Soul Icon Mitch Ryder on Lou Reed, Wilson Pickett and Why He Doesn’t Care About the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame [Exclusive]

Lori Acken 5 minutes ago

Mitch Ryder performs with The Detroit Wheels on a T.V. show circa 1967. — Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images

Courtesy of some car trouble, Mitch Ryder arrives just 20 minutes before for his headlining show at a popular blues festival in Waukesha, Wisconsin, just outside of Milwaukee. Still, the blue-eyed soul innovator, known for such hits as “Devil With the Blue Dress” and “Sock It to Me, Baby!” has every intention of making the fans not mind one bit, including the ones for whom he’s quickly autographing a stack of posters. And the ReMIND editor he chats with before the show. That’s because Ryder, now 80, loves music — playing it, recording it, championing it and talking it over. And he knows his worldwide fans are the reason his career is heading toward its 65th year.

So how did a mop-topped teenage boy — one whose mom raised him on the honky-tonk sounds of Hank Williams and who cut a gospel record when he was just 16 — become a genre-blending music icon with an international fanbase? For the artist formerly known as William Sherille Levise Jr., it came from cutting his musical teeth in the Motor City during Motown’s heyday and the birth of Detroit-style rock ‘n’ roll. At 21, he rechristened himself Mitch Ryder (a name he chose from the Manhattan phonebook), formed the Detroit Wheels and set to work creating a sound all their own

Redefining the Detroit Sound

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, ca. 1960s

Everett Collection

“My first singing group was a Black group,” Ryder explains. “I was the only White singer, and it was good training for me. I loved that style of music, and my band, they liked rock and roll. So we got together and we blended those two and it was a sound that had not been heard around the country, apparently, because of the way we exploded.”

Blending R&B with rock ‘n’ roll also landed Ryder on stage and in the recording studio with some of each genre’s most legendary artists, from Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to Lou Reed.

Multicultural music

Ryder and Pickett did statement-making joint performances as part of famed radio jock and “Fifth Beatle” Murray Kaufman’s “Murray the K Show,” blending their bands at the height of Detroit’s “long, hot summer” race riots in 1967.

“The idea behind it was using his band, me being White,” Ryder recalls. “It worked for 13 dates. And he is responsible for putting me on stage at the Apollo in New York where I was very well-received. I was grateful for that, as well.”

Ryder and Redding performed together on the Cleveland-based TV variety show Upbeat. It would mark Redding’s final recorded performance before he and his band died in a plane crash outside of Madison, Wis., on Dec. 8, 1967. Redding and Ryder performed the Eddie Floyd tune “Knock On Wood,” which had become a Top 40 hit for Redding that same year, and reached No. 1 in 1979 courtesy of Amii Stewart’s disco-fied version.

Feeding the rock ‘n’ roll animal

On the rock ‘n’ roll side, Reed loved Ryder’ live performance of his hit song “Rock ‘n’ Roll” so much he let Ryder and his Detroit Wheels spinoff band Detroit record and perform it with his blessing.

“I was in a club in New York City working and Lou came to see me,” Ryder told his Waukesha audience before grabbing a cowbell and igniting his band into a thrumming, shoulder-shaking rendition of the tune. “Lou watched the show and came backstage and sat down next to me and said, ‘You know what, Mitch? I like your version of my song better than I like my own,’ and I looked at him and I said, ‘Well, can I have some of your drugs?’

“It was totally crazy for him to do that, but we put it out anyway,” Ryder continues. “I only lasted for one album with [Detroit] because it was a really, really hard group to morph into. Too much of everything. Too much drugs, too much, chaos, too much confusion, too much, too much of everything that a man couldn’t want.”

Ryder heads (way, way) west

Still, Ryder knew he had something good going with his signature blend of blues and rock, even after both scenes eventually moved on, compelling him to head for Germany to continue evolving his sound. There, his career thrived in the late ’70s and ’80s, and he is still a sought-after performer, launching the tour for his 2025 Ruf Records release “With Love” there.

“I started going there in ’79,” Ryder says. “I worked there 17 years just in the West because they had the wall. When the wall came down, I did all of Germany for 30 years. So that’s 47 years of going, every year, to Germany. And one thing I found out about artists in Germany, in Europe, is that, if they like an artist, they follow his art throughout his life.

“Over here, it’s like you’re as good as your last hit and that’s how they value you,” he shrugs. “Because of my age and my demographic diminishing, there’s less and less work every year.”

Fame is not fortune

To that end, Ryder treasures his 2005 induction with The Detroit Wheels into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame and his 2009 induction as a solo artist. In 2017, he was also inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. As for fans who are puzzling over why Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels doesn’t have a home in Cleveland’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Ryder says he doesn’t consider it a snub, but rather a testament to his commitment to their sound, and the fans, famous and otherwise, who love it.

“It’s shied away from its original mission, and it’s not about rock and roll,” Ryder says. “The way I knew rock covers every sort of genre of music, so I don’t really want to be there. But I don’t begrudge any of my fellow artists that are happy there.”

Surrounded by a crack band on this steamy August night in Waukesha, Ryder makes sure to express his gratitude to a few of the many music icons who count Ryder among their primary influences, from Reed to Pickett to John Mellencamp and even Prince.

ReMIND Staff

Ultimately, though, he says, that far-reaching impact doesn’t define what he hopes his legacy will be.

“We established a sound,” Ryder reflects. “Other people were grateful for it. I’ve seen written testimonies from artists way bigger than me saying, ‘This is who influenced me. This is how I got my start.’ And I’m grateful for that. But I don’t feel like that should be a judgment on what I am as an artist.”

Then he issues a challenge.

“I would like one day for one dedicated person — just one in the whole wide world — to get every recording I ever made, listen to them, watch the growth of the artist, follow the progression, follow the evolution, follow me to through my life’s work, up to the very end,” Ryder says. “Then I would be very pleased and proud to know that I had accomplished that in my life.

“As far as the judgment goes, that’s up to God. That has nothing to do with music.”