Mitch Ryder, the legendary “unsung hero” of Michigan rock and roll will be presenting and signing his new autobiography Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend, at the Book Beat bookstore on Sunday, February 5th between 12:30 -2:30 PM. This is a rare opportunity to meet and hear Ryder speak in a small and intimate setting. The Book Beat is located at 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park. This event is free and open to the general public. To reserve an autographed copy of Devils & Blue Dresses, you can order online now or call (248) 968-1190 Music by Mitch Ryder will be available next door from our neighbors at Street Corner Music.

order now online at: Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend,

Mitch Ryder’s autobiography goes well beyond typical eyewitness accounts of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll road stories. His account of rock stardom is one of the most lucid, original, darkly emotional and surreal in rock and roll. In 34 concise chapters, Ryder has penned a passionate and often experimental exposè, told in a distinctly introspective voice, a ‘long nights journey’ through the twisted alleyways of the music business and how his natural talent and notoriety was used and abused by himself and those around him.

…read more about Mitch Ryder’s Devils & Blue Dresses

Technorati Tags: author appearance, autobiography, booksigning, Detrot Rock, Devils and Blue Dreeses, Mitch Ryder

*  *  *   *   *  Devils & Blue Dresses, a review

Mitch Ryder’s autobiography goes well beyond typical eyewitness accounts of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll road stories. His account of rock stardom is one of the most lucid, original, darkly emotional and surreal in rock and roll. In 34 concise chapters, Ryder has penned a passionate and often experimental exposè, told in a distinctly introspective voice, a ‘long nights journey’ through the twisted alleyways of the music business and how his natural talent and notoriety was used and abused by himself and those around him. Readers take caution, this is not a light bedtime story.

Devils & Blue Dresses is an emotionally searing autobiography where Ryder opens his heart and confronts his past with deadly aim. It’s a well-written memoir on music-politics, the weight of fame and identity, and its attendant web of  prizes and perils. The book highlights many tragic-comic episodes both high and low; starting with impoverished scenes of childhood, a dysfunctional home-life and Ryder’s early manipulation and naivety inside the commercial hit-making machine. A string of exceptional high moments sparkle throughout the book; witnessing Bob Dylan’s recording of Highway 61, jamming with Jimi Hendrix (who asked Ryder to be his singer), partying with The Beatles at a countryside LSD retreat after their celebratory release of Sargent Peppers and Hollywood screen tests with Sam Peckinpah and others.

Gifted with one of the greatest voices in rock and blue-eyed-soul history, the teenage Ryder was taken under the wing of producer/manager Bob Crewe, an early 60s hit-single Svengali known for his Four Seasons smash hits; “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Sherry” and Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eye’s Off You”. Crewe would indoctrinate Ryder through strange scenes of stardom decadence while ensconced at his posh Dakota apartment in New York City.

Ryder’s first top-ten hit was the Crewe produced wonder “Jenny Take a Ride”  –a rocket of a single that skillfully combined Little Richard’s “C.C. Rider” with “Jenny Jenny” –a classic showcase for Ryder’s high-energy solid gold vocal style. That talent/producer relationship was dramatically revealed by Ryder who said, “Mr. Crewe held all the cards… all of the music appeared on his record labels, or was licensed out, and he held management, recording and publishing contracts… As long as the hit records kept coming, I was safe from the ill will of an industry that, by nature, was insensitive and exploitative and whose executives were, for the most part, angry and bitter at having to suffer the childish abuse of so many of their client victims.”  Ryder himself a ‘client victim’ lost most of his royalties and was bound to medieval contracts that froze his assets. Finally he was forced to beg for a $15,000 down payment on his Southfield, Michigan home –and that became one of the last royalty payments Ryder ever received. His love for music and contempt for the industry is burned deep onto every page.

Ryder’s story is a roller-coaster of comebacks, failures, marriages, infidelities, depressions, suicide attempts, career mistakes and close calls. His association with Barry Kramer at Creem Magazine and manager John Sinclair (of MC5 fame) culminated in a heady lost year, but his reformation of the band Detroit produced his 1971 release Detroit, a blistering rock LP that featured the Lou Reed / Velvet Underground single “Rock ‘N’ Roll”  -one of Ryder’s last hits and a version Lou Reed declared to be definitive.

The book is filled with first hand documents; recording contracts, publicity shots, family photographs and deeply personal poetic side-bar sections titled, “a window to my soul” – italicized journal entries that convey Ryder’s inner thoughts on Southern Antisemitism, Holocaust museums, the feminist movement, “the dysfunctional existence we call American culture”, and his evaluation of poverty, freedom and democracy. Near the book’s end is a twelve page break-up letter and biting personal assessment from his wife Megan, followed by a glossary (Appendix A) that posts an A-Z listing of the artists Ryder met and his recollections of them, some include; Chubby Checker: I wish I knew how to turn a penny into a dollar like he does. Dave Clark Five: The Riveras and I took care of them before we ever had a hit. Janis Joplin: we talked about how tired we both were… we looked like two penniless vagrants … it was a surreal scene.  Little Richard: It was his voice that taught me about energy. Jackie Wilson: …there was Jackie nude on a bed with a nude woman and we conversed for maybe fifteen minutes. Appendix B is Ryder’s outspoken geographic impressions from Canada to Switzerland. Appendix C is a complete discography of singles and albums and Appendix D, “An Essay from Mitch” is a last poetic stream-of-consciousness rage, a Heart of Darkness decent into an empty and bleak apocalypse. A sense of betrayal, anger and vitriol is aimed both at himself, the marketplace and his critics he calls “a pack of vengeful hyenas” – yet through all the pain and rejection there remains the rock steady soul of a Detroit survivor, unafraid to face himself and his demons head-on.

