313 Legends

Louis Hayes is a master of propulsion, a gifted drummer who can take a band and light it up without ever overshadowing it, showing how balance can exist between subtlety and intensity – a groundwork first laid in his childhood.

Hayes was raised in west Detroit and came from a musical family.

He played drums, his mother played piano, and his cousin Clarence Stamps was also a local drummer.

In his early years, Hayes soaked in the city’s marching bands, church music, R&B, and bebop.

By his teens, Hayes was playing in Detroit clubs and learning on the bandstand with some of Detroit’s brightest young musicians.

Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s produced some great jazz, with Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Paul Chambers training in Detroit before coming to New York.

This early exposure gave Hayes a swing-influenced rhythmic vocabulary open to modern innovations.

For more than fifty years, Scott Morgan has made a career off the back of his gritty, soulful voice and guitar.

If any Michigan born and bred musician embodies the raw energy and authenticity of Detroit’s rock scene, it’s him.

In the mid-60s, Morgan was lead singer and rhythm guitarist in the Ann Arbor garage rock band the Rationals, with regional hits like “Respect” (a cover that was a predecessor of Aretha Franklin’s version) and “I Need You” garnering them a loyal Midwest following for their heavily R&B, fuzz-driven guitar, and soul influenced sound, which reflected their deep love of Motown and the British Invasion.

When Donald Byrd was growing up in Detroit’s middle class, public schools were known for their highly acclaimed music programs and local music clubs were giving area youth the honor of performing as national jazz acts.

After attending Cass Technical High School (the place many Detroit music legends found their start), Byrd then went on to attend Wayne State University, his early training there spanning everything from music theory to bandstand practice, both of which had a major influence on his technical proficiency and personal style long before he ever left the city.

Since the start of her career, “Detroit’s Queen of the Blues”, Thornetta Davis, has become a global ambassador for the musical soul of Detroit – an ascent that makes sense considering her upbringing.

Growing up, jazz and blues were commonplace in Thornetta Davis’ West Side Detroit household. She also sang in church choirs as a child, developing her vocal range and emotional delivery early.

By the middle of the 1980s, she was playing in the city’s clubs with local bands, quickly becoming known for her energetic performances.

She then joined the Detroit rock band Lamont Zodiac and the Love Sign (later the Chisel Brothers) – a band that elevated her status on the Detroit blues circuit.

Backed by perfect timing and melodic inventiveness, Paul Chambers was a man whose sound anchored an enormous volume of iconic records — a feat he could not have accomplished had it not been for his upbringing growing up in Detroit, which gave him both the technical base and the rhythmic edge that would later go on to become his trademark.

Chambers was born in Pittsburgh but moved to Detroit as a young child with his family, a community with a music education system and jazz scene that was among the best in the nation at the time.

At Cass Technical High School, he studied classical bass and developed sight-reading and bowing abilities that would later distinguish him in jazz.

Chambers then began performing in Detroit clubs as a teenager alongside local heavyweights like Kenny Burrell, Yusef Lateef, and Barry Harris at a time when the post-war jazz scene in the city was extremely competitive, forcing young players to learn bebop and the high standards that club audiences demanded.

If Detroit is a city known for teaching by doing, Marcus Belgrave taught by playing.

His infamous horn was more than just an instrument…

It was a welcome mat, an open door, a signal to come in and stay awhile.

If Motown polished Detroit’s sound for the world stage, Iggy Pop tore it to shreds and set it on fire.

Where others sought harmony, he sought rupture—loud, physical, feral.

He isn’t here to entertain.

He’s here to confront.

If Iggy Pop was Detroit’s bare chest provocateur, Fred “Sonic” Smith was its cool hand on the fretboard:

Fierce, innovative, and grounded in working-class authenticity, he didn’t just play rock ’n’ roll…he made it sound as if it was inevitable.

Long before Kanye West called him “the god,” and Questlove swore by his drumming, J Dilla was James Dewitt Yancey from Conant Gardens, Detroit – a shy, meticulous kid who made crafting beats and records look easy.

He never chased fame.

He chased feeling.

He didn’t merely sample songs – he channeled spirits.

Listen to a Dilla beat, and you’ll hear more than just rhythm.

You’ll hear the soul being cracked open and rearranged.

Long before pulling off insane stunts like decapitating himself onstage with guillotines and snakes, Alice Cooper was Vinny from Detroit – the skinny kid raised on scripture and Chuck Berry in equal measure – one who took notes on how to tear it all down in style.

You can’t tell the story of Alice Cooper without including Detroit – not because he was born there, but because only Detroit could give life to a story this wild:

A goth glam mirror to America’s teenage id, a prolific man who made his band and himself a character so ridiculous you had to ask if the joke was on him or on all of us.

Detroit is known for forging talent.

For R&B songstress Teairra Mari, there was never any option but success.

Once a teenage powerhouse from the city’s east side, her voice has the kind of ache many Detroit girls know all too well: the kind handed down by soul queens and Motown legends, by single mothers on the grind, and by the doo-wop icons that continue to live on in the hearts of Detroit’s newest generation of rising stars.

By the age of 16, Teairra had what every R&B hopeful dreams of: a deal with Roc-A-Fella co-signed by Jay-Z himself.

Finally, the crown had been placed firmly on her head.

Stevie Wonder is the kind of musician that only Detroit can produce – one-part church, one-part factory, one-part raw emotion.

He didn’t get his start because he wanted to perform.

He wanted freedom.

A blind boy from the east side of the city with a gift that most grown-ups could not comprehend, Stevie rose to fame like a prophecy. 

He was a Motown miracle: 

A musical powerhouse with a soul far too big for any box.

Little did anyone know – they had a future hitmaker on their hands.

Before he became the velvety voice of endless love songs and transformed a little house on Grand Boulevard into a birthplace of soul, Smokey Robinson was just a skinny kid from Detroit’s North End writing lyrics on notebook paper and dreaming of making music that the world couldn’t ignore.

His voice flowed like honey.

But his pen?

Razor-sharp.

If Berry Gordy built the Motown machine, Smokey was its oil – a longing lyricist, equal parts tender and streetwise – a man who made heartbreak sound beautiful and Detroit’s blue-collar grit universally loved.

For a town so prone to being set on fire, Robert Hood learned the art of control.

Where others shouted, he moved in silence. 

Tightened up. 

Stripped down. 

Went minimal. 

Not emotionless – never that.

Quite the contrary, his music is equal parts sweat and machinery, holiness and steel, automation and soul.

Mayer Hawthorne never planned to be a soul singer.

Long before the industry ever co-signed him as cool, he was just Andrew Mayer Cohen: A Jewish kid from Ann Arbor with a killer record collection and a crate digger’s ear.