Courtesy of Marsha PhilpotĪfter his building was demolished, Von Battle moved his record shop from the east side of Detroit to the west side, on 12th Street. Joe Von Battle stands inside Joe’s Record Shop in the 1950s. Today, there isn’t a single Black-owned grocery store in Detroit, the Blackest big city in America. Hundreds were forced to relocate or close permanently. Hastings Street was home to more than 300 Black-owned businesses, including restaurants, doctors’ offices, and even eight grocery stores. Over a mile of Hastings Street and its surrounding land was turned over to developers, dismantling the once thriving epicenter of Black life in Detroit in order to create a high-speed thoroughfare from downtown to the surrounding suburbs. “My father had been very, very successful in his record business,” Music said.īut in 1960, Von Battle was forced to close his shop and relocate to make way for I-375 - a giant, four-lane sunken freeway. At one point, Joe’s Record Shop had 35,000 albums in its inventory and generated the present-day equivalent of $2.5 million in revenue. Von Battle recorded blues artists like John Lee Hooker and was the first person to ever record Aretha Franklin. “People sang up and down the street, they played their guitars on the corner, they sang gospel,” said Von Battle’s daughter, 67-year-old Marsha Philpot, more commonly known as writer Marsha Music, “so my dad began to record these people.” His shop was a focal point for the music scene on Hastings Street - the center of Black business and entertainment in 1950s Detroit. Later, he remodeled the store to include a recording studio. Joe Von Battle started the business by selling records from his personal collection. The store was lined with vinyl records and music posters, with a big, upright piano in the back. In 1945 in Detroit, Michigan, a man who is believed to be the first African-American independent record producer opened up a blues and gospel record store called Joe’s Record Shop. This story is published in collaboration with BridgeDetroit.
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