Some of my favorite moments at Detroit's annual Concert of Colors diversity festival seem to occur when seemingly disparate performers take the stage to create beautiful music together.
The festival's final Sunday this year showcased a couple of performances that were particularly good examples of this type of musical synergy.
We've long been fans of Detroit Blues diva Thornetta Davis, and we've had a package of tickets for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for several years now, so we particularly looked forward to seeing Thornetta and the DSO perform together.
Conductor and violinist John McLaughlin Williams, well known for spotlighting the work of modern American composers and as the first African-American conductor to win a Grammy Award in 2007, took to the podium to preside over the program he created to spotlight the artists.
The show kicked off with about a half-hour of modern jazz, theater and classical tunes performed by the orchestra.
This proved to be a good way to introduce a crowd that wasn't necessarily classical music fans to the DSO, and one of the best examples of why the DSO enthusiastically welcomed the Concert of Colors to its Orchestra Hall when organizers needed a new venue for the annual festival after losing their previous venue about a half dozen years ago. I remember hearing that the DSO and Orchestra Hall management told the festival organizers that they would love to host the event on one condition--that the DSO could perform at the festival! This appearance, like the symphony's appearance with Ozomatli in a Latin-hip-hop-rock flavored show last year, helped demonstrate the orchestra's versatility across multiple genres and with different artists.
Thornetta then took the stage with her band and backup singers, starting with about 20 minutes of gospel-influenced music.
Williams stepped down from the conductor's podium to accompany Davis on violin on "Sunday Morning", a song from her first solo album. I remember purchasing the album shortly after its 1996 release, but the song wasn't one I really remember hearing her perform at bar shows around town, so it was a special treat to hear the song in a live version with Williams and the orchestra.
The last forty minutes of the show started as Davis sassily introduced it as her "naughty girl" music, launching into some of the blues and R&B tunes fans around town most know, love and remember hearing from her.
The show ended with a rendition of what must be regarded as one of Thornetta's signature covers, a rollicking rendition of the old Jeannie Cheatham tune "Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On" with the crowd lustily joining in on the chorus refrain.
We stuck around for the rest of the evening so we could catch the final show of the festival, a performance from Wayne Kramer and Melvin Davis billed as the Rock & Soul Summit.
Don Was spotted Kramer and Davis greeting each other like long-lost friends at last year's Concert of Colors festival during the Don Was All-Star Revue.
Was learned that the pair really were long-time friends who hadn't seen each other in many years, but who performed around town together during the 1970s as a band called Radiation.
Davis began his music career as a songwriter and performer during the early 1960s. He released a series of soul songs as a singer, enjoying a bit of regional success and performing as a drummer behind acts like Smoky Robinson and the Miracles (he played on studio sessions for "Tears of a Clown") and Dennis Coffey (Davis played drums on Coffey's first solo album "Hair and Thangs" during the late 1960s).
Meanwhile, Wayne Kramer became famous as co-founder of the MC5 (Motor City 5). The band subsequently gained fame for its blistering live performances and became infamous for its radical politics and the song "Kick out the Jams" with its unexpurgated opening.
Kramer saw his music career interrupted when he did a prison stretch of more than two years during the mid-1970s on drug charges. He subsequently continued to perform as a musician off and on through the years and sometimes supplemented that income by working as a carpenter.
Davis also continued to work as a musician through the years, but incredibly ended up working a regular post office job from 1984 until retiring from there about five years ago.
The combination of Davis and Kramer may look, at first glance, as unlikely. Kramer still embraces his left-wing political stance as an advocate and supporter of Detroit's working class on stage, while Davis has a looser stage presence and patter that encourages the audience to believe in love and dreams. Both men, though, have musical careers that cover more than five decades, and both have their own history as part of Detroit's sometimes struggling working class.
Davis and Kramer proved that they still have strong musical chops and demonstrated the versatility that served them well throughout the years as they backed each other's big hits.
The highlight of the show came when Kramer got his old friend Davis on stage behind the drum kit and told the audience that he thought it was time to "Kick out the Jams...." (If you're from the Detroit area, you know what comes next!)...and they did!
© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved
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