Little Detroit History Letter holiday potluck
I fixed up a couple of snacks to share
Season’s greetings! From the department of half-finished drafts, I offer you this little spread of holiday-ish, history-ish offerings!
First, some music
My kindergartener came home from school recently with a printout about the Marvin Gaye song “Purple Snowflakes,” which he’d learned in music class. The tune didn’t really spring to mind until he sang it to me. Yeah, I guess I’d heard that one before, once or twice. We listened to it together, once or twice, then again and again. Now it rings through the halls — the real halls of my house, and the halls of my head — at all hours. The chorus is in a minor key, it has some nice moody jingle bells in it, the song is about sitting by a fire while it snows outside. Perfect.
A detail from my kid’s “Purple Snowflakes” printout. I love his drawing of the Motown sign.
Gaye, with Clarence Paul and Dave Hamilton, wrote and recorded “Purple Snowflakes” as a Christmas song1, then recorded a version with non-holiday lyrics and released it as “Pretty Little Baby” on the Tamla label on June 18, 1965. It went to no. 16 on the Billboard R&B charts. (Did anyone wonder: Why does this song of the summer have jingle bells in it?) “Purple Snowflakes” stayed on the shelf until 1993, when it was released on Motown’s “Christmas in the City” compilation. (A syndicated newspaper music critic that year dismissed this haunting gem from the vault as “silly”?? Rude.)
The sublimity of this track (also my inability to enjoy anything in life without first considering its relationship to Detroit) has had me thinking about other music that might set a locally festive mood this season. Here are a few ideas, beyond all of the Motown stuff, which, it goes without saying, is great:
Jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby is essential Detroit listening always. (I wrote about her in my old TinyLetter in 2019.) With Ashby on harp, Jimmy Clark on the celesta and Tom Montgomery on the Hammond organ — a combo that is as delightfully weird and wonderful as it sounds! — “The Sounds of Christmas” is collector’s vinyl today but available for your listening pleasure on YouTube:
Ashby was also a member of the Soulful Strings, which released “The Magic of Christmas” in 1968. Instant holiday swank. Just add cocktails!
There’s probably a boatload of other Detroit Christmas jazz that I don’t know about (yet!), but for something more contemporary, Detroit-born Geri Allen’s 2011 “A Child is Born” is a collection of traditional Christmas songs rendered for plaintive and soulful solo piano.
Goofier: Sure you could, should and probably will listen to Bob Seger’s “Little Drummer Boy” this year, but why not follow it up with Soupy Sales’ 1963 surf rock take on “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town?” I do not know why this exists and I do not want to know because it would ruin the magic.
And what do you even need me for when local national treasure DJ Dave Lawson makes a vintage vinyl Christmas mix for all of us every year? This year’s mix is his 10th annual and, I humbly submit, his best yet.
The Winter Garden
One hundred years ago, a new entertainment venue promised Detroiters an indoor winter wonderland. Its owner, Leo J. Rodgers, purchased an old factory building at Forest and Hastings Streets and transformed it into an extravagant indoor amusement park advertising rides, fashion shows, boxing tournaments, Mardi Gras-themed New Years’ Eve party, a “fun forest, perplexity palace, circus arena, ballroom, dragon caves, etc.” There was also an on-site day care with a doctor on staff??? Good idea Leo J. Rodgers!
Circus, Ghosts, Menagerie, etc., etc. Advertisement in The Detroit Free Press, Jan. 3, 1923.
Rodgers told the Detroit Times that he had visited all of Europe’s great amusement parks to inspire the design of the Winter Garden and hired the accomplished amusement park engineer T.H. Eslick for its design.
Except Eslick was maybe a con artist? And after about a year, advertisements for the Winter Garden disappear from the Detroit papers.
Then in 1925, a court case:
A former watchman at the Winter Garden, Louis J. Morton, sued Rodgers for back pay and physical injury.
“The amusement devices built by Oscar J. Jurney, ‘amusement engineer’ of Jersey City, N.J., for the Winter Garden Amusement Park at Forest avenue and Hastings street, proved to be more productive of broken bones and physical disorders than pleasure, (Morton) … testified Wednesday,” the Detroit News reported.
A Tilt-A-Whirl-sounding “French Ride” made Morton “dizzy for a week,” he testified. The “Big Slide” broke his arm. A lot of the other rides just didn’t work, Morton said, and he had to go around the park every day hanging “Out of Order” signs on them.
Rodgers was also the subject of a dispute with a club of circus performers who claimed that their checks for a performance at the Winter Garden bounced. At the time of Morton’s suit, the News reported that the Winter Garden’s run had only lasted a few months in 1922 and ‘23.
Other refreshments
It’s pegged to Thanksgiving but I think still holiday-appropriate: Mickey Lyons on the history of Cold Duck, the “wine-dreg punch” that came to Detroit via a German prince. I love that the family Cold Duck tradition anecdotes had to be anonymized.
Cobo Christmas Carnival, 1977. Detroit News Photo Archive.
If you missed it last year, I wrote about the folkloric Ford Rotunda fire and how it spawned a whole other Detroit holiday attraction we mostly don’t talk about anymore: the Cobo Hall Christmas Carnival.
Finally, a simple word or two of gratitude: Bringing back the Little Detroit History Letter was the best thing I did in 2023. I’ll be resting and reading and researching for the next couple of weeks to fill up the ideas bin and bring you more delights in the new year. Thank you for reading.
XO,
AEB
This article claims that the song was written for Stevie Wonder. Intriguing!