I've decided to write a series of blogs out musical cities. The first city I'm starting with Is one with a a lot of history and that is Detroit in Michighan in the good old United States. It really started in The nineteen thirties with Jazz and Blues being at the fronthold of it all, with artist like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, they were the heavy pioneers of that early Detroit scence.

Heading up To the nineteen fifties saw the introduction of more Blues to detriot with people like the unbelievable John Lee Hooker and other Blues cats, as I like to call them, like Eddie 'guitar' Burns and Bobo Jenkins amongst others.

Detroit's Rock N Roll started with Bill Hayley, who was a native of the city. Hayley was one of the early pioneers of early rock n roll in the nineteen fifties, his song rock around the rock had that great twangy backbeat with so many other artists have used over the years. The next great rocker was the Legendary Michighan rocker, Del Shannon, he was a top musicain was Del, his song 'runaway' wich is a tremondos song It has loads of musical thing goin on at once.

One of the biggest export out of Detroit was without doubt Mowtown records, originaly called Tamla Records. It was founded by Auto parts worker Berry Gorty Jnr, who started off as a songwriter, writing songs for Jackie Wilson, It was then he realised there was much more money to be made in actually producing the records which brought Motown to the world. That became home to some of the biggest artists ever to grace the music world, I mean proper heavyweights like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Tempations, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson And The Miracles, amongst others.

.  

There were other stars who made it big out of detroit without the help of Motown, that included The Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin. The Other big record label from Detroit in those days was Fortune Records the concentrated on a more R&B and Soul sound.

Unkown to a lot of people, Madonna, apart from her early years, actually grew up in Rochester wich is only thirty five miles outside Detroit and she attended The University of Detroit, on a dance scholarship. Many of Madonna's early hits were written by her ex boyfriend and detroit native Stephen Bray. 

More modern day Detroit muscians Included a guy born John Antony Gillis, but far better known to the world as Jack White. Jack White first rose to fame with Meg White in the amazing duo, The White Stripe I remember first hearing 'seven Nation Army' I was like Wow!!! and was even more suprised when I found out it was just a girl on drums and a guy on guitar, but they created a really big sound! Also they were at one time married to each other. Jack went on to further aclaim in bands such as The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, not to mention his critically aclaimed solo album, Blunderbuss and also working with great musicians such as Beck, The Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck and Alicia Keys, what a guy! 

There are so many great musicians to hail from Detroit, but if I mentioned them all, this blog would go on forever and people wouldn't have time to read it. So that's part one of a 6 part blog on Musical cities. Keep you're eyes peeled for part two!!