All the loose threads and surreal  juxtapositions give the book a down-home slightly dizzy feel where Ryder may in fact be forging new directions in prose. Sincere and courageous to the nth degree and constructed seemingly without editorial direction, his book is one of the most self-analytic, raw and beautiful memoirs in the history of rock and roll. It’s purity comes from the fact he did this completely himself  and its uncertain how his fans will receive this type of a creative autobiography, but one thing undeniable is that Ryder has laid out the naked truth for all to see and he remains a verifiable Detroit and national treasure.

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Ryder’s book will also accompany a new album, The Promise, his first release in over three decades. Produced by another Detroit legend Don Was, the disc’s dozen tracks feature eleven originals plus a live cover for the Motown classic “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.” Copies of the new CD will be made available during the signing from our next door neighbors at Street Corner Music. We appreciate your support of this event, for more information please call: (248)-968-1190

Technorati Tags: book signing, Detroit music, Devils and Blue Dresses, Mitch Ryder, Rock and Roll, The Detroit Wheels

To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.

– Henri Cartier-Bresson

Take care of all your memories…  for you can not relive them. -Bob Dylan

From poetic and humorous recordings of family life and urban landscapes to his surprising tabletop conceptual works, Bill Rauhauser’s photography has always been stamped with clarity of thought, gentle beauty and an eye for composition. His decades long love affair with Detroit, modernism, photo history and the organization of forms and their refinement is an inspiring tale. He is at the age of 93, still questioning, developing and recreating himself as an artist.

There’s nothing sentimental, passive or decorative about Rauhauser’s street work yet they contain a romantic and passionate core, all beautifully rendered black and white images, each a small poignant story.  Some of the best work is risky, unconscious, snapshot driven and yet also carefully composed, implanted with his memories and a respect for  the city and its culture. The urban landscape is the main star in a Rauhauser photograph.

Detroit has become a favorite location for photographers in the recent past, chosen as the symbolic and literal center of the post-industrial wasteland. Many books have documented its magnificent ruins. Rauhauser’s investigation was a prelude to the ruins, a map before the crime-scene, familiar territory for anyone brought up in Detroit in the 1950s-60s.

There is something fatally romantic about an urban photographer in the mid-1950s wandering freely throughout Detroit. Rauhauser’s practice both coincided and sometimes mirrored the beat era mythology that grew around the wandering figures of Robert Frank and Jack Keroauc, whose On the Road was published to a sensational response in 1957. Being anchored to Detroit in the 1950s was a much less fashionable and frenetic situation for Rauhauser, but perhaps a more truthful one. He was stuck in the quintessential American city, the crucible and furnace of  Fordism, where the struggles of race and class played out in everyday life.

After describing a visit to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s exhibition at MOMA in 1947, as a “revelatory” one, Rauhauser quickly realized that his life’s passion and career path would soon be devoted to photography. The idea of eternity frozen in a photograph – life organized and contained in a single ‘Decisive Moment’ rang true for Rauhauser, and he began spending his free time on the streets with a Leica 35mm rangefinder (the same preferred camera of Cartier-Bresson).

In 1955, a photograph by Rauhauser (Three Figures on a Bench) was chosen by Edward Steichen for his “Family of Man” exhibition, one of the most successful and viewed photo exhibits in history, seen by over nine million people. Rauhauser took that as an encouraging sign and he continued his street work with renewed vigor. 1955 was also the same year Robert Frank began his cross-country photo project that would result in “The Americans” – another milestone in photo history. Frank’s snapshot aesthetic held a fascination for Rauhauser, who was already  practicing those methods himself on the streets of Detroit.

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Rauhauser has often referred to himself as a flânuer, a wandering urban observer, sampling and documenting the rhythms and pace of the city.  The flânuer was a term popularized by Charles Baudelaire to describe the slow city-gazing, 19^th century window-shopping dandy of his time – the romantic wanderer of the urban landscape. Baudelaire admired photography’s documentary nature but also despised and thwarted its fine art applications. In his essay On Photography of 1859, he describes the dual nature of photography and where he saw it headed, “If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally. It is time, then, for it to return to its true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and arts… Let it rescue from oblivion those tumbling ruins, those books, prints and manuscripts which time is devouring, precious things whose form is dissolving and which demand a place in the archives of our memory—— it will be thanked and applauded.”[i]

The book Bill Rauhauser 20^th Century Photography in Detroit is a treasure trove for what it preserves of Motor City life, especially the era following World War II when streets were still filled with vendors, shoppers and energetic activity of all kinds. Rauhauser concentrated his walks along Woodward Avenue, Mid-town (Wayne State University), the riverfront, Belle Isle, and took to documenting small working class homes and the city’s architectural gems. The vibrancy of those times marks a stark contrast to how the fortunes of the automotive capital would slowly unravel.

In over 300 black and white images we journey with Rauhauser in a city overflowing with consumerist euphoria, determination and grit –scenes abundant with immediacy and excitement. The photograph Sander’s Lunch Counter, Woodard Avenue, Detroit shows a group of three women enjoying ice-cream on a typical hot summer’s day, the middle figure blowing a frozen funnel of cigarette smoke into the air, a scene most Detroiters of a certain age can identify with –and there are many others, like the series of the Michigan State Fair sideshow barker’s and their sexy but dangerous looking carnival gals. Street preachers, rushing lunchtime office workers, newsstands, fruit vendors, street cleaners, gamblers, musicians, barbershops, students, bikers and fashionable women fill the book with a timeless lost-world glow. The photos are presented with little or no captions, but they will gain in awareness over time, true vessels of how we saw ourselves and once lived in Detroit before the apocalypse of ruins.

Gazing over the book is like walking through fields of memory, recognizing scenes from a past gone-to-dust and a history belonging to all who’ve lived it or care to see. There are many isolated and lost figures; lonely seniors, tired park-bench warmers, beggars, pimps and bums  -the outsiders of society found in daily encounters that break down and disrupt “normal” social order – gatherings and crowded street scenes dissipate into fragile moments of reflection and despair, slices of life’s existential sadness – tiny miracles caught in time.

