Pat was a mainstay at the early Baker’s Keyboard lounge (established in 1934). “The main attraction up until 1954 was local pianist Pat Flowers, who was so popular that Clarence Baker no longer served food as the principal means of support, he provided entertainment nightly. Pat had Clarence change the name to Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. By the fifties Baker was booking jazz trios and quartets such as Fats Waller, Meade Lux, Errol Garner, Art Tatum, Tommy Flanagan and George Shearing.”

Baker’s Keyboard Lounge is still active as a landmark Detroit jazz showplace, it is acclaimed as “the world’s oldest jazz club” and during its 73 year history has had “almost every jazz musician of national importance” performing on its bandstand.

The following Pat Flowers article appeard in the Metro Times as “Jazzman Extraordinaire” by Kim Heron:

For decades he was a lost man of Detroit jazz, and when he passed away Oct. 6, (2000) at age 83, the word spread slowly. We might not have noticed here but for an inquiry to the Metro Times by a diligent librarian on behalf of a curious patron. Pat Flowers? His name rang a bell faintly as having been the pianist who had played at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge when the keyboard was the key to the club, back when, we were told, the club at Eight Mile and Livernois had cornfields for neighbors.

Calls to Jim Gallert and Lars Bjorn, authors of a forthcoming history of Detroit jazz, filled in details, as did a short piece that appeared in the newsletter of the Southeast Michigan Jazz Alliance. It outlined a career that might have been much more.

A conservatory-trained Cass Tech grad, Flowers was appearing at local clubs before he was out of his teens and became “an almost permanent fixture at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge … from about 1939 to the mid-1950s.” In the mid-1940s, Flowers recorded in New York with several of Fats Wallers’ former sidemen. His repertoire, according to the newsletter, ranged from Chopin to Waller to titles such as “Eight Mile Boogie.”

He had, in fact, been a Waller protégé, said Gallert. A Coda magazine article quotes Waller introducing Flowers around, saying, “This young man will carry on when I leave off.” When Waller died in 1943, Flowers was billed as his successor, performing and recording with former Waller sidemen.

And if he didn’t have the Waller charisma, he certainly had the sound. “You knew you were in the presence of greatness,” Gallert said. But after Flowers’ career faltered in New York, he returned to Detroit and drifted off the main axis of the jazz community. Just what went wrong is hard to pin down. “He was one of the most private people,” said Gallert. And despite prodding, Flowers rebuffed Gallert’s attempts to interview him. He was working at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club at the end. “He was a genius living in our midst,” said Gallert. 

When school children hear Rev. Robert Jones play Son House’s “Death Letter Blues”, they are immediately transported into the life of the Delta Blues legend, but a few seconds later they are made aware that modern rap is based in the same structure that House helped to pioneer. Jones’ presentations emphasize the evolution of African-American traditional music from the spiritual into the Blues, and from Blues into everything else. Robert Jones, a full-time Baptist pastor in Detroit, has taught and lectured for over 15 years at Wayne State University, Loyola, and the University of Mississippi, among others. In addition, he has taken his unique presentation to into grammar, middle and high schools all over the country. Robert works primarily in the Midwest, but wherever he travels, his sense of humor, engaging storytelling, broad knowledge of Blues history and skills as a multi-instrumentalist makes his presentation a winner with audiences of all ages. In 2005-2006, the Mississippi Valley Blues Society brought Rev. Jones to the Quad City area for a series of 12 very successful workshops. Robert will be presented with the award at the ceremonies in Memphis, Tennesse on February 3, 2007.

The pastor of Sweet Kingdom Missionary Baptist Church, Robert is a self-taught musician who developed a love for traditional blues music as a teenager and began playing professionally in his mid-twenties… As a performer, Robert has shared the stage with a variety of well-known musical artists, such as Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams and Dr. John. His styles include songs and playing styles from the Mississippi Delta, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia and early Chicago blues traditions. Aside from his performing and broadcasting careers, he has taught blues music at Central Michigan University, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo College, among other places. Robert has received many awards in the past, including 1991 Metro Times “Detroit’s Best Blues Instrumentalist” and 1995 Living Blues Magazine named him “one of America’s Top Blues Performers.”

“Most radio is about what’s the latest cut and there is nothing wrong with modern gospel, but the rich heritage and tradition of this music has been the foundation for many contemporary performers” –Robert Jones

Robert’s program, “Deep River” can be heard Sundays from 1pm to 3pm on WDET. It is one of the finest home-grown radio moments on the dial. Deep River, a gospel and spiritual show that delves into America’s devout and sacred music tradition. Source: wdetfm.org, Listen to archived shows at: DEEP RIVER WITH ROBERT JONES

About the Book: Sometimes the national significance of local events is overlooked or underestimated. In Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, author Kevin Boyle recounts a sensational 1925 murder trial in Detroit. The circumstances of the case and the ensuing courtroom drama had national implications for the emerging Civil Rights movement. The story of Ossian Sweet, however is not generally well known in the Metro Detroit area.

In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The burgeoning auto industry brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared. Ossian Sweet, a doctor and grandson of a slave, had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white east side neighborhood. Just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house. Suddenly, shots rang out and a white man was dead.

