It’s not just because the late Ted Lucas shared a hometown with Third Man Records co-founder and co-owner Ben Blackwell that the Detroit native became obsessed with reviving Lucas’ music. But that surely sweetened the pot, as Blackwell dove headlong into the obscure artist’s work in Motor City in the ’60s and ’70s, from his psychedelic rock groups The Spike Drivers and The Horny Toads through his “exotic instruments” session gigs with Motown Records. Although the two never met — Lucas passed in 1992 — Blackwell indicates that he feels a kinship with this songwriter and instrumentalist that “could not catch a break” in the mainstream…in being a DIY artist from the “perpetually slept on” Detroit music scene, then or now.
Lucas’ one and only solo release from 1975, a self-titled LP often dubbed The OM Record, is a collection of tunes Blackwell describes as “one of the most beautiful records I’ve ever heard.” This unsung hero of experimental folk got new pressings in 2010 thanks to small labels Yoga and Sebastian Speaks, which has a Nashville tie in founder William Tyler. But Blackwell hoped he could widen the record’s exposure even more.
“I am a firm believer that truly great music, truly important, truly special, truly moving music will eventually find its audience. And I feel very lucky to be in a position that I can help connect those two, music to artist. I think that’s part of my my mission, whether chosen or bestowed upon me or both.”
Get to know the expert craftsman Ted Lucas through these songs and also through the appreciative insights of Blackwell, who has spent about 10 years stewarding Third Man to re-release the half-century old Lucas album on vinyl and with some digital extras, out February 21.
We sat down to chat in the soundproof “lathe room” behind The Blue Room stage, where the Nashville-based record label, store and venue will sometimes record artists’ performances to vinyl in real time. “You hear that?” Blackwell asked. “Barely anything,” I answered. “Exactly!”
Hearing Ted Lucas for the first time
Ben Blackwell: I worked at a record store in Detroit called Car City Records, which is one of the the best record stores that I have memories of, and it’s not exclusive to working there. When I got my driver’s license, the first place I went was Car City Records. They had a CD compilation of The Spike Drivers that I remember buying sometime in the 2000s. I was mainly interested that it was a Detroit thing. I didn’t know much else about it. And you’d hear people in your orbit kind of mention Ted Lucas and other folks that had played with him…that were still in the Detroit scene at that point. I’m thinking of a gentleman named Larry Ray who was playing in a band called Outrageous Cherry, who I crossed paths with dozens of times.
But I think that Ted Lucas really got on my radar as a friend of mine named Zach Cowie, who I’ve known for I guess 20 years now, and he used to work for Sub Pop. I think he worked for Drag City as well. He’s an amazing music supervisor, amongst other things. A hi-fi genius in terms of stereo equipment and all that stuff. Really, really solid, dude. He had said something to me at some point about the Ted Lucas album. And he said, “You know, there’s two different versions of it.” I was like, “Yeah, OK,” and then as soon as I got off the phone I was like, “Alright, I got to figure out what the fuck this Ted Lucas record is.” And so I went and immediately looked it up and people were not terribly hip or aware of it. Zach is definitely on the cutting edge in that realm then and through this day, amazing depth of of knowledge and record obscurity.
So I went and I think I probably found a copy for maybe $20 or $30 tops. And just dropping the needle, first song, Side A, “Plain and Sane and Simple Melody,” I was just like, “What is this?” It’s kind of the hope, anytime you go to a local folk section, let’s say, you hope that the record sounds like this and it never really does. And so this was like, “Wow, it actually can happen.” It’s a beautiful, wonderful voice arrangement with acoustic guitar. Just simple.
“Baby Where You Are”
Celia Gregory: Do you have a favorite on the record?
BB: There is a bevy of unreleased Ted Lucas material that we are combing through, that we are priming for additional archival releases down the road. In the process of combing through all of that stuff, we came across some sort of notation, whether it was a letter or correspondence, whatever it was. But “Baby Where You Are” was a song Ted wrote for his son Peter Lucas, while he was still in womb, in utero. And this was a song Ted would sing to his son waiting for him to be born.
It’s beautiful because even if you don’t know the story behind it, you would think this is just a really, really charming, heartfelt love song between lovers. Right? But this is actually a song from father to son. I’m a big softy now of anything involving parenthood, with three daughters at home. And so hearing something like that, of just the striking beauty and simplicity of that song and knowing that the spark of it was fatherhood, that hits me in a way different than probably everything else on the album.
