Everyone knew the house would rock and the Streamline Moderne marquee would shake when Paul Williams brought his sizzling combo to the Duke Theatre in Oak Park for another hot showing.
It was one of the last tour dates of 1949 after Williams’ record — “The Hucklebuck” — spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the R&B chart.
“Paul has never forgotten the friends who helped him get started,” the Detroit Tribune reported at the time.
After honing his saxophone skills in orchestras at Northeastern and Cass Technical high schools in Detroit, Williams embarked on a professional career. His big break came from an obscure point of origin.
“He met the owner of a record shop named Joe Battle, who delighted in the saxophonist’s original instrumentations,” the Detroit Tribune article explained.
With ears afire, Von Battle — the Georgia transplant added “Von” for distinctiveness — introduced Williams to Savoy Records, and the label sponsored his studio sessions in New York City. In tribute to Von Battle, Williams released a follow-up, “Thirty-Five Thirty.”
The song name-checked the address of Joe’s Records at 3530 Hastings St., a location on the western border of Black Bottom on the city’s east side that Von Battle had established.
“Family history says that in 1945, a Jewish widow who was selling out her business (a general store), offered him a deal on her Hastings Street storefront and Joe soon opened up shop,” daughter Marsha Philpot wrote. Starting with discs from home, he built an inventory of 35,000 records. At the back of the shop, a simple studio served the mission of recording dozens of blues and gospel artists.
To market the tunes, Von Battle established J.V.B. Records and other labels. Artists he produced ranged from jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, who ultimately became a professor at UCLA, to bluesman John Lee Hooker, who Philpot remembers “sometimes slept on the couch in the back of the shop.”
Besides the studio, Von Battle undertook live recordings in clubs and churches. A signature effort was the long collaboration with the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. Signs at Joe’s proclaimed, “We have records by Rev. C.L. Franklin.”
Known as “The Man with the Million-Dollar Voice,” Rev. Franklin preached and sang his way through more than 75 albums. When his 14-year-old daughter, Aretha, cut her first gospel album, Von Battle helmed the controls.
Business was booming, but Von Battle’s entrepreneurial spirit remained unquenched. Late in 1956, the Tribune reported he would invest $50,000 in a film to be shot in the 5,000-seat auditorium of King Solomon Baptist Church. “Detroit’s sensational gospel preacher” announced the project at a press luncheon in the Gotham Hotel near Orchestra Hall. The filming would take place on Easter Sunday, 1957.
Filling the bill would be the Soul Stirrers, the Dixie Hummingbirds, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Sammie Bryant — with New Bethel’s choir of 300 supplying extra bounce. As the highlight, Rev. Franklin would deliver “one of his greatest sermons.”
There’s no trace of a finished film, but Rev. Franklin was portrayed by actor Forest Whitaker in “Respect,” a 2021 docudrama. Von Battle himself awaits cinematic interpretation.
In the intended jump from records to film, he prefigured one of his customers, Barry Gordy, who shopped for records and yearned to follow in Von Battle’s footsteps.
Gordy, along with his team, went on to write and produce smash hits at Motown Records, of course, and then went full Hollywood with “Lady Sings the Blues.”
Any depiction of Von Battle would necessarily present him with a drink in hand. The bibulous father of eight died in 1973 at age 57. By then, urban renewal had replaced Hastings Street with the Chrysler Freeway.
Joe’s Records moved to 12th Street in 1960, but was ravaged in the 1967 Rebellion. Unfortunately, monuments are scarce; the largest trace of Von Battle’s empire is found in his enduring contributions to what became known as the Detroit Sound.
