The Prime Movers (Michigan band)
American musical group; blues band based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, founded 1965
The Prime Movers were an American blues band based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, which was 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 musicians including Little Walter, Magic Sam, Big Walter Horton, and many others perform. 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 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.
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