Tales from the Detroit Backbeat
The Six Degrees of Ron Course and Frank Mielke: A fourth in a series of interviews with Detroit’s lost rockers
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One of the wonderful byproducts of composing my rock ’n’ roll love letters, The Ghosts of Jim Morrison, the Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll and Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis, to my old friend, The Phantom, is that the man who some knew as Ted Pearson, others knew as Arthur Pendragon, and years-after-the-fact fans knew as “Tom Carson,” is the unexpected introductions and friendships I forged with his friends and bandmates.
I can now call Jerry Zubal, my friend. The Jerry Zubal. Of the band Rockicks. Now, that may not be a big deal to you, the reader, but it is to me. Years ago I found Jerry’s lone album by his band, 1977’s Inside, in the bins of a used record store and cherished it. I know that guy on that album.
I come to meet Joe Memmer, who knew Earl McGrath of Rolling Stone Records and partied with the Bee Gees. And Joe worked alongside Dave Gilbert of the Rockets in the band Shadow. Dave Gilbert. Of the Rockets. For me, while everyone was worshipping David Lee Roth and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, I bowed to the altar of Dave Gilbert. And I know a guy who worked with Dave — thanks to Arthur Pendragon.
I’ve also come to know bassist Daniel O’Connell of Detroit’s contribution to the footnotes of U2’s storied career, Barooga Bandit — and thanks to Daniel, I am one degree of separation away from Terry Reid, Fee Waybill of the Tubes, and Rick Springfield. Daniel was a member of the Wha? , the first band to appear on the stage of The Grande Ballroom. And I met that guy and that rocks. The unsung Detroit rock royalty I’ve met through the introductions of the famed Phantom of Detroit humbles me.
I am the Kevin Bacon of Detroit and I am doing it in less than six degrees! Yeah, that and a quarter won’t get me a donut and a cup of coffee at Dutch Girl Donuts on Woodward Avenue. Someone call Vinyl Collectors Anonymous. I need a meeting.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And writing Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis certainly made me stronger . . . but it almost accomplished the former. Tracking down musicians and bandmates to give their insights 40 years after the fact regarding an obscure rock album in the footnotes of the Doors’ career is no easy task.
In addition to Jerry Zubal, Joe Memmer, and Daniel O’Connell (just to name a few) making my investigations into the life and career of the Phantom of Detroit easier was two of Detroit’s unsung masters of the backbeat: Ron Course and Frank Mielke. It was a pleasure to spend time with these kings of meter and enjoy their tales of Detroit’s rock ’n’ roll scene that you won’t hear in any other Detroit Rock tome. It was an honor to include their insights in the soon to be published Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis — the band behind the 1974 album known to the world as Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1.
First, we’ll sit down with Pendragon’s first drummer — well, not really. While the Phantomphiles of the web believe Ron to be the band’s first drummer . . . well, we’ll let Ron Course explain it to you.
Ron Course: Mr. Meter
R.D Francis: So, Ron. Did you started out in a high school band like most musicians?
Ron Course: I started out in the Navy Big Band, playing with a 13-piece group. And while I was stationed in Bermuda, we had this band, XL.
R.D Francis: Then you went back to Detroit.
Ron Course: Yeah. You know, recording, back then, it was all straight up to reel-to-reel and you transferred to cassettes, which don’t last, as you know. That’s why I have been transferring my stuff to compact discs and uploading them to Facebook and whatnot. But there’s no remixing, because you really couldn’t do that. There are some glitches, sure.
My favorite recording is Coloradus doing Steve Miller’s “Love Shock.” I listen back to that and I say “holy crap” to myself. We were all proud of what we did with that song — and all of our stuff. The beauty of that tune is that it sounds rehearsed, and it’s not. We just knew where the other was going. I was so fortunate in my playing career, which I didn’t do for money, but White Heat, Bliss, and Coloradus, so many bands, but those three stand out.
R.D Francis: And White Heat was with Johnny Heaton of Tantrum?
Ron Course: Yes, that’s right. Johnny Heaton and Mike Sneed were on guitars in White Heat. A great, great band.
R.D Francis: Then there’s the Shotgun Willie Band. Great sounds as well.
Ron Course: Shotgun Willie was another one. We opened for the Charlie Daniels Band at Hart Plaza. I played in front of at least 450,000 people during my time with Shogun Willie. So, I made “it,” so to speak. It can’t be about money. I’ve just been very fortunate as a musician for my fifty-year career. I tried to sit down and write a list of the bands; there’s just so many. But eight or nine stick in my mind.
