By Andrew Jones
When John Sinclair was 10 years old he convinced his father to take him to their local radio station. Thinking all the R&B bands he listened to on Saturday mornings were there playing live, he was shocked to find “a square white guy playing records.” But by then his love of music was deeply rooted and indeed, throughout his turbulent life, he’s been a tireless champion of American blues, rhythm & blues, jazz, and to a lesser extent rock & roll. He’s not only been the manager of the infamous MC5 but has worked in the promotion, organization, documentation and dissemination of the music he loves and considers a force of change for the better.
Born 2 October 1941 in Flint, Michigan, John grew up in nearby Davison. He attended Albion College and the University of Michigan—Flint College, where he received a degree in American literature. Later he entered graduate school at Wayne State University, where he developed a thesis on William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch before dropping out in the fall of 1965 to pursue activities in the Detroit jazz and poetry community.
John is Probably most well known for the draconian nine and half to ten year prison sentence he received in 1969 in Michigan for possession of two joints and the ensuing 1971 concert to free him which featured pop musicians John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Seger; jazz artists Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd; and speakers Allen Ginsberg, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale. John Lennon even wrote a song for John entitled John Sinclair. Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state’s marijuana statutes were unconstitutional. His political activism before that time included the founding in 1968 of the White Panther Party, which advocated a “total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets.”
But in 1964 he and a small group of others founded the Detroit Artist’s Workshop. Eventually it turned into what he calls a housing project for artists to practice and work. He not only produced many jazz concerts featuring local talent but helped to organize such musical groups as the Detroit Contemporary 4, the Workshop Arts Quartet and the Workshop Music Ensemble. The Artist’s Workshop Press also emerged from this project which published among other journals the jazz magazine Change (1965-66). The Artist’s Workshop mutated into Trans-Love Energies when they joined the first wave of hippies and got into rock and roll and that’s when he became the manager of the MC5. Eventually they got a lot of flack for their left wing political views and John was fired.
After his release John teamed up with Peter Andrews who produced the Free John Now Rally. Andrews was also the organizer of the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, the grandfather of all blues festivals running from 1969 to 1971 and originally sponsored by the University of Michigan. When the university refused to sponsor another blues festival they decided to do it themselves, John suggesting they add jazz to the bill. After securing they’re own sponsorship they co-produced The Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1972 and 1973. John considers it the highpoint of his productive life.
In the 1980s he was managing local bands and booking local talent in five Detroit clubs, for which he also did the promotion. He laments, however, that few people wanted see the acts he wanted to present, acts like Koko Taylor, Sun Ra and Junior Wells with Buddy Guy. “All my work has been trying to expose people to great music, poetry and art.” At the end of the 1980s he worked in the music department of Wayne State University, where he taught the history of rock and roll, “which was basically a history of African American music until about 1960 with blues and jazz and rhythm and blues as the center point,” as well as a class on the history of the blues.
John has also spent time spinning records for numerous radio stations in the US. As a teenager he would DJ at dances after football games, and in the 1960s he guest hosted many shows for underground radio. To promote The Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, Peter Andrews went to a local radio station and bought 6 hours of time for John to promote and prepare listeners for the kind of music they’d be showcasing. In the 1980s he did a shows like Ancestor Worship, Revisions: Another Look at Modern Music and The Sound of Detroit, the music of which was recorded at the Detroit Jazz Center. After relocating to New Orleans in the early 1990s his daughter introduced him to the people at WWOZ radio where again he was the champion of the rich local music scene. “It was the only station of its kind in New Orleans,” he boasts, “everybody listened to it in their cars and in their homes, it was always on.” Eventually he started doing live broadcasts and producing CDs of the music he played on the air. He now has his own show in cyberspace, The John Sinclair Show, which can be heard at www.radiofreeamsterdam.com.
In addition to all of this, John has always been a poet as well, a bard in the true sense of the word, paying homage to his musical heroes. His books of poetry include Fattening Frogs for Snakes: Delta Sound Suite, Song Of Praise: Homage To John Coltrane and Always Know: A Book of Monk. He set out on tour in 1995 to promote his recordings and books and to give readings and performances with the many permutations of The Blues Scholars, a band he formed in New Orleans and with which he performs his poetry set to archetypal blues songs. Today at age 66, when he’s not chillin in Amsterdam, he still out there on the road.
—Amsterdam
2007
