He s from Arkansas, grew up in Memphis, is known as “Detroit,” and lives in Chicago. But the well-traveled blues singer and pianist Emery “Detroit Junior” Williams, Jr., has a piece of Toledo s musical history in his pocket for playing at the “Party of the Century” for the Toledo Museum of Art s 100th birthday.
Junior s memorable solo performance at the June 2, 2001, bash, thumping the keys of the museum s one-of-a-kind Wendell Castle-designed Steinway Grand Piano, was captured beautifully on a new disc on Blue Suit Records, “Detroit Junior: Live at the Toledo Museum of Art.”
The 68-year-old bluesman is celebrating the CD release this weekend with three separate concerts in Toledo.
“Junior s repertoire is wide-ranging, and we re a blues label for the most part, but we told him to play the stuff that you usually play,” said Bob Seeman, vice president of Toledo-based Blue Suit. “That s why you have songs by Nat King Cole and Brook Benton on the album.”
While Junior has said he enjoys working with other musicians, as he will tonight when he is accompanied by Voodoo Libido in concert at Diva s, there are advantages to playing solo concerts like the one recorded at the museum.
“I like to bring a band but when I do solo, I don t have to tell anybody what I want to play. I can go as far as I want to go,” Junior said on the CD s liner notes.
After growing up in Arkansas and Memphis, Junior moved to southern Illinois, Detroit, and then, in the early 1960s, to Chicago, where he picked up the “Detroit” moniker.
He made his recording debut for the Bea and Baby Label in 1960 with the hit single, “Money Tree” and has worked with blues greats such as Howlin Wolf and Hound Dog Taylor.
Junior also is an accomplished songwriter, and three of his favorites are included on the new live disc: “Turn Up the Heat,” “Boogie Blues,” and “If I Hadn t Been High.”
The 11-song disc also includes such popular numbers as “Caledonia,” “Key to the Highway,” and “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer.”
“It was quite a setting for a concert,” Seeman recalled. “Junior was playing the Wendell Castle piano over in the corner. Above him was a blown-up picture of museum benefactor Edward Drummond Libbey riding a camel on one of his expeditions in Egypt, and just across from Junior was some art-making activity for kids. So they were making art, and everybody was listening to music, and observing the museum s art - it was all the right things in that gallery that day.”
A bit of the museum scene was captured on the live disc - Junior s third for Blue Suit - in the form of a concert video that can be viewed when the disc is played on a computer CD-ROM drive. Wearing a cowboy hat while seated at the stately Castle piano, Junior boogies through a version of “Black Night” by Charles Brown.
Detroit Junior will celebrate the release of “Detroit Junior: Live at the Toledo Museum of Art” with a concert with Voodoo Libido at 8 tonight at Diva s, 329 North Huron St., admission is $5; and free solo performances at 2 p.m. tomorrow at the museum (reuniting with the Castle Steinway), and 1 p.m. Sunday at Boogie Records, 3301 West Central Ave.
First Published November 14, 2003, 12:55 p.m.
