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They were especially prevalent in the gay black community, who embraced the free culture that went hand-in-hand with disco music. Across the Detroit/Windsor border, the Canadian hotspot was Elmwood Casino, open until 6 AM.Įlmwood Casino was one of many late-night disco joints.
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For the straight suburban crowd, disco clubs included The Butterfly in Sterling Heights, Lenote in Roseville and Angie’s in Farmington. Studio 54 was a big part of Detroit’s scene, but clubs such as Lafayette Orleans, Boogie Down Lounge and My Fair Lady (later just The Lady) were also staples for the straight urban crowd. And, by the middle of the ’70s, as it was the case in the rest of the country, disco was everywhere. The friction lessened as disco continued to move in. “You couldn’t just put on Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ and not do ‘Brick House’ by Commodores.” “You have to understand, in the black community, you had to mix disco and funk,” remembers Howard. “He preferred the more disco sound.”Īlthough DJs like Collier, Renaldo White and Morris Mitchell, who had a group called True Disco, welcomed the disco movement with open arms, others, such as Howard, were wary. “Ken refused to play anything funk,” says Howard. As the funk/disco changeover transpired, Collier pushed disco at Studio 54, Detroit’s smaller version of the infamous New York Club. The founding fathers of techno often list Collier as a direct influence, but Collier has all but been forgotten in the international conception of Detroit’s music history. Ken Collier, who passed away in 1996, was one of Detroit’s foremost gay disco DJs, later a leading name in the progressive and house movements. “A lot of the radio stations completely changed their format and played disco music day and night.
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“I think we were all inspired by disco music,” says Delano Smith, one of the city’s second wave disco and house DJs. Stations WJLB (pre-FM), WCHB, WLBS and WGPR placed on-air personalities and mix show DJs like Tiger Dan, Jay Butler and Al Perkins in clubs for nighttime gigs, a trend later followed by Duane “In The Mix” Bradley and others. In conjunction with the evolving club scene of the mid-’70s, radio also hopped on the disco train. Charles Love was another important figure, throwing events under the name Fun Time Society in suburban-friendly spots like the Northville Hilton hotel. Party promoters like Zana Smith (owner of Harmonie Park’s Spectacles) put newer disco spots on the map, such as the Downstairs Pub, while others including Dale Willis, Bruce Moore, Carleton Northern and a Jamaican man known as Effie were key names responsible for Detroit’s early disco parties, which drew anywhere up to 2,000 people a night. Other funk clubs in Detroit such as Millie’s, Ethos, Wash’s Flamingo and the Pink Poodle soon followed suit. “The DJ got all the popular records, so why would anyone pay for a band?” “The bands were being pushed out because a band cost $500 and a DJ cost $50,” he says. Howard, who lived across the street from the club, recalls when The 20 Grand made the transition from funk to disco.
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“If you took classical and put it with a funk band that had a full piece, you got disco,” says longtime Detroit DJ Felton Howard.Ĭlub owners took notice of the newfound sound and the attention it attracted, especially at a popular hangout for Motown artists, The 20 Grand on the corner of 14th Street and Warren. Once strings were added in, the disco sound began to emerge. The city was awash in four-piece R&B groups who later incorporated full ensembles consisting of trumpets, trombones, drums, guitars, pianos and vocals.
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To add to the understanding of how Detroit birthed such a vibrant genre in the late ’80s, Ashley Zlatopolsky speaks to some of the DJs and producers that were there.īefore disco’s mainstream explosion, funk bands held precedence in Detroit clubs. Memories of teenagers throwing thousand-strong disco parties rampant after hours clubs, with authorities turning a blind-eye under the rule of Mayor Coleman Young a short-lived New Wave boom that brought the likes of The B-52’s to party in Detroit – all of it has basically been forgotten in the techno surge that followed. This is far from true: a fascinating tale mostly left untold, aside from a small chapter in Dan Sicko’s Techno Rebels and a handful of articles, Detroit’s blossoming dance music culture between 19 was a highly influential period that never received the credit it deserved. It’s as though when Motown left Detroit in 1972 for Los Angeles, the city’s music scene essentially died until it was revived by techno a little over a decade later. Because of a lack of readily available documentation, there is a gap in Detroit’s music history between the days of Motown and the rise of techno in the mid-’80s.