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There’s a wealth of material to soak in, amazing jaw-dropping images that stop you in your tracks. Here’s mid-century Motown, alive with a variety of activities, barbershop rituals, bus-stop ques and swaggering soul brothers and sistahs. One small section devoted to Detroit auto-shows in the 1960s is one of the book’s strongest highlights. Young models with exaggerated flipped up hair-dos, million-dollar smiles, mini-skirts and go-go boots light up the Cobo Hall displays selling sex and sizzle alongside the latest Detroit muscle cars.

This decades-long self-assignment aligns well with many other urban photo projects such as Atget’s life-long study of the monuments and beauty of Paris, Arnold Genthe’s Chinatown in turn-of-the-century San Francisco and the New York Photo League’s gritty documentation of New York City in the 40s and 50s. Rauhauser’s work clearly shows the lighthearted sense of improvisation and quick thinking he brings to street photography, which is the main attraction filling most of the book. It should remain the standard reference for displaying Detroit in classic mid-century for years to come.

Rauhauser’s street scenes are varied in technique and subject matter, ranging from posed snapshots, to comical, uninhibited, and voyeuristic off-the-hip shooting. Many photographs are the result of strong technical ability matched with careful planning and dumb chance. The Zen-like presence of the photographer is there to see and think ahead, becoming invisible to his surroundings and subject. For the most part his subjects are caught off-guard and unaware of the camera. Rauhauser’s key distinction is a graphically charged and constructive eye that builds a photograph from layers of physical reality and desire (the subject matter) against the balanced dispersal of light and darkness.

He once said, “I see in black and white.”- a vision used with good effect alongside the complexity of moving subjects and architectural backgrounds. I think Bill also see’s in shades of desire;  a pretty figure, sophisticated well-dressed ladies, women in bathing suits, leggy dancers, snake-charmers, sexy backsides, young women smoking, modeling and performing  – a luxuriant parade of beauties and delights!

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Several images quote important historic photographs, an ability that came naturally and perhaps unconsciously to Rauhauser with his deep knowledge of photo history. There’s the Atget-like side view of a man in thick boots wheeling a heavy loaded cart of cardboard across the street (p.92) looking plucked from another century and several movement-freezing shots echoing Martin Munkacsi; (p. 83, 143) who once said, “all great photographs today are snapshots.” Rauhuaser’s image of four young blacks on the beach of Lake Michigan (p.114) harken back to the iconic Munkacsi image, Black Boys ashore Lake Tanganyika taken in 1931, an image Cartier-Bresson credited “as the only photograph to ever inspire me.”

Overloaded streets filled with humanity combined with Rauhauser’s eye for women bring to mind Gary Winogrand’s “Women are Beautiful”  series ; (p.134, 148, 155, 178, 213) and the flattened almost painted looking urban cityscapes of Aaron Siskind; (p. 100, 130, 164, 194) or the pool-hall greasers of Danny Lyon (p. 62, 209, 219) and the urban lunch counters of Robert Frank; (p. 60, 81). His image of the tough bee-hived French Fry Girl from either Bob-lo island or the State Fair is a powerful 60s portrait, close to iconic. Visual puns and mirrored images abound like the ridiculous toy-car parade Shriner’s convention, Detroit 1978, (p.184), or the odd man at the State Fair unconsciously mimicking a circus banner behind him (p.227) or the Weegee-like bum sleeping off his drunk in the doorway: Cass Avenue, Detroit (p.103).

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The still-life series Rauhauser began in late 1960s became known as the “Object Series”. Dejarlais notes in the book’s introduction, “He purposely photographed objects that were invisible to society because of their daily functional use…using a 4×5 view camera he aimed for intense clarity and lit them for optimal revelation of detail…”  He furthered these experiments by exploring object abstractions that ended in a series of totally wild black and white architecturally constructed objects, the Egyptian titled Temples and Tombs series –a totally unique body of work in the history of photography, one he discovered by himself and owns –a series created out of found materials and discarded kitchen utensils. These fantastical high contrast works were produced sometime in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a humorous conceptual and creatively jarring body of work, perhaps an antidote to his earlier street photography.

The still life constructions were extensions of the photographer’s passion for architecture (his first profession) and are non-manipulated, experiments in free-form expression. The Temples and Tombs series are self-contained utopian worlds, surrealist M.C. Escher post-objects, (almost a reversal of documentation).  The series developed at a time when it was more difficult to work in the street. By the 1980s privacy issues became dominant and the streets were becoming more dangerous. Rauhauser explained that with the still life work, he went into himself and pushed the straight “truth telling” aspect of photography to an extreme edge. The Temples and Tombs were an answer to an exit, analytic fragments of  truth found in architectural abstraction, like something Frank Ghery would make from crumpled wastepaper. They are deceptively clever tabletop fantasies – chaotic yet ordered, strange and alien perception puzzles of pure form.

Rauhauser’s 1970s elemental object series and still lifes are relatives to Marcel Duchamp’s revolutionary notion of the readymade[ii]. By isolating the found object, removing it from its normal usage and understanding, Duchamp wished to challenge the viewer and what we accept as works of art. Duchamp presented the bicycle wheel, urinal, bottle rack and the snow shovel – the everyday object as some of the first minimalist artworks – what he called “a form denying the possibility of defining art”.

Where Duchamp wanted to go against the grain and destroy “retinal art” with his readymade sculptures, Rauhauser emphasized the beauty and aesthetics of simple objects and common sculptural form; the baseball, derby hat, music stand, ruler, rain boot, transistor radio tube, etc., the everyday objects he was attracted to for primarily aesthetic and functional reasons – objects whose “form followed function.”  These were then presented as purely clean and flat minimalist “retinal art” – a sly reversal of Duchamp’s approach. The photographic isolation of the object became a commonly used devise that would influence book and graphic illustration to a staggering degree by the early 1990s. Rauhauser’s careful choice of objects are linked in a self-referential index – functional forms that also register as signs and symbols in the photographer’s visual autobiography.