R.D Francis: As I told you before, this long-gone music blog, speaking about the Phantom and Pendragon recordings that were pirated as The Lost Album, someone called you out and said that Johnny “Bee” Badanjek from the Rockets wasn’t Phantom’s drummer, Ron Course was, and that you were in one of their favorite bands, Bliss.
Ron Course: Well, I wish I could take credit for that, but that’s not true. I don’t know who was. It was Chris Marshall who invited me to go out to his house. Everything was set up there, expect for my drums, which I set up in the living room. I had no clue to what we were doing. I listened back to the tracks two or three times. There was no rehearsal; the [Pendragon] tracks were already laid down. I got them each in two or three takes. It was a couple of tunes. I don’t recall what the songs were.
R.D Francis: Chris Marshall said you were amazing and blew him and Art away.
Ron Course: Well, when you sit in with a band, you have to make yourself part of it. Don’t play drum solos all night long. I hate drum solos. I did it once, in small bar on a weeknight with Bliss in Traverse City. Al Carmichael, my old Bliss bandmate, jokes about it, still. He was like, “Jesus, where’s that been?” And I told him, “Back where it belongs, in hiding.” [Noted session drummer; Steely Dan] Steve Gadd was a drummer I respected; I picked up plenty of licks from him.
But I was very enthralled by Pendragon. First, I have my own “dark side,” and Art wrote very dark lyrics. They were really good and I enjoyed them. I wish I would have got to know those guys better. Chris wanted me, tried to talk me into [Pendragon]. I was in and out of a couple bands at that time, I think. But they already had a couple drummers in mind, so I wasn’t offended. A lot of the bands back then were always switching around and trading members.
R.D Francis: Were you with Bliss or Coloradus at that point?
Ron Course: I think I was in Bliss at that point. By the way, I have to call out White Heat’s cover of “Sympathy for the Devil” at the Firebird as one tune I always remember. Great band. Are you familiar with Jimmy Dormine?
R.D Francis: His band escapes me at the moment. I know he’s a notable session player in Nashville.
Ron Course: Yes. We picked up Jimmy from Howell, Michigan, at eighteen for the Shotgun Willie Band. Just amazing and a hell of a nice guy. He was a Jaco Pastorius-type virtuoso. But he had this chance to join Confederate Railroad. He wasn’t going to do it; he didn’t want to leave the band, so me and [Rick] Niemi [from Shotgun Willie] had to convince him to do it. Nashville is where he needed to be. Jimmy would just nail it.
R.D Francis: And that is what Chris Marshall said about you: you’d just nail it. You played to a click track with zero-room for error and nailed it.
Ron Course: Drummers have a function: Meter. If you don’t have that, then you can’t do what I did with Art’s music. Again, a great bunch of guys. I wished I had more of a rapport with them. Art was great. Very cordial, very complementary. Now sometimes that’s not a real sign [of a person], but I found out later on from Chris that’s the way Art is: he didn’t pass out complements lightly to fellow musicians. So that made me feel good because, frankly, I was unsure. In fact, I never got to hear the finished tracks. It was four songs, now as I recall now.
R.D Francis: So, here’s how you were pulled into the Phantom mystery: Art’s album from 1974, which was long out of print, was pirated in 1989 in Italy. Then the Pendragon tunes were bootlegged in 1990 to ride the coattails of the first record.
Between the rabid European fan base for Jim Morrison, and with radio shows dedicated to the Doors also playing Art’s music, this cult for Art’s music grew in Italy and spread across Europe. So Europeans begin searching the web for information, your name pops up on a couple blogs, saying it’s you, not Johnny Bee. So there you, go. You’re famous in Italy.
Ron Course: Wow. Really? Well, that’s nice. But, you know, in the end. I “made it.” Especially with Shotgun Willie. It was a hard life out there, but a lot of country stars would come see the shows. Toy Caldwell from Marshall Tucker would come sit in with us. The country bands respected us and even envied us, because of where we were at. We made good money for a time, but it can’t be about money. And when you get it, it pours back into the music anyway. You can go out there and makes lots of money, but it doesn’t mean a thing if the music isn’t there. I was doing what I loved to do. Period.
R.D Francis: And that applies to those guys in Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. Sure, they made money. But you know it wasn’t about money. I’ve read they made only about $150 week, received bonuses, then were up to $1,500 weekly paychecks.
Ron Course: They can thank Punch [Ed Andrews] for that. Some people thought Punch was ripping them off. Nope. He put those guys on salary at $450 a week once they started doing shows. Once they got airplay, they made money hand over fist. And Punch, being the smart businessman he was, invested their money — for each person. No musician thinks of [investing]. But Punch set them up for life. Now they can play when they want; they don’t have to play. They can sit and do nothing, except play music. He took great care of them.
R.D Francis: And it’s great that they had Punch in their corner and that happened for them. But the point I’m making, Ron, is that you are just as enriched as they are.
Ron Course: Oh, yeah. Emotionally, you bet. I look to what I put into it and got out of it with satisfaction — every night. I’d leave work every night exhausted — well, what we called “work.”
It’s like Jimmy Dormine said one night when we were out looking for bands to watch on our night off from Shotgun Willie, and he said, “You know what’s funny about all this, Ron? They’re paying us really good money for something we’d do for free.” And it’s true. I didn’t care. I wasn’t one of these musicians, those “players” who wouldn’t play if I didn’t make a certain amount. Put the money first; you’ll fail.
R.D Francis: Which is why Seger and his guys did so well; in addition to Punch looking out for them, they had your attitude about the music. They would have played, including Bob, for free.
Ron Course: Oh yes, an excellent band that I still think doesn’t get their due because, well, you have these big powerhouse, company bands. Not to take away from Springsteen, I love them and they’re great and all, but they’re no better [than the Silver Bullet Band]. I’ll tell you, between Shotgun Willie, Coloradus, and Bliss, we opened a lot of local shows for major bands and frankly, they’re no better than we are. Except for the money.
R.D Francis: Now I need to go listen to Confederate Railroad again. Who would have guessed Jimmy Dormine would be on one of the branches of the Phantom. That rocks.
Ron Course: Oh, yeah, like I said, great guitarist. Jimmy is just incredible.
R.D Francis: And thanks for the Coloradus concert upload by the way. Great band. Again. “Love Shock” from Steve Miller. So awesome.
Ron Course: Thanks, brother. Yeah. I loved that band for sure.
R.D Francis: I think you forgot one band, Ron.
Ron Course: Really, who?
R.D Francis: Danny Zella & the Zeltones.
Ron Course: Oh, wow. My memory! Funny thing is that the Zeltones are the “roots” of Coloradus. Danny, sadly, passed away some time ago. The Zeltones were myself, Rick Stockwell, Mike Sneed, and Dale Kath and we played the Firebird — the same place where White Heat cut our version of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” back in 1972.
R.D Francis: Right. I caught that tune on Soundcloud. That’s Johnny Heaton’s band and Mike Sneed and yourself were in the band as well.
Ron Course: Yes. Now Danny was a great saxophone player; he killed on the sax. I remember Kottage doing “Dem Changes,” an old Buddy Miles tune, and Danny was just brilliant with the sax on that tune. But at some point, the Zeltones became Kottage, with a “K.” And that would eventually become Coloradus.
Born in Hartland, Michigan, a small town just north of Ann Arbor, a then eighteen-year-old Jimmy Dormine joined the Shotgun Willie Band, a country-rock outfit that featured Ron Course.
A disciple of the Duane Allman and John Mclaughlin school of guitar improvisation, Jimmy would go onto serve as the lead guitarist for a three-album, fourteen-year career with Atlantic Records’ Confederate Railroad. In addition to a prosperous tenure with Col. Bruce Hampton (Sixties outfit Hampton Grease Band), Jimmy worked as the guitarist for the “Luke Wheeler Band” in seasons 3, 4, and 5 of the ABC-TV drama, Nashville.
New music in 2021 by Dale Kath and Ron Course — The Blue Room.
Frank Mielke: A Rock ’n’ Roll Patriot
As for Johnny Heaton, Ron Course’s ex-bandmate: He got his teenaged start as the lead guitarist with the West End, which won the 1969 Farmington Hill Founders Festival band competition. In addition to Johnny Heaton, the West End featured Mike Johns on lead vocals, Terry Worden on rhythm guitar, Mike Durette on bass, and Frank Mielke on drums.
Proving how small Detroit Rock City really is: Frank’s cousin, Dave Mielke, is the guitarist for the Waterford, Michigan-based Woodstock-era tribute band, Magic Bus. The band’s keyboardist, Robert John Manzetti, currently works alongside former Pendragon guitarist Joe Memmer in the Detroit Doors. Yeah, that is how Detroit rolls, baby. In less than six degrees. So please welcome to the stage, Frank Mielke.
R.D Francis: Frank, how did the West End come into being?
Frank Mielke: We were all 16 or 17 years old. It was during summer break between our junior and senior years in high school when the Farmington Hills event took place.
R.D Francis: I know Johnny Heaton formed White Heat sometime around 1972. Did he leave the West End or did the band break up?
