazier and others. And Frazier, likewise, picked up
jazz, but blues was more his style.
“They loved him, I think, more than they loved us playing jazz,”
Benson said of the audiences at Tate's.
Benson remembered Frazier as a quiet, congenial man. “He would tell
a few jokes,” he said. The two lost track of each other after
Benson's stint in the U.S. Army in the early 1950s, he said.
Frazier was born in Arkansas in 1915 and played with Johnson in the
1930s, with the men working their way to Detroit. Though the
details are murky, legend has it that Frazier killed a man in the
South in a 1935 shootout in which he was wounded, causing him to
head back to Detroit, where he married a cousin of fellow musician
Johnny Shines and settled down.
“The story has been told different ways by different people,”
Herberger said.
The folklorist Alan Lomax, who was working for the Library of
Congress, made a 1938 musical recording of Frazier in Detroit,
Herberger said, and Frazier's work can be found on many other
recordings, though not often in a prominent role.
“He was only featured on a few recordings, but he participated in
many,” Herberger said.
As far as he knows, Herberger said, Frazier made his living with
his music after moving to Detroit.
Still, the Detroit Blues Society was unable to locate any
relatives, nor any mention of him published at the time of his
death.
“He passed without much notice, at least in the press,” Herberger
said.
mjachman@hometownlife.com | (313) 222-2405
The grave of legendary
blues musician Calvin Frazier now has a headstone. (photos by Bill
Bresler | staff photographer)
Wolfgang Spider of the
Detroit Blues Society, at the graveside of Calvin
Frazier.
Headstones That We Have
Placed or Have Helped to Place
Other
Detroit Musician Headstones
Calvin
Frazier Major "Big Maceo" Merriweather
C.J. Morris Darrell Banks