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The book’s lack of complete annotations is a mystery, a small flaw that could be fixed in a later printing. The dark grey chapter headings are abrupt and intrusive beside the photos, upsetting the flow of the book. The overall size is about 8.5 x 11″ and is overly generous with photos in a short span, over 300 images appear in 311 pages.  The paper is of good quality with almost no bleed-through and a soft varnish was added to the photos which have a great tonal range and appear printed in tri-tone or full color. The decorative glossy cover is a great graphic image of a summertime parade down Woodard Avenue with the world’s largest American flag flapping on the side of the Hudson’s department store, a female photographer shooting her family, with her prominent ass in the foreground. The book design is functional, but could be improved with a looser, less crowded layout and little more research for the captions.

A 30 page introductory text by Mary Dejarlais gives a close inspection to Rauhauser’s history and background, his formation as an artist and educator, from his beginnings in Detroit’s Silhouette camera club to his current adoption of digital photography. Dejarlais lays out the influences and histories that informed Rauhuaser’s photography and thought, including his friendship with photo dealer Tom Halsted and central figures Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and film theorist Siegfried Kracauer.

Dejarlais’ introduction also makes clear Rauhauser’s contributions to photography and the city. Over the course of five decades many area students (who are now professional photographers) had taken Rauhauser’s classes at the Society of Arts and Crafts, later the College for Creative Studies (CCS). As a teacher and photo collector he exposed students to firsthand examples of famous photo works, originals he brought into the classroom. In 1964, Rauhauser opened Gallery Four, one of the first galleries in the US devoted exclusively to photography. He was also responsible in the early 1960s for bringing the attention of collecting and appreciating photography as an art-form to the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the first national museums to display an interest in the medium.

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Rauhauser has worked a lifetime in semi-isolation (a common situation in Detroit), but its one of the aspects he most enjoys. Detroit allowed him the freedom of anonymity, of walking the streets unfettered and for many years the city proved to be a trusted canvas and muse. He has not spent his time searching for exhibitions or promoting his work outside the city (even though there are few opportunities in Detroit for exhibiting or receiving critical feedback). He works along self-imposed rules, free to explore anywhere his imagination takes him.

When thinking of Rauhauser’s extended street project, I’m reminded of the quietly eccentric and stoic Eugene Atget (1857-1927), a photographer who witnessed and documented the working classes alongside the 19th century grandeur and transformation of Paris, lugging his heavy view camera across the city photographing beggars and prostitutes to regal palaces and elegant parks. Atget was unrecognized by the public but enthusiastically followed and collected by a small group of surrealist artists who eventually saved his work from certain destruction. Images taken by Atget now construct our view and how we think about Paris from the late 1890s and early 1900s. They are a transformational archive.

Bill Rauhauser 20^th Century Photography in Detroit is not the glossy hallmark tour of the Motor City you might expect. The Book is a gritty but sincere survey across a sixty-year arc of Detroit images, from its industrial peak to its gradual decline. It’s raw do-it-yourself  journalism of the common man, an urban spectacle and a private diary of the past, one photographer’s long term affair with photography, photographic history and Detroit, and is unlike anything published on the city before. Rauhauser is a stealthy, acute observer and flânuer of daily life, a masterful sage in our midst.

Bibliographic Coda

Just over 10 years ago, after Bill Rauhauser’s retirement from CCS, he began to seriously collect and organize the body of his photographic work. These reflections become a source of renewal for the photographer who has made a public offering in the form of books and donations of  artwork. Major collections of his photographs now reside in the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Burton Library in Detroit. Soon after the publication of 20th Century Photography in Detroit, a man in the audience during Bill’s presentation at the Book Beat, purchased an extra copy for his niece who is a curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The Museum then showed an interest in purchasing works and were recently given a donation of original silver prints by Mr. Rauhauser for their permanent collection. 

Bill Rauhauser 20^th Century Photography in Detroit (2010) is the most comprehensive monograph of Rauhaser’s work to date. It also  compliments several other books he produced and helped to publish over the past decade; Detroit Revisited (2000) with photographer’s John Thomas Baldwin and Gene Meadows, text by Mary Dejarlais, Bob-Lo Revisited (2003) with text by Martin Magid, Detroit: Auto Show Images of the 1970s (2007) and Beauty on Detroit Streets (2008) text by Mary Dejarlais. All should be known to anyone with an interest in photography, urban studies and the history of Detroit. Rauhauser and Dejarlais  have recently formed a new joint publishing partnership named Cambourne Publishing and we eagerly look forward to future volumes.

Last Note: The famous Three Figures on a Bench photo shown at the beginning of this article was later appropriated and cast in bronze by another artist. It was a life-sized replica of the photo, except it showed the figures engaged in sex, but that’s a story for another time.

[ii] on the readymade: Introduction, ToutFait Towards a Definition at http://www.toutfait.com/unmaking_the_museum/introduction1.html

Technorati Tags: 20th Century Photography in Detroit, Bill Rauhauser, detroit art, Detroit Photography, photography book review

Book Beat

“Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Elmore Leonard is an awfully good writer of a sneaky sort; he is so good you don’t even notice what he’s up to.”
– Washington Post Book World

“A superb craftsman . . . his writing is pure pleasure.”
– Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Elmore Leonard is our greatest crime novelist… the best in the business.”
– Washington Post

Elmore is helping to promote the release of his latest novel (book #45!) Raylan (available for pre-order  now ) continues the story of US Marshall Raylan Givens, who previously appeared in Leonard’s books Pronto, and Riding the Rap, as well as his shorty story “Fire in the Hole,” and who currently is the central character in the hit FX tv show Justified. Played by the actor Timothy Olyphant, Raylan is one of Leonard’s most unforgettable characters. “Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard—a page-turner filled with the sparkling dialogue and sly suspense that are the hallmarks of this modern master.”

