Phelps Lounge

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Phelps Lounge occupied 9000–9006 Oakland Avenue, a site that had been the Oakland Theatre (1914), the Academie Theatre (1923), the Echo Theatre (from 1934) and the Bizerte jazz bar; Eddie Phelps bought it in the early 1960s (1960 per the Michigan Chronicle, 1964 per the building history site EHERG) and turned it into a 450-seat showroom with a huge horseshoe bar, where headliners often stayed ten days doing two shows a night. B.B. King, Etta James, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Ike & Tina Turner, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Bobby Bland, Little Milton, the Temptations, the Isley Brothers and the Staple Singers played there, and George Clinton's Parliaments became Funkadelic during a 10-show run at Phelps in 1968. The lounge closed around 1980–1981 and the building stood abandoned.

1. 450 seats, huge horseshoe bar
2. Ten-day runs, two shows a night
3. Where Parliaments became Funkadelic