A forgotten Ann Arbor music legend gets his due

Would it surprise you to learn that it was a radio disc jockey in Ann Arbor who discovered, groomed, and recorded Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Del Shannon and his immortal Billboard No. 1 hit “Runaway?”

Would it interest you to discover that this same man, partnered with his brother, was the first to promote and stage concerts starring such future bebop legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, and John Coltrane, establishing the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area as a paradise for modern jazz music to this day?

And would it shock you to read that this man launched his career as a Black high school student in the late 1940s?

His name was Ollie McLaughlin, and if you’re not familiar with it, that’s the point. The remarkable accomplishments of this southeast Michigan radio personality, concert promoter, talent scout, manager, record producer, label owner, and music publisher have been largely lost to the passage of time. Which is why his son, Khaliph Young, and daughter, Moira McLaughlin, joined talents to create the new seven-part podcast series Before Motown There Was Ollie: The Ollie McLaughlin Story, available now in celebration of June as Black Music Month.

And according to Young, the title is legit: Ollie scored his No. 1 hit with Shannon’s “Runaway” three years before Berry Gordy topped the Billboard pop charts for the first time on the Motown label, with “My Guy” by Mary Wells in 1964.

Young, who spent more than 30 years working in local television and Detroit city government before launching his own local content creation and social media strategy firms, Zen Zen mobile and Hikari Labs, started working on the project with his sister last November. Over all the decades, the timing just seemed right.

“Moira is the archivist,” he explains. “I had some elements, but she kept digging and digging and getting more, sound bites of people he might have worked with, or who knew him, or who lived in Ann Arbor at that time. She’s been doing films on YouTube, really active in different Michigan music groups, and I produced a podcast two years ago called Tapestry in Black that highlighted different men and women from the Black Power revolutionary movement of the ’60s. That’s where I got the idea from. I said, ‘A podcast would be easier than doing films, because we won’t need visuals. Then if you want, later on you can use the audio to make more short films.’

“It’s been ready since April, and she’s been just bursting at the seams to drop it. But I said, ‘No, no, we’re going to have the most impact if we wait for Black Music Month. Just hold your horses.’”

In the first episode, “From Mississippi to Michigan: Meet the Motor City Music Man,” with a healthy assist from AI, Young allows Ollie, who died in 1984, to introduce himself to listeners in his own voice. The youngest of 13 children in Carthage, Miss., “I was born into a world shaped by limited opportunities, like many African-American families in the South,” he recalls.

“During the Great Migration, my siblings moved North one by one in search of better opportunities. Eventually. I was sent to live with my older brother Maxie in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I continued my education there, and that’s when something started to form. And it was magical.

“I did it all,” Ollie says of his immersion into the music industry. “My name might not be well known, but my impact was profound.”

“Runaway” wasn’t Ollie’s only pop chart achievement. He was also instrumental (pun intended) in such memorable R&B classics as “Cool Jerk” by the Capitols and “Baby I’m Yours” from Barbara Lewis. He became the first African American to host his own show on Ann Arbor’s signature station, WHRV-AM (now WAAM), “Ollie’s Caravan,” the first jazz radio program in the area.

As rock music emerged, Ollie’s energy shifted. His in-person “sock hop” dances featuring the latest hit releases filled high school gymnasiums and other venues throughout the region. And his “Scooby Doo Club,” inspired by an offhand comment on the air and created decades before the cartoon character of the same name, became an unexpected youth movement, with thousands of proud card-carrying members.

One episode of the podcast celebrates Ollie’s relationship with the Funk Brothers, the legendary session musicians more closely associated with Motown Records who created the Detroit sound. Every episode ends with an original R&B song praising Ollie’s legacy, composed by Moira with AI assistance. Ironically, however, given this glowing tribute, Young says he never knew his father.

“That’s a really curious and strange situation,” he says. “I never met him personally. When he was in the hospital, my mom was like, ‘You should go and see him.’ But I was like 21, I said no, and then he passed. Years later I met my younger sister in a radio class at OCC! Along the way we found more kids. We went on ancestry.com and three more brothers popped up. Pops was a rolling stone.”

With apologies to Motown.Before Motown There Was Ollie: The Ollie McLaughlin Story is available now on iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and podbean.com.

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Jim McFarlin, former media and entertainment critic for the Metro Times and the Detroit News, is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in People, USA Today, Black Enterprise, HOUR Detroit,... More by Jim McFarlin

Jim McFarlin

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