The writers for the TV show “Justified” have blue wristbands that say WWED: “What Would Elmore Do”? -The Wall Street Journal

Elmore Leonard is the author of dozens of popular novels including Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, Big Bounce, and 52 Pick-Up. Many of his novels have been adapted into films, including his short story 3:10 to Yuma. He is most well-known for his gritty crime novels- many set in and around metro Detroit- that feature break-neck pacing and strong dialogue. He has been called “the great American writer” by Stephen King.

Peter Leonard is the author of Quiver, Trust Me, All He Saw Was the Girl, and the upcoming Voices of the Dead.

Leonard’s previous novels have been jaunty crime capers similar to those of his father, Elmore. This one, set in 1971 and the first of a two-parter, has the same energy and precision but is much darker thematically, more painful and considered. On the surface it’s a cat-and-mouse thriller: scrap-metal dealer Harry Levin is determined to track down the German diplomat who killed his daughter when driving drunk. The police tell him the man has been afforded immunity and won’t face charges, so Harry travels back to Munich, where he was born, to dispense vigilante justice … Leonard’s handling of Harry’s wartime internment in Dachau proves he’s no one-trick pony. There are thrills here but also a desperate pathos. If you haven’t read Leonard before – and you must – this is a great place to start. –The Guardian

“Elmore Leonard is a tough act to follow, but son Peter is off to a terrific start. TRUST ME is fast, sly and full of twists. Clearly, great storytelling runs in the Leonard family’s DNA.”  -Carl Hiaasen

Technorati Tags: author lectures, autographings, Baldwin library, book beat events, crime writing, Detroit book signings, Detroit literature, Elmore Leonard, local signings Detroit, Peter Leonard

Glenn Barr is one of Detroit’s finest living artists – an incredibly skilled painter that exhibits internationally, and has created his own unique self-contained and stark futuristic-retro world; one skewed by the history of Detroit’s low-brow culture and that addresses our post-industrial pop-damaged age.

Barr combines techniques from the world of commercial illustration, figurative art, pop and 1950s abstraction onto his signature rusty, earth-toned palette. His subjects range from space-age teenager sirens to funky hipsters, mischievous devils, sprites and fairies -all portrayed against a decaying carnivalesque dystopian setting. The result is a darkly sinister and lush googie filled tripped-out goulash, where paradox, angst and uncertainty meet on a fantasy battlefield – what Barr terms his “haunted paradise”. A sly and subtle humor invades most of the work -an irony riffing off cultural overload, dead-media, lost utopias, the sexy sixties and our collective obsession with cool.

Identified with the lowbrow movement, Barr’s first retrospective was Haunted Paradise (2006) released by Last Gasp and his Los Angeles dealer Billy Shire. His latest release is the condensed survey and marvelous FACES, another Last Gasp book that takes a close up view at 80 different paintings Barr created over the past 5 years. Another recent title is the latest HEEP #4 from a series of self-published zines containing drawings from Barr’s   sketchbooks.

In the backroom gallery, a special pop-up shop for the holidays has been set up and carefully arranged by the artist, featuring an assortment of  signed books, zines, posters, toys, and limited edition prints and cards. In addition, Barr has selected books and objects from around the store to create a personalized Barr-inspired gift selection. Stop by soon and peruse the offerings. The Pop-up shop will close in early January.

Our bestselling title! More than a photographic saturation job of a single city, Detroit: 138 Square Miles provides contextual perspective in an extended caption section in which Reyes Taubman collaborated with University of Michigan professors Robert Fishman and Michael McCullough to emphasize the social imperatives driving her documentation. An essay by native Detroiter and bestselling author Elmore Leonard addresses the social and cultural significance of the post-industrial condition of this metropolis. The volume’s spine is specially treated with black ink to evoke the industrial character of its subject. A more in-depth review is available at DETROIT: 138 SQUARE MILES: ELEGANCE, RUST & SOUL

Fever: Little Willie John; A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul  (SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE!)

“Little Willie John is the soul singer’s soul singer.” – Marvin Gaye.

“My mother told me, if you call yourself ‘Little’ Stevie Wonder you’d better be as good as Little Willie John.” – Stevie Wonder

The soaring heights of Little Willie John’s career are matched only by the tragic events of his death, cutting short a life so full of promise. Charged with a violent crime in the late 1960s, an abbreviated trial saw Willie convicted and incarcerated in Walla Walla Washington, where he died under mysterious circumstances in 1968.

In this, the first official biography of one of the most important figures in rhythm & blues history, author Susan Whitall, with the help of Little Willie John’s eldest son Kevin John, has interviewed some of the biggest names in the music industry and delved into the personal archive of the John family to produce an unprecedented account of the man who invented soul music.

Glenn Barr’s Faces (SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE)

Glenn Barr presents a 96-page compilation book featuring details from 80 paintings and drawings he created over the past five years. Inspired by the complex expressions and raw emotions revealed by faces, Barr invokes the human condition, creating a multitude of personalities ranging from extraordinarily common to extreme and fantastic.  Visit our in-store Glenn Barr pop-up shop in the backroom gallery just for the holidays – check out 4 new poster designs on heavy weight gloss paper, available at $20. each, plus a new GBarr sketchbook zine : HEEP #4 ( SIGNED COPIES OF HEEP!!)

Detroit Television: Images of America Series

Detroit broadcasting history is rich with character . . . and characters. It began atop the Penobscot Building on October 23, 1946, when WWDT shot a signal to the convention center, part of a “New Postwar Products Exposition.” WWJ-TV offered scheduled programming in June 1947, and WXYZ-TV and WJBK-TV jumped in a year later. The medium has influenced the city’s personality and social agenda ever since. Soupy Sales turned getting a pie in the face into an art form. Mort Neff celebrated the state’s outdoor charms. George Pierrot showed Detroiters the world. Other beloved personalities include: Milky the Clown, Ed McKenzie, Sonny Eliot, John Kelly, Marilyn Turner, Robin Seymour, Bill Bonds, Dick Westerkamp, Jingles, Bill Kennedy, Lou Gordon, Captain Jolly, Johnny Ginger, Auntie Dee, and many more.