“Overcome with the beauty of it” and empathy for the artist
BB: I keep on thinking about the recordings that we’ve been given access to in undertaking this endeavor. So it’s not just reissuing this OM album. There’s more stuff coming down. I don’t know if everyone’s ever burst into tears in the Turnip Truck parking lot or if it’s just me. But I’m sitting listening to a live Ted [cut], you know, some tape that we had transferred up in Detroit and just was overcome with the beauty of it…and the fact that it is so clearly, it’s so evidently beautiful and so skilled in its construction and its art, its artistry, and just realizing, “Gosh, this guy could not catch a break.” He tried everything he could. This album was originally pitched as a demo for Mo Ostin at Warner Brothers Records. It seems like it has all the hallmarks of like a mid-1970s singer-songwriter. Like, how was this not jumped on?
CG: It sort of fit.
BB: Absolutely. And so when Mo Ostin turned it down, Ted was a little bit dejected and it took him a minute to put it together on his own and self-release it. I think it’s safe to say that every original copy of this record was absolutely handed from Ted to whomever was the recipient. [Laughs] There wasn’t any distribution. This probably wasn’t really ending up in record stores writ large or anything like that. So I think of that as someone who’s, you know, self-released records and someone who’s done that addressing packages out of your bedroom. I feel like there’s a there’s a kinship in that just in general, let alone from the Detroit aspect of it all. And I feel like Detroit is perpetually slept-on in terms of the great artists that come from there and are produced from there. I will connect the dots to Rodriguez. I will connect the dots to the all-Black punk band Death. These are stories that we continue to tell. And I could tell you a half-dozen more that the world isn’t even ready for yet. But I got to tell everyone about Ted Lucas first.
Motown sessions and gigs seemingly everywhere
CG: Ted Lucas is mostly a behind-the-scenes guy. You’ve talked about the bands he was in that you thought were great. And then this is such beautiful singing and songwriting. But he was mostly a session guy for a little known label, right? Tell us about that.
BB: So Ted was — I don’t know if this is an official title or just, you know, written on the back of a napkin, but he was considered the exotic instruments expert at Motown in Detroit. So the Motown Hitsville studio was classically open 24 hours a day. I think the only time that they ever closed was during the Detroit riots in 1967. But, you know, when you’ve got The Temptations, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas on your label, you’ve got musicians with the skilled caliber of the Funk Brothers, who played instrumentation on all the Motown stuff. You’d find an instance where it was like, “Hey, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles need a sitar on this new B-side,” and call up Ted. He’s the sitar expert in Detroit.
We found going through old newspaper clippings that, like, the local department store, you know, this is when a department store would have a whole floor dedicated to vinyl records. And it would be like, “Friday nights from 5 to 7 at the store, Ted Lucas will play sitar.” And it would be a thing of like, “Wow, what is this weird, exotic thing?” He was really, really visible in Detroit music, both in that realm, but also always playing residencies, always lots of performances on local television. He was a frequent contributor to the daily newspapers, both as a writer and as a commentator in terms of writing letters in and all that stuff. Just a really, really fascinating, interesting person.
I’ve not lived in Detroit for 16 years now, but digging into this depth of this material, I felt immediately like, “I know this guy.” Like, I know this is a Detroit guy through and through and it just only strengthens my love for this record. And I think that that’s not even necessary. You can just listen to the music and love it. You don’t have to know that he went to Mumford High School, like that’s irrelevant to most folks. But to me, when you hear Ted Lucas went to Mumford, I’m thinking, “I’ve got a Mumford Phys Ed Department T-shirt like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop!” And it’s all connected. This is all your own interesting universe that you create.
Digital bonus tracks
BB: We didn’t want to besmirch the established canon of this record, but we also wanted to be able to reward folks that have spent time with it, maybe have spent years and have already come to love it. And so for the digital only bonus tracks, “Nobody Loves Me Like My Baby Does” is one.
Another one that we’re doing is called “You’ve Got the Power.” “You’ve Got The Power” is great because it’s probably, of anything Ted did — it’s the most in line with, it should be on this record. He was very, very susceptible to stylistic deviations at the drop of a hat. And so when you listen to the OM Record, Ted maybe sounded like this for six months and then he was off to something else. Still with his talent, still with his phrasing and his ear for melody and all that. But it might sound more like a prog band or something like that. So “You Got The Power” is really, really interesting in that regard.
And there’s another song called “Head In California,” which he had recorded and released with his band The Horny Toads. The version we’re putting out is more of like a solo acoustic rendition done after the fact.
But I think one of the greatest things that Ted ever did is one of these digital bonus tracks that we have called “Love Took a New Trip”…or “Love Took a Trip,” I can’t remember. Ted was very bad about titling his songs so it might have ten different titles across ten different years or whatever. But it basically starts out as an improvised guitar raga and then falls into just a really beautiful acoustic folk fingerpicking song with these beautiful lyrics, “Love took a new trip, a blue trip.” And I think that’s the one that made me cry in the parking lot at Turnip Truck. I don’t think you you have the gumption to play all 17 minutes of it on the radio show. But it is a very, very beautiful song. And I think we’ll have more reason and more opportunity in the future to share things like that more widely than just a digital bonus.
