- Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig is one of the headliners at this year's Detroit Movement Festival over Memorial Day weekend.

This month, Craig rolled out his annual video series, "All Black Vinyl," on Instagram.

Every Wednesday and February, he selects a playlist of black artists from his massive record collections.

"American Black Journal" contributors, Bryce Huffman of Bridge Detroit and producer Daijah Moss talked with Craig about the importance of celebrating black music history.

- Happy 2025.

And we're back again with a new edition of "All Black Vinyl."

- So, Carl, tell me, why did you start your "All Black Vinyl" series and what does that medium for music mean to you personally?

- Mm.

During COVID, it was just hell.

(laughs) And, you know, everybody was doing streaming, but not really streaming with meaning.

Of course, George Floyd and all the things that were going on at that time had such a big impact.

But I really felt that there needed to be something that I could do that had meaning.

And for Black History Month, it made sense to do a project that was about the music, about the music that is good music, but that's music that's done by, whether it's people from Detroit or people from outside of Detroit that would celebrate Black History Month.

So "All Black Vinyl" just seemed to be an obvious thing for me.

And it was a lot of fun to do it, you know, instead of it being something where I would sit there and mix records for a day or something.

I liked the concept of doing one a day.

And I got so many people from not only inside of the United States, but outside of the United States that were looking forward to seeing the next day that I would do a post.

See, there's Miles up there.

- [Speaker] What about the eyes?

- [Bryce] You've been collecting vinyl for years now.

How big is your collection?

And is there one record that stands out as very important to you on a personal level?

- I can always say like, oh yeah, you know, we got all these records in stock and stuff.

Yeah I got, you know, 50,000 records, a hundred thousand records.

No, it's not like that.

It's something that I don't pay attention to collecting for the sake of collecting records.

I buy it because I love the music and I want the music.

So I don't have a Fela Kuti record or a number of Fela Kuti records because that was the trend.

I have 'em because I just like the music, you know?

The music that stands out really the most to me, Marcus Belgrave, Vibes from the Tribe from Phil Ranelin, you know, the Detroit stuff, ♪ Motown, and from Detroit - When you go through records that you haven't listened to in a while, is there an appreciation for the recording process, the artistry that goes into making the albums that you kind of rediscover?

- Those records that were being done in the 50s and the 60s and even the 70s, the process of making 'em and the care of making 'em was incredible.

And it's so much different than when you're using a laptop, you know, or I mean, MPCs sound great and stuff, but, you know, to have the guys in the studio going straight to tape, mixing console, left, right, center, boom, you're there.

- Now jazz, techno, hip hop, R&B, these are all genres that have been covered on the show and all genres that are really important to black history, especially music history.

Tell me, was there a genre that you think sounds best to you when it's recorded on vinyl?

- Mm.

You know, there was a whole disco sucks movement that happened in, what was it, 1979 in Chicago.

It was a baseball game between Detroit and Chicago.

Was it the White Sox versus the Tigers where they blew up all those pieces of vinyl.

And disco might've sucked because of all the novelty that happened with it, but a lot of those records are recorded so well.

They sound incredible.

You know, there's records from Barry White that just sound enormous on the sound system.

Moodymann, he's been playing the Isley Brothers at his gigs mixed with Thundercat and the Isley Brothers record sounds monstrous on the sound system.

- How do you go about talking to younger generations of music lovers, people who might not even know that they are history buffs through music?

How do you talk to them about that importance?

- I'm somebody that doesn't really force my musical ideas on my kids, and I try to use how I deal with things with my kids, to dealing with other people's kids if it comes to play.

So when I was learning how to play piano before, guitar was my instrument, but I was learning how to play piano, I hated the regiment, you know, that it was just really regimented, how you had to learn piano.

And when I met Francesco Triano, who's a concert pianist from Luxembourg, and he played the piano where he is banging on the sides and pulling the strings and doing all these things, I'm thinking like, why didn't we do that when I'm learning how to play piano?

That would've made me wanna play piano and stick with piano because it becomes more of a performance instrument.

