Music / Business & brands
Johnnie Mae Matthews
1922–2002
· singer, songwriter, producer, label owner
"Godmother of Detroit Soul", the first African American woman to own and run a record label, whose Northern Recording Company launched the Distants and Bettye LaVette.
- Born
Bessemer, Alabama- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 79- Also known as
- Godmother of Detroit Soul
- Detroit years
- 1950s–1980
- Field
- Music, Business & brands
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Matthews, a blues and R&B singer from Bessemer, Alabama, founded the Northern Recording Company in Detroit and is described as the first African American woman to own and operate a record label. In the late 1950s Northern recorded Otis Williams and the Distants, with Melvin Franklin, Al Bryant and Richard Street, whose "Come On" (1959) was a local hit before the core of the group left to form the Temptations. She also gave early breaks to David and Jimmy Ruffin, pianist Joe Hunter, Popcorn Wylie and Norman Whitfield, and in 1962 produced 16-year-old Bettye LaVette's "My Man – He's a Lovin' Man", later an Atlantic hit. She recorded herself for Mercury's Blue Rock and her own Big Hit label, and in the 1970s she managed the funk band Black Nasty, later the ADC Band, whose "Long Stroke" (1978) was an R&B hit. She closed Northern for good after 1980.
Highlights
- Founded Northern Recording Company in Detroit
- Recorded the Distants, forerunners of the Temptations
- Produced Bettye LaVette's first hit (1962)
- Guided the ADC Band ("Long Stroke", 1978)
- Portrayed in the 1998 miniseries The Temptations
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Buried here · 2002
Woodlawn Cemetery
Her grave (per Wikidata).