Sweet, his wife and 9 other black adults were arrested, held without bail and charged with murder and conspiracy. The case attracted the attention of a fledgling NAACP, which used the situation as a way to mobilize public support for its legal defence fund. With the NAACP’s involvement, the upcoming trial received national attention. Clarence Darrow, the legendary labor lawyer and Scopes Monkey Trial defender, agreed to take the Sweet case. Arc of Justice recounts the trial, explores the politics of racism and the growing pains of a young Civil Rights movement, and poignantly captures the epic tale of a man trapped by the battles of his era’s changing times. The story may be 80 years old, but it has important lessons for today.

Arc of Justice won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2004, was a New York Times Notable Book; and was cited as one of 2004’s “Best Books” by the Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Detroit Free Press, Seattle Times, and Salon.com

Mr. Bolye will be signing the book at the Detroit Public Library Saturday, February 3 at 2:00pm, Farmington Community Library; Sunday, February 4 at 1:30pm, Clinton-Macomb Public Library – Main Monday, April 16 at 1:00pm, Baldwin Public Library Monday, April 16 at 7:00pm, Southfield Public Library Tuesday, April 17 at 2:00pm, Rochester Hills Public Library Tuesday, April 17 at 7:00pm, Canton Public Library Wednesday, April 18 at 7:00pm.

Some of the events include: Feb. 14th at 7 pm, Rabbi Sherwin Wine will address questions of race at the Baldwin Public Library. Wednesday, March 21 at 6:30 PM at the Clinton Twonship Library Join Dr. Isaiah McKinnon – University of Detroit Mercy Professor, motivational speaker, and former Detroit Police Chief – as he discusses the life and trial of Dr. Ossian Sweet and Arc of Justice. Tuesday, January 30 from 7:00 – 9:00pm
at the Southfield Library Auditorium Rochelle E. Danquah, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, will discuss the experiences of African Americans in Detroit over a 65-year period.

Sweets Project Exhibit
A travelling display of images and information of the era from the University of Detroit Mercy. In the Roaring Twenties, Ossian Sweet, the young physician arrived alone in Detroit. Sweet did not know that he would establish a thriving medical practice and find a wife to love. He would not have dared to imagine that one day he would be able to move his family from the city’s most dangerous ghetto to a home of their own in a safer place. Nor could he have envisioned that his struggle to hold on to this home, his greatest pride, would lead to his indictment in a murder case that would put him and his wife and friends in prison, bring the famous Clarence Darrow to defend them and launch a landmark battle that helped ignite the struggle for civil rights. The Library exhibits will be held:

January 11 – 18 Farmington Community Library
January 19 – 29 Detroit Public Library
Jan. 30 – Feb. 2 University of Detroit Mercy
February 3 – 5 Detroit Public Library
February 7 – 13 St. Claire Shores Public Library
February 15 – 21 Shelby Township Library
Feb. 23 – Mar. 1 Macomb County Library
March 3 – 11 Chesterfield Public Library
March 13 – 19 Rochester Hills Public Library
March 21 – 27 Southfield Public Library
Mar. 29 – Apr. 5 Bloomfield Twp. Public Library
April 7 – 15 Canton Public Library
April 17 – 23 Royal Oak Public Library

For more information on events across the Detroit area please visit EVERYONE’S READING INFO

Everyone’s Reading is a community wide reading program sponsored by public libraries in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties. Similar to other One Book, One Community programs across the country, Everyone’s Reading promotes community dialogue through the shared experience of reading and discussing the same book.

“Every King holiday has been a national “teach-in” on the values of nonviolence, including unconditional love, tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation, which are so desperately-needed to unify America. It is a day of intensive education and training in Martin’s philosophy and methods of nonviolent social change and conflict-reconciliation. The Holiday provides a unique opportunity to teach young people to fight evil, not people, to get in the habit of asking themselves, “what is the most loving way I can resolve this conflict?”

On the King holiday, young people learn about the power of unconditional love even for one’s adversaries as a way to fight injustice and defuse violent disputes. It is a time to show them the power of forgiveness in the healing process at the interpersonal as well as international levels.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not only for celebration and remembrance, education and tribute, but above all a day of service. All across America on the Holiday, his followers perform service in hospitals and shelters and prisons and wherever people need some help. It is a day of volunteering to feed the hungry, rehabilitate housing, tutoring those who can’t read, mentoring at-risk youngsters, consoling the broken-hearted and a thousand other projects for building the beloved community of his dream.

Dr. King once said that we all have to decide whether we “will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life’s most persistent and nagging question, he said, is `what are you doing for others?’” he would quote Mark 9:35, the scripture in which Jesus of Nazareth tells James and John “…whosoever will be great among you shall be your servant; and whosoever among you will be the first shall be the servant of all.” And when Martin talked about the end of his mortal life in one of his last sermons, on February 4, 1968 in the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, even then he lifted up the value of service as the hallmark of a full life. “I’d like somebody to mention on that day Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others,” he said. “I want you to say on that day, that I did try in my life…to love and serve humanity. — from the King Center.org

Click, view and listen to: “I Have a Dream”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk