- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels stand out as perhaps the fiercest rock and roll band to make the big time, working closely with Bob Crewe.
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels – Breakout (1966): Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels stand out as perhaps the fiercest rock and roll band to make the big time. Working closely with Bob Crewe, a songwriter and record producer best known for his work with the Four Seasons, Mitch Ryder had honed his sound in Detroit bars and nightclubs and, for a time, was the lead singer for an otherwise African American band called the Peps. He left the Peps after he was reportedly unable to bear the blatant racism that his bandmates had to endure; and he hooked up with the house band for a Detroit club, taking the name Billy Lee and the Rivieras. There was already a California band called the Rivieras, so they changed their name to Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and moved to New York City.
Their second single “Jenny Take a Ride” – a medley of the Little Richard song “Jenny Jenny” and the blues standard “See See Rider” – was released in late 1965 and reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and No. 1 on the R&B chart – the first time a rock group had achieved the latter distinction. Bob Crewe had planned to release “Jenny Take a Ride” as a “B” side until he heard the reactions from Keith Richards and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones who were in the studio while the recording was being made. Their follow-up single, a cover of the Righteous Brothers’ first single (from late 1962) “Little Latin Lupe Lu” made the Top 20. The biggest hit by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels was another medley, “Devil with a Blue Dress On” / “Good Golly Miss Molly” – coupling a Motown single “Devil with the Blue Dress” by Shorty Long with the Little Richard classic – and hitting #4 on the Billboard singles chart in 1966. Their 1967 single, “Sock It to Me Baby!” made the Top Ten; but it was banned in some markets as being too sexually suggestive. Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels had included the phrase in the lyric “gonna sock it to me now” from their earlier 1966 hit “Devil with a Blue Dress On”. Also, Aretha Franklin incorporated a repeated “sock it to me” call into her classic song “Respect” (1967). A few years later, “sock it to me” became one of the most repeated catch phrases on the long-running comic variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, typically followed by the speaker being drenched or attacked. Most famously (from Wikipedia): “During the September 16, 1968, episode, Richard Nixon, running for president, appeared for a few seconds with a disbelieving vocal inflection, asking ‘Sock it to me?’ Nixon was not doused or assaulted. An invitation was extended to Nixon’s opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but he declined. According to George Schlatter, the show’s creator: ‘Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election’, and ‘[Nixon] said the rest of his life that appearing on Laugh-In is what got him elected. And I believe that. And I’ve had to live with that.’ ” Breakout – the title is given on the album cover as Breakout . . . !!! – is the second album by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and includes their biggest hit, “Devil with a Blue Dress On” / “Good Golly Miss Molly”, along with “Little Latin Lupe Lu”. The album consists mostly of R&B songs cranked up full blast, interspersed with a few original songs that were mostly co-written by Bob Crewe.