Frank Mielke: In 1970 the West End broke up when our bass player and lead singer who, at the time, was Jeff Deeks, left. He was recruited to join Harpo Jets, who opened for [Suzi Quatro] and the Pleasure Seekers at the Birmingham Palladium, which trumped the West End’s accomplishments thus far. Now, at the time, Harpo Jets, which also come to include Mike Durette, was known under a different name when they did the Palladium gig; I can’t recall the name. They changed their name to Harpo Jets because of Jeff Deeks’ similar looks and actions to Harpo Marx.
I’d also have to note that guitarist Tony Combs, who was the leader of Harpo Jets, he was the lead guitar player in my first band, the Patriots, when we were twelve or thirteen years old. Tony’s younger brother, Andy, was a drummer in Orange Lake Drive.
According to The Concert Database.com, the Harpo Jets also opened for Teegarden & Van Winkle on 7/17/1970, at Mount Holly, located on South Dixie Highway in Holly, Michigan.
The database also shows Orange Lake Drive performing numerous gigs from 1976 to 1984 in the Detroit area and indicates they reformed for a series of gigs from 1993 to 2001.
R.D Francis: And did you attempt for form or join another band after the West End?
Frank Mielke: Johnny Heaton, Dave Anderson, and Ken, I can’t recall his last name [Crawford], met at my house to discuss forming a new band. It was the first and last time I was ever with a group of individuals that could have successfully pulled off the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young classics that we played around with that day.
[However,] within days of that meet up: I was asked to play drums for a newly forming Waterford area, seven-member Flash Cadillac [not to be confused with oldies retro-rockers Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids from Boulder, Colorado]. I was the last member to join and I joined for what I believed would be a one-time performance at a Battle of the Bands — and an opportunity to do battle with Harpo Jets. Flash Cadillac was an overwhelming hit with the audience and we walked away with a victory over the favored-to-win Harpo Jets! The Flash Cadillac project kept me busy and in gas money for the next year and a half playing all the available teen venues — including headlining Waterford’s first Walk for Mankind rally.
The out-of-state Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids hadn’t yet been nationally recognized; however, after it became clear that we might be doing this a while, we, Flash Cadillac, changed our name to David and the Diamonds.
The Walk for Mankind was a fund-raising innovation created by physician and pastor James Wesley Turpin, which was active from 1969 to 1971.
R.D Francis: And what did you do musically after the Flash Cadillac/David and the Diamonds gig?
Frank Mielke: After my high school graduation, I went on to college. Terry Worden joined the Air Force and Mike Durette joined the Navy. Johnny Heaton formed White Heat, I believe.
White Heat with “Sympathy for the Devil.”
R.D Francis: So, I have to ask: Did you know Ted Pearson or see his bands Madrigal or Walpurgis?
Frank Mielke: I don’t recall if I met Ted Pearson or seen his bands live. There was so much great music going on and places to experience it in the Motor City between 1968 and 1975, so it’s possible. There are dozens of great bands I saw and directly or indirectly had contact with and I can’t remember their names or the year.
[However,] There are shows I attended that I do recall. I was there at the riot at [Mike Quatro’s] The Black Arts Festival [aka The Black Magic & Rock ’n’ Roll Festival] in Detroit where Ted Nugent was arrested for swinging from ropes over the crowd at Olympia Stadium, which was filled with cops in riot gear and shields and gave us twenty minutes to clear the stadium.
I was also at The Cinderella Ballroom [closed 1975] when the J. Geils Band recorded their Live Full House album [recorded April 21–22, 1972; released September 1972]. I was at the Pink Floyd concert where they blew up the stage and injured some of the concert attendees in the front row.
I was at East Town when the Grateful Dead told the crowd that Detroit could go [expletive] themselves and they would never return to Detroit after they had been busted minutes after arriving in the Motor City for the first time.
I was also in the audience when Blondie played Detroit for the first time and was booed and pelted with projectiles by a full house demanding that Iggy Pop take the stage. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band was the headliner. I could go on and on . . . what a time!
Johnny Heaton, Mike Roush, Jerry Zubal and Dale Kath with the HRZK Band.
Yes, what a time it was, indeed. And thanks to Arthur Pendragon and his choosing this writer to chronicle his career and his life and times, I hope you, through my writings, will experience those wild and wonderful times of Detroit Rock City. And most importantly, that you remember the life and music of The Phantom of Detroit — Arthur Pendragon.
END
— R.D Francis is the writer of The Ghosts of Jim Morrison, the Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll and Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis, both which explore the life and times of the musician responsible for the mysterious 1974 Jim Morrison “solo album,” Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1 — and came to replace Jim Morrison in the Doors.
You can learn more about the Phantom’s career and book purchasing information by visiting the Facebook Author’s Page for R.D Francis.
Photo and Video Section
All photos and videos in this article used by permission of the Ron Course and Frank Mielke archives.
