Listen To Music From Label That Set The Blueprint For Motown And Discovered Alice Coltrane

The story of Detroit’s Fortune Records, a family-owned label that set the blueprint for Motown and laid the groundwork for the celebrated musical legacy of the Motor City, is finally being told in new book Mind Over Matter: The Myths & Mysteries of Detroit's Fortune Records. Authors Billy Miller and Michael Hurtt leave no stone unturned in chasing down the wild tales behind some of the coolest music that you may have never heard. A virtual alternate history of early rock 'n' roll and soul, Fortune Records influenced a generation of Midwestern luminaries including Smokey Robinson and the MC5's Wayne Kramer, as well as other music heads like Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group

Aside from Fortune's Big Three -- the ever-influential Nolan Strong and the Diablos, Andre Williams and Nathaniel Mayer -- the label was the first to record jazz legends Kenny Burrell, Alice Coltrane and Donald Byrd, blues man John Lee Hooker, country hit makers the Davis Sisters, boogie-woogie piano pounder (and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" author) Roy Hall, rockabilly legend Johnny Powers and soul men Spyder Turner and Melvin Davis among many others! The diversity of Fortune Records was unlike that of any Detroit record label that came before or after it. Largely female-led, its output was an aural microcosm of the city's racial and ethnic multiculturalism, from pop, polka, jazz, hillbilly, doo-wop and bluegrass to gospel, blues R&B, rock 'n' roll and soul -- with diversions into Gypsy and Tejano music. 

Check out Fortune Records on Spotify: