Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - “Devil with a Blue Dress On” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” (1966) : The story

    The son of a big-band singer, William Levise started out in teen harmony groups, but not until the record producer Bob Crewe renamed him Mitch Ryder and his band the Detroit Wheels did his career get any traction. The group’s second recording for the Motor City’s DynoVoice record label—a medley of Little Richard’s “Jenny Jenny” and the Chuck Willis hit “C.C. Rider” entitled “Jenny Take a Ride”—became a hit, and established Ryder’s “formula”: medleys. Ryder’s work in clubs taught him that a clever string of songs could keep people dancing. Though the individual tunes were held together by tenuous threads (sometimes just a drumbeat), they grew into mini-sensations, in part because of Ryder’s gruff shout and his band’s grind-it-out style.

“Devil with a Blue Dress On”/“Good Golly Miss Molly” is Ryder’s shining moment. In three and a half minutes, Ryder and crew take two Little Richard classics on a joyride in a road-hogging drop-top V8. The rhythm section is all steady reliability—all Ryder has to do is ride around and shout at the appropriate times, and these undeniable songs take care of the rest.

Ryder, who is white, attracted the usual complaints about exploitation immediately after this became a hit—to some he was Pat Boone in shaggier duds. Ryder deserves better: He and his steady-rolling band showed that rock songs can be a renewable resource. Later generations got the message: Ryder lives in the brawny roar of early Bob Seger and fellow Detroiter Kid Rock, and his clever conjoining of “Devil with a Blue Dress On”/“Good Golly Miss Molly” figures into the epic medleys that are a fixture of concerts by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Much as Ryder did, Springsteen uses invigorated renderings of warhorses not to simply pay homage to the great rock past, but to make that spirit manifest in the here and now.