Lee's Sensation Club

01 / The story of this place

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Black businessman Uzziel Lee opened Lee's Sensation Club, also known as Lee's Club Sensations, at 1300 Owen Street in Detroit's North End neighborhood in 1944, running it as a 'black and tan' club, one of the venues of the era that welcomed both Black and white patrons at a time when much of the city's nightlife was segregated. In the early 1950s, a teenage Jackie Wilson, not yet the star who would become known as 'Mr. Excitement,' worked at Lee's Sensation as a solo singer before forming a vocal group called the Falcons there with his cousin Levi Stubbs, who went on to lead the Four Tops. That early stage set Wilson on the path to a major R&B and soul career, and gave Stubbs his own start in Detroit's vocal-group scene before Motown's rise. Little is documented about when Lee's Sensation Club closed, and no trace of the building or a marker is known to survive today.

1. Opened in 1944 at 1300 Owen Street in Detroit's North End
2. A 'black and tan' club welcoming Black and white patrons
3. Jackie Wilson worked here as a young solo singer in the early 1950s
4. Levi Stubbs, later of the Four Tops, sang with Wilson here as the Falcons