The Prime Movers (Michigan band)

The Prime Movers
Prime Movers at Living End 1966
Background information
Origin	Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Genres	Blues, garage rock
Years active	1965–1970
Associated acts	The Stooges, The Iguanas, Iggy Pop
Members	Michael Erlewine Dan Erlewine Robert Sheff Robert Vinopal Spider Winn Jack Dawson James Osterberg Jesse Crawford

The Prime Movers were a blues band based in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, formed in 1965. The band originally consisted of Michael Erlewine (lead singer, harmonica), Dan Erlewine (lead guitar), Robert Sheff (keyboards), Robert Vinopal (bass), and Michael "Spider" Wynn (drums). Vinopal left soon after the band's formation and was replaced by Jack Dawson. Wynn left a short time later and was replaced by James Osterberg, who would later become famous as Iggy Pop. When he joined the Prime Movers Osterberg took the name "Iggy", from his previous band The Iguanas.

The Prime Movers played throughout the Midwest. In 1966, the band frequented blues clubs in Chicago where they saw blues legends like Little Walter, Magic Sam, Big Walter Horton, and many other bluesmen perform live. Courted by a subsidiary of Motown Records who wanted to promote them as a white group playing "black" music, the band refused to cooperate, preferring to study and perform classic Chicago-style blues than to record songs that were fed to them by Motown. A consequence of this is that they were not professionally recorded. (Recordings made by the band and fans surfaced years later, including a recording of Iggy Pop singing the Muddy Waters song "I’m a Man.")

The Prime Movers played a significant part in helping to host the first two Ann Arbor Blues Festivals, in 1969 and 1970, which were the first (and largest) blues festivals (in terms of the number of great bluesman who performed) in the U.S. Michael Erlewine interviewed dozens of the performers, and the spirit of these early festivals carried over into the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in 1972, 1973, and 1974. Members of the band were also involved in the 1972 festival.

As time passed, the Prime Movers became kind of the elder statesmen in the burgeoning Ann Arbor music scene, working with the younger groups, and playing with visiting artists like Jerry Garcia. They frequently shared the bill with the MC5. In the Midwest, the band played at Detroit clubs like the Grande Ballroom, the Living End, the Chessmate, and the Wisdom Tooth. They also appeared frequently at Mother Blues in Chicago as well as other Michigan clubs like the 5th Dimension, Mothers, Schwaben Inn, Depot House, Town Bar, and Clint’s Club, and Mr. Flood’s Party.