Detroit's "Close and Play" DJ reflects on Post-Motown music scene

Carleton S. Gholz, a native Detroiter who earned a Ph.D in communications at the University of Pittsburgh and now teaches at Northeastern University in Boston, is writing a book on "Post-Motown" Detroit. Some of you might remember Dr. Gholz from our August speaker series on Detroit music.

While we wait for the book, here's a tease -- an illuminating interview in the Daily Swarm with Morris Mitchell, a Detroit DJ (way back in 1971) before mixing records was the norm. "Close and Play" meant just that -- playing a record all the way through, take the record off, and slip the next song on the turntable -- all the while, maintaining a flow to keep the audience on their feet. Mitchell belongs to the small group of historically gay DJs who brought the music from places like New York and Chicago and laid a foundation for dance culture in the D.

Excerpt:

I’ve never been scared of anybody that was better than me; I think that made me popular. When I did cabarets, if I had somebody spin with me that they weren’t familiar with, and then they were really good, the crowd would really appreciate it. You follow what I’m saying? Because it was somebody new they had never seen get behind those turntables, they wore it out. They wore the crowd out.

Feel the beat here.