Detroitland: A Collection of Movers, Shakers, Lost Souls, and History Makers from Detroit’s Past

Detroitland contains the stories behind familiar names like Frank Murphy, the infamous Purple Gang, the Lone Ranger, “Potato Patch” Pingree, and Charles Lindbergh. Yet Bak also reveals lesser-known episodes in Detroit’s history, like the ambitious International Exposition & Fair of 1889; the killer heat wave of 1936, with five straight days of hundred-degree temperatures; and the attempted around-the-world flight of Ed Schlee and Billy Brock in the Pride of Detroit in 1927. He introduces readers to little-known and unique Detroit characters, like the fierce Black Legion gang that was Detroit’s own version of the Ku Klux Klan; Johnny Miler, the man who walloped Joe Louis in the Brown Bomber’s first-ever amateur fight; patrolman Ben Turpin, the terror of Black Bottom criminals; Sophie Lyons, legendary “Queen of the Underworld” and Detroit philanthropist; and Shorty Long, Brenda Holloway, the Velvelettes, and other forgotten Motown artists of the ’60s.

313: Life in the Motor City (SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE!)

A native of Detroit, John Carlisle has written about and photographed the city for the Metro Times for four years under the name Detroitblogger John, a pen name based on his longstanding web project, detroitblog. He has also been a contributor to Hour Detroit magazine and an editor at the C&G Newspapers chain. A graduate of Wayne State University’s journalism program, Carlisle has won numerous awards over the years for his writing and photography and was named Journalist of the Year in 2011 by the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Parallel Universe: Detroit/Tokyo (SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE!)

A unique book that illustrates daily life in Detroit and Tokyo. Each page is a reflection of social and personal activities in the two cities. In Tokyo, the artist Yasuo Tanaka makes skeleton puppets out of wire, ink and paper. He then takes them into the field and returns with starkly bold and humorous images that mimic daily life bordering on the epic. Detroit artist Dick Cruger finds corresponding landmarks around the city of Detroit using his trademark robot constructions. Both artists use their miniature puppets to draw interesting parallels among life in the urban jungle. A Limited Signed Edition of this book is also available in a handmade slipcase and in a numbered edition of 25 copies for $75. Visit the exhibition BONES in our backroom gallery to see Tanaka’s art and read YASUO TANAKA: PHOTOGRAPHER & PAPER NAPKIN ARTIST

Hype & Soul! Behind the Scenes at Motown (SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE!)

From being Motown’s first outside hire, to coining the term “The Detroit Sound,” Motown publicity director Al Abrams had a inside vantage point to the greatest pop music machine of the 20th century. Abrams stockpiled a massive collection of photos, promotional fare and internal documents as the label rose from obscurity to international success with artists such as the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Abrams’ new book, “Hype & Soul,” assembles hundreds of those rarely seen items for a peek behind the scenes of Motown’s buzz machine. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of previously unseen photos, press clippings, and memos, Hype & Soul is THE insider’s look into the publicity machine that defined the Motown sound for generations.

Car Guys Vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business (SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE!)

In 2001, General Motors hired Lutz out of retirement with a mandate to save the company by making great cars again. As vice chairman, he launched a war against the penny-pinching number-crunchers who ran the company by the bottom line, and reinstated a focus on creativity, design, and cars and trucks that would satisfy GM customers.

Lutz’s common-sense lessons, combined with a generous helping of fascinating anecdotes, will inspire readers in any industry. As he writes: “It applies in any business. Shoe makers should be run by shoe guys, and software firms by software guys, and supermarkets by supermarket guys. With the advice and support of their bean counters, absolutely, but with the final word going to those who live and breathe the customer experience. Passion and drive for excellence will win over the computer-like, dispassionate, analysis-driven philosophy every time.”

Bill Rauhauser’s 20th Century Photography in Detroit (limited edition with print)

This edition is the signed limited and numbered edition of “Bill Rauhauser’s 20th Century Photography in Detroit” and includes an 8×10″ print of Rauhauser’s photograph of three people on a bench that was included in the “Family of Man” exhibition in 1955. This image was also turned into a life-size bronze sculpture of nudes engaging in sex in the 1990s. The book and print are from an edition of 50 copies. The print is a digital image printed and initialed by Bill Rauhauser and numbered from an edition of 50 copies. The regular $49.95 trade edition of Bill Rauhauser’s 20th Century Photography in Detroit is also still available signed by the photographer and author Mary Dejarlais.

Poetry is Revolution silk screen (SIGNED BY JOHN & LENI SINCLAIR)

A limited edition purple toned silk screen reprint of Trans-Love Energies classic 1967 poster is now available in an edition of 75 copies, on heavy card stock signed and numbered by Leni and John Sinclair!

The title “Poetry is Revolution” became the guiding principle behind the cultural revolution fermenting in the Midwest from the Detroit Artists Workshop , Trans-Love Energies, White Panther Party & Rainbow Peoples Party. Also see:  WHITE PANTHER BUTTONS for sale

Talking Shops: Detroit Commercial Folk Art

“Hand-painted shop signs are among the truest forms of vernacular art.

Speaking an idiomatic language widely understood in their intended community, they are vernacular in the strict sense of the term. Just as pertinent, they communicate in near total independence from fine art society, rarely reflecting its cultural aspirations and pretensions. Yet they can embody the creative qualities fundamental to art — visual expressiveness, aesthetic dimension and craftsmanship. And they are typically made by artists who are self-taught or, if trained, working within a kind of folk tradition.” — SOURCE & COMPLETE REVIEW:  Windows to the vernacular

Julia Reyes Taubman worked in semi-seclusion on her Detroit photography project for nearly seven years and after almost 40,000 photographs she’s assembled her first book with the help of former Detroit Free Press art critic Marsha Miro and book designer Lorraine Wild, a former Detroiter who endowed the book with its visual rhythms and understated focus.

Wild builds up a subtle narrative and pacing structure for the mammoth 488 page book, framing the images into an almost cinematic jigsaw puzzle, from its 1970s’ conceptual-art tone cover with it’s dark burnished industrial-edged spine to its chapter divisions cataloged into East, Central and Western regions. Photographs are often strung together into clusters like a small Greek chorus gathered together by type, size or setting. Page layouts bounce off each other, overlapping and mirroring forms. Some pages extend into one another with their borders continuing the skylines and horizons, areas of pure white acting like rest stops along the way. There is visual music and poetry in large evidence, the brilliance of the design sculpting the project into the category of “book as art object.”

Beginning with the East is a shot of the Detroit river, the true star, life-blood and namesake of the city. It’s a mysterious washed-out photograph, shrouded in fog and drifting off the page like the numinous seascapes of Hiroshi Sugimoto, balanced on the edge of life or death. The book moves forward and westward like a child taking its first steps, slowly, carefully, opening its eyes.

Punctuated by visual mysteries and alien landscapes, (a chair perched in a tree, an odd telephone glued to a tall pole, blue snaky hoses in a forest swamp, dark windowless biker bars, stained crack-house mattresses, gang graffiti and bizarre rubbish piles, homes turned inside-out) the book casts a mythic labyrinthian quality as it passes through gray overcast winter skies, skeleton tree branches and snow covered grass. The quietly surreal, bluesy and lonely nature of Detroit  creates the perfect backdrop and  subject matter for photographic inquiry.

Detroit: 138 Square Miles reads like a visual journey through the scarred backsides and forgotten wastelands of humanity, a spiritual quest through small neighborhoods, infernos, architectural gems, seedy bars and secret locations. Photos from a low-flying airplane splash across the page like exclamation points, revealing powerful rarely seen views of the city, showing in detail the vastness of its rusted arterial and organic nervous system.

In her 1953 non-fiction masterpiece, The Pleasure of Ruins, the late novelist Rose McCauley wrote, “Ruin is always over-stated; it is part of the ruin-drama staged perpetually in the human imagination, half of whose desire is to build up, while the other half smashes and levels to the earth.” This volatile mixture of the sublime and ordinary, the historic and powerless, the built up and smashed, ignites an arresting condition for the photographer and viewer. The imagination is stirred by the contemplation of ruins as we cast ourselves inside the post-apocalyptic future of the present. History is never completely preserved or frozen by photographs. We are left with tracings from the past, fragments that form an ephemeral reality beyond our reach. As observers we are caught inside the poetic conundrum of the ruin and the photograph, a state in constant change, dissolution, romanticism and recovery.

Detroit: 138 Square Miles is equally an autobiography and diary about its maker as it is a love letter to the city. Taubman’s appreciation of modernist buildings and formalism are noted in abundance and are set off alongside her rock ‘n roller aesthetic. The photographer’s fascination with outsiders, criminals and loners connect and syncopate with the outgrown wilderness of the city. The story also unfolds how an artist crafts an identity from their surroundings. The city’s isolation and despair is gently opened up and contrasted by public parks, museums, rock concerts, sports arenas, architectural details and little known neighborhood folk-art curiosities. Taubman’s shared journey is not unlike Baudelaire’s conception of the flânuer: “To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world…”  -not just a crash course on Detroit but also a compendium of a magical kind, a private index with its own unique codes, style and purpose.

Detroit: 138 Square Miles includes a warm reflective introduction by local legend Elmore “Dutch” Leonard. He states, “The reason I’m still here must lie in Julia’s pictures… there is beauty in despair and sometimes a glimmer of hope. ” – and in Jerry Herron’s introductory essay “Living With Detroit”,  he states, “.. the truth of this place is not something you say or take home in an image, but something you do and keep on doing until you become part of the design.” Detroit citizens have an undying passion for their city and its history, reflected in a flood of Detroit-centered books recently published. Generous footnotes next to thumbnail prints in the back of the book fill in details and background history forming a well captioned book-inside-a-book. The printing quality compares with the best of any fine-art photography book published today and is destined to add significantly to the discussion on ruins and the post-apocalyptic cities we inhabit. This latest addition makes a handsome cornerstone to any collection on or about Detroit.

The last photograph in the book is the gravestone of the great bluseman Son House who spent his final years in semi-obscurity working as a janitor in the Old Main building at Wayne State University, his Dry Spell Blues could be a fitting epitaph and accompaniment to the photographs:

“It has been so dry, you can make a powder house out of the world

Well, it has been so dry, you can make a powder house out of the world

And holler money mens, like a rattlesnake in his coil

I throwed up my hands, Lord, and solemnly swore

I have throwed up my hands, Lord, and solemnly swore

Well, ain’t no need of me changing towns, it’s the drought everywhere I go

It’s a dry old spell everywhere I been

Oh, it’s a dry old spell everywhere I been

I believe to my soul this old world is bound to end..” –Dry Spell Blues, Son House

Detroitland covers a century of Detroit’s rich and colorful history, Bak relives the scandals, mysteries, catastrophes, triumphs, and celebrations that have rocked Detroit. He also introduces readers to the heroes, criminals, stars, and regular people who lived through them, or in some cases, set them in motion.  Detroitland contains the stories behind familiar names like Frank Murphy, the infamous Purple Gang, the Lone Ranger, “Potato Patch” Pingree, and Charles Lindbergh. Yet Bak also reveals lesser-known episodes in Detroit’s history, like the ambitious International Exposition & Fair of 1889; the killer heat wave of 1936, with five straight days of hundred-degree temperatures; and the attempted around-the-world flight of Ed Schlee and Billy Brock in the Pride of Detroit in 1927.