You know, Elton John tried to make piano, or let's even go to Little Richard, because that's where it all comes from.

Little Richard, the way he was playing piano, standing on it and all that stuff was like someone standing there with a guitar and just show boating with the guitar and stuff.

So, you know, banging, turning it into a percussive instrument as well as a melodic instrument would've made it so much more interesting because I could see the vision of that.

I could see the vision of being a rock piano player by banging on the instrument instead of it being traditional and classical.

So I think with kids that you have to not only come down to their level, but you have to, you know, you have to show that it's entertaining.

You know, something that's entertaining to a grown man is different than what's entertaining to, you know, a teen.

(upbeat music) - As a lifelong student of black history, is there any record or group of records that you think newcomers to this history just have to listen to, to fully appreciate the strides that have been made?

- You gotta go to the roots.

With black music, you have to listen to Billie Holiday, you know, you have to hear "Strange Fruit."

You have to hear the political records, the Nina Simone stuff.

You have to know that music in the same way that you have to know Elvin Jones's records, or Count Basie or Duke Ellington or Miles Davis, or going into the blues of Muddy Waters and "Howlin' Wolf."

You have to go all the way down through it.

You have to understand why shiny suits were worn on stage.

You have to understand the Chitlin Circuit.

You have to understand why James Brown got on because he was impersonating Little Richard, you know?

It's like the knowledge and the history is really important to be able to pour into modern music because the blues is the music that has always dominated, you know, American music from the time it was race music, you know?

These are are important milestones.

They're like little flags.

They're everything.

So even gospel, gospel's another thing.

I grew up going to a Lutheran school, but my grandparents were preachers in the south.

And I didn't really get the gospel thing until I saw a film of Aretha Franklin playing Montreux Jazz Festival.

And it freaked me out.

It freaked me out.

It blew me away.

It was just another level.

So when I was watching another video of Miles Davis playing Montreux Jazz Festival, when he brought the electric organ on and wouldn't play his horn, you know, his roots are gospel, jazz, and the blues goes into his music.

He was able to morph it in the rock.

He was able to morph it into wherever he went.

So you gotta know the language.

It's like, you know, as a black man getting a job in Google or something, you have to understand the language that the people are talking, you know, within your environment in order to be able to advance.

(upbeat music) That's right.

"All Black Vinyl."

Once again, enjoy yourselves.

- We wanna take a moment now to acknowledge the recent loss of a Detroit broadcasting legend.

Award-winning reporter Al Allen passed away this month at the age of 79.

His long career as a radio and television journalist ended in 2012 when he retired from Detroit's Fox affiliate WJBK after spending nearly three decades there.

He was a guest here on "American Black Journal" in 2018 after releasing his memoir titled, "We're Standing By."

- [Interviewer] You got into radio, - Yes.

- [Interviewer] Before TV.

A lot of people don't understand, you weren't always the guy on Fox two in the morning on TV.

Talk about how you went into radio first and what you did there, how you made the transition into television.

- I tell interns this, and you know this industry that we're in, because you were in print and I was in broadcast.

It is not easy.

You knock on the door, ring the doorbell, or pick up a phone.

No, they're not concerned about you.

"We're not hiring today.

You don't have any experience."

So I did, I got my start in radio, Little Rock, Arkansas at KOKY was my first radio station.

I was the news director.

I mopped floors.

I washed windows.

It was on the air too as well.

I worked with the guy- - [Interviewer] Wait, wait, wait.

You cleaned up and, what?

- Oh, yes, you did everything.

You know, you were getting your start.

And I worked with a guy named Jocko Smith.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- He was nationally known because he coined the phrase soul music as dirty, filthy black music.

And everybody said it.

And you know, that's what he coined as soul music.

- Wow.

- So I worked with some of those.

I worked at WGPR in Detroit.

We came to Detroit.

I worked at GPR and I worked at JLB twice.

- [Interviewer] When it was AM.

- When it was AM.

Oh, don't talk about that.

We laughed when they said we're gonna switch from AM to FM and we said, "FM, that's not gonna work.

Nobody's gonna listen."

Well, we were wrong.