Mitch
Ryder of The Detroit Wheels
William
Levise Jr. was born February 26, 1945, in Hamtramck, Michigan,
and spent his formative years frequenting the clubs on Woodward
Avenue, watching many of Tamla/Motown's star attractions. He grew
up in Detroit listening to black music and joined a group in high
school called the Tempest. Levise later sang in a black quartet
called "the Peps", but suffered so much harassment that
he left the group. He went to Los Angeles for a time, then returned
to Detroit in 1963, to form another group which he called Billy
Lee and the Rivieras.
Levise himself
was Billy Lee and sang lead vocals and was backed by bass player
Earl Elliott, lead guitarist Jim McCarty (later of Buddy Miles
Express and Cactus) and drummer John Badanjek. The group later
brought in Joe Cubert, who had been with the Tempest, to play
rhythm guitar.
By mid-summer
of 1964, the group 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 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, and took the name that he has used ever since. 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 that brought them fame but no fortune
and tore the group apart in the process. The first Mitch Ryder
& The Detroit Wheels single, "I Need Help", failed
to make an impression, but in late 1965, their second attempt,
"Jenny Take A Ride!" climbed to #10 as The Wheels welded
Chuck Willis' "C.C. Rider" to Little Richard's "Jenny,
Jenny".
"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 medly, "Devil
With A Blue Dress On" & "Good Golly Miss Molly",
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.
Early in 1967,"Sock
It To Me-Baby!" became Ryder's final Top 10 single, despite
being banned on several stations for being too sexually suggestive.
It was followed by "Too Many Fish In The Sea" &
"Three Little Fishes", that reverted to the medley formula,
but it was the final chart entry (at #24) for Mitch Ryder &
The Detroit Wheels.
Encouraged
by Bob Crewe's vision of Mitch Ryder as a solo artist, the Detroit
Wheels were summarily fired in 1967, and after releasing, "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 for Mitch Ryder, but the "What Now My Love"
album, released in mid-1967, may be the worst piece of overblown
dreck ever associated with a major artist. Removed from the powerdrive
of The Detroit Wheels, swamped by strings and pompous pretense,
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, and 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.
Liner notes containing phrases like "After being raped by
the music machine that represents that heaven-on-earth" 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, but fine
music didn't spell commercial success, and Ryder returned home
to a reunion with The Wheels drummer John Badanjek in the short-lived
supergroup called simply, "Detroit", which lasted just
long enough to record one heavy-duty rock 'n' roll album in 1971.
An embittered
Ryder left the active performing scene, heading to Denver and
working a day job for 5 years while honing his songwriting skills,
with his wife Kimberley, after hours. When he returned to Detroit,
he formed a new band and released the 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 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.
Mitch Ryder
is currently enjoying another surge in European popularity and
has released two more LPs for Line Records, "Red Blood, White
Mink" and "In The China Shop". There's certainly
nothing nostalgic about the charged music here, and no one, ever
kicked out the rockin' R&B jams better than Mitch Ryder.
The tragedy
of Mitch's story is that mis-management, 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
imitate-able, fiery voice flying over the top.
These days,
Mitch Ryder is still a major concert attraction and he still puts
on a great show, as witnessed by the "Backstage" staff
in 1998. He has been working on two books about himself: one a
biography being written by a journalist, the other an autobiography
in his own words. Although neither book has been titled yet, Ryder
says he'd like to call his autobiography, "From 'It' To Shit".
He also has a new album ready to go once he finds an American
record label.
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