313: Life in the Motor City is a collection of 42 stories and more than 100 glossy photographs, many previously unpublished, by Detroitblogger John Carlisle of detroitblog.org fame. His blog and weekly column in Metro Times chronicle the quirky and often over-looked stories of average folks in the city. Read about a man with a strip club in his living room, the city’s last gun shop, a historic church kept alive by a handful of its parishioners, a bar in a ghost town, a coffee shop for the homeless, an art gallery in a mattress store and a family who made an abandoned apartment complex their home, among many other unforgettable people and places in Detroit.

Detroit Television chronicles the history of many of the most fascinating characters in tv history. Soupy Sales turned getting a pie in the face into an art form. Mort Neff celebrated the state’s outdoor charms. George Pierrot showed Detroiters the world. Other beloved personalities include: Milky the Clown, Ed McKenzie, Sonny Eliot, John Kelly, Marilyn Turner, Robin Seymour, Bill Bonds, Dick Westerkamp, Jingles, Bill Kennedy, Lou Gordon, Captain Jolly, Johnny Ginger, Auntie Dee, and many more.

For more info on this event or to reserve copies of any of these titles, please call Book Beat (248) 968-1190. This event is free and open to the public.

Listen to a recent WDET interview with Dr. Fred Pearson, the current director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies: http://www.wdet.org/news/story/PeaceandConflictInterview/

Please sign a petition to save the peace center here: http://www.signon.org/sign/save-the-center-for-peace?source=c.url&r_by=1272864

Silent March for Peace FRIDAY October 14th, AT NOON meeting at the front entrance of  Old Main/WSU campus : https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227485250644699

“WSU President Gilmour has moved to have the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies closed, with a final vote of the Board of Governors to be decided in December. The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (where the Center resides), Robert Thomas, has given a directive to have a formal annual commitment of $177,000 as a pre-condition to withdraw its request for closure by a self-defeating deadline of October 21, 2011. We are intent on taking a collective stand on the import of keeping the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies open. We implore this academic administration to engage in fruitful open negotiation as the Center’s supporters bring forth resources and support, funds and fundraisers to meet this financial challenge.

We are taking a stand that peace education is vital to the development of our society and it shall continue. At this Great Turning we need to model the importance of citizenship as living responsibly in the world. And we must ask, “What does a university responsibly give to a society?” The university was originally founded on the principle of providing “academic freedom.” My classes have been cross-listed with the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies and they have creating the context for studying and creating art that moves the culture forward, and raises questions that move our society forward.

Save the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies and give peace a chance!

We are in the midst of a powerful democratic awakening and we need your help as a leading voice for peace. The Center for Peace and Conflict Studies in Detroit
is part of the Wayne State University, a major Carnegie Mellon research university in the cultural center of Detroit. We are now stewarding the 21st century facing great battles for our devastated inner city school systems which experiences 50-75% dropout rate, the ravished environment and the ravaged economy. I am teaching a class titled: Art as Activism: So You Say You Want a Revolution? and it is committed to being part of the grassroots activism that is fired up in this city at this time. We have read Grace Lee Boggs’s current classic The New American Revolution: Sustainable Revolution for the 21st Century as our textbook where she speaks to this being the time to “grow our own souls.” Now we are literally asking our Wayne State University administration to,
“Give peace a chance!”

The Center for Peace and Conflict Studies began in 1965 and forged peace education during the seismic social changes of the following decades. This program is the oldest of its kind, and it grew during the most challenging decades of social change for peace, women’s rights, civil rights and the LBGT movement. Now we are another crucible for change. This Center for Peace and Conflict Studies teaches the tools for creating a more just society and beloved communities in a state that has been rated third in the number of hate groups in this country, and where hate crimes against LGBT individuals have reported to be increased in 2010 (according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs). It was crucial in mediating life threatening conflict with Arab-American owned businesses in the neighboring township Dearborn after 9/11, and continues to be crucial in educating against bullying in the schools and diminishing violence against youth. It is successful in its mission to “develop and implement projects, programs, curricula, research and publications in areas of scholarship related to international and domestic peace, war, social justice, arms control, globalization, multicultural awareness and constructive conflict resolution” and it is being threatened of being closed by its own administration to serve the budget cuts and be the sacrificial lamb to this economic crisis.

We acknowledge that these are difficult times and that the administration must make difficult decisions. However we are there are creative solutions for keeping the center open and we are mandating our administration to consider being flexible to those who are stepping up to the plate to create solutions for sustaining the operation of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Howard Thurman cautions those of us who are concerned with cultural transformation to not allow our visions to conform to a pattern we seek to impose but rather to allow them to be modeled and shaped according to the innermost transformation that is going on in our spirits.

It took 46 years of social justice struggle to have the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies forge its presence to now. We must keep it in place, keep what is good. We have to take care of the past in order to take care of the future. If we let it cave now, we will march, and rise, and create revolution to again ask, “What kind of education do we need to forge the future?” And it will be, again, a Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. ” – source; face book announcement, created by Aaron Timlin, Marilyn Zimmerwoman, and Sarah Stawski

If your class is interested in attending this event, please contact Janet Batchedler at (313) 481-1409 for more information.

Devin Scillain may best be known as a nightly news anchor on WDIV Detroit, but he is also an accomplished musician and children’s author with over a dozen titles to his credit, including the bestsellers A Is For America and Fibblestax. His latest title is Memoirs of a Goldfish, which tells the charming story of a simple goldfish and his solitary life that is upended when assorted intruders invade his fishbowl.

Memoirs of a Goldfish is the featured title for 2011’s Michigan Reads! Children Program, which highlights the importance of reading and sharing books with children, especially toddlers through early elementary, and to recognize the vital role libraries play in providing access to the quality books, programs and services that lay the foundation for reading and school success.