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Ron English
Jazz guitarist Ron English has enjoyed a long and varied music career, with roots wide and deep in blues, Broadway, bebop, avant-garde, funk, Motown, and gospel.
Ron got started playing standards for dances and receptions around his native Lansing, where his father was a well-known guitar teacher, then graduated to a sort of roadhouse jazz and blues mix, in the bands of drummer Bud Spangler and Jackson tenor man Benny Poole, and various organ trios, including his long time employer and collaborator Lyman Woodard. Along the way, for his friends, Bob Baldori and the Woolies, Ron contributed the guitar solo on a classic blues rock “nugget,” the Woolies’ 1967 cover of Bo Diddly’s Who Do You love?
He joined the Detroit Contemporary 5, led by trumpeter Charles Moore, in the mid-60s. Its first edition also included drummer Danny Spencer, bassist John Dana and saxophonist Larry Nozero. The DC5 was the house band of the Detroit Artists Workshop Society, an arts collective spearheaded by legendary poet and activist John Sinclair.
In the 70s, Ron played with some of the later expanded editions of the CJQ, led by Charles Moore and pianist Kenny Cox, exploring more post-bop and avant-garde paths. He participated in the artistic self-determination efforts of the 70s with the Tribe and Strata organizations, producing concerts and records. Ron was featured on a couple Strata releases, CJQ’s Locations and Lyman Woodard’s Saturday Night Special.
From the 70s on into the 90s, Ron toured and recorded with Michigan jazz artists Lyman Woodard, Phil Ranelin, Wendell Harrison, Kenny Cox, the Jimmy Wilkins Orchestra, the Austin-Moro Big Band, and Eddie Russ, with whom he toured Europe.
He also toured backing the Four Tops, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, and the Supremes’ Mary Wilson, and recorded with Gladys Knight and the Pips. He made much of his living for a number of years in the pit orchestras for the Fisher Theater and others, backing Broadway musicals and pop acts, and occasionally with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He played banjo on the DSO’s recording of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess suite.
Ron led his own jazz groups in the greater Detroit area, starting when his quartet played every Thursday night at Cobb’s Corner for about two years in the late 70s. Ron’s groups opened concerts for Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, the Jazz Crusaders, and others, and appeared frequently in Detroit’s Labor Day jazz festival at Hart Plaza. His 1988 LP From Now to Then was drawn from live concerts at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
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Various Artists: John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop
by Chris May
Valuable as both a curated chronicle of jazz history and as high-grade music, John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop: Community, Jazz And Art In The Motor City 19651981 comprises around 70 minutes of live recordings by some of Detroit's finest sons along with an informative 24-page booklet. Among the musicians are trumpeters Donald Byrd and Charles Moore, reeds player Bennie Maupin and, resident in the city in the mid 1960s, pianist Stanley Cowell. The backstory: The Artists ...
read morePoet M.L. Liebler and Guitarist/Poet Ron English on Detroit Jazzstage
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JazzStage Productions
Poet M.L. Liebler and jazz guitarist/poet Ron English are the November guests on Detroit JazzStage. M.L. fronts the group, M. L. Liebler & The Magic Poetry Band. By day, he is a Wayne State University professor (and St. Clair Shores, Michigan's first Poet Laureate). Over the last twenty plus years, M.L. has combined his insightful, urban poetry with the funky tones of modern jazz, resulting in a perfect elision of sound and vision. Ron has enjoyed a long and varied ...
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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson