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 in February, he selects a playlist of black artists from his massive record collection, American Black Journal.

Contributors Bryce Huffman of Bridge Detroit and producer Dacia 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?

During Covid it was just hell, okay?

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

Of course, George Floyd and and all the other things that were going on at the 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 of, Detroit.

That was 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 like 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 we would that I would, do a post that there's Miles up there.

And, what about that?

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 this, all this, records and stock and stuff.

Yeah, I got, you know, 50,000 records, 100,000 records.

No, it's not like that.

It's, 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.

Because I just like music, you know, the music that that stands out really the most to me.

Marcus Belgrave, vibes and tribe from Phil Randle and, you know, the Detroit stuff and Motown records 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, those records that the that were being done in the 50s and 60s and even the 70s, the, the process of making them and the care of making them was, was incredible.

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

You know, there was a whole disco sucks movement that happened in and was in 1979 and, in Chicago, it was a baseball game between, Detroit and Chicago.

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

Disco might have 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 there's, records from Barry White that just sound enormous on the sound system.

Moody man, 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 important, somebody that doesn't really force my musical, ideas on my kids.

And I try to, to use how I, how I deal with things with my kids to dealing with, other, other people's kids if if it comes, if it comes to play.

So, when I was learning how to play piano before I guitar was my instrument, but I was learning how to play piano.

I hated the regiment.

The the, you know, that it was just really regimented how you had to learn piano.

And when, I met Francesco Tristano, who's a concert pianist from, from Luxembourg, and he played the piano where he's 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 have made me want to 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 a 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 showboating with the guitar and stuff.

So, you know, banging, turning it into a percussive instrument as well as a melodic instrument would have 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 you have to show that is entertaining.

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

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 got to go to The roots.

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

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

You have to know that music in the same way that you have to know.

Elvin Jones records or Count Basie or Duke Ellington or Miles Davis or, going into 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 shoe 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 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, these are important milestones.

They're like little flags.

They're they're everything.

So even gospel gospel is another thing I didn't I grew up going to a Lutheran school.

My grandparents were preachers in the South, and I wasn't really I didn't really get the gospel thing until until I saw, a film of Aretha Franklin playing Montreal Jazz Festival, and it freaked me out and it freaked me out.

It blew me away.

It was just another level.

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

Jazz goes into, and, the blues goes into his music.

He was able to morph it in the rock.

He was able to morph it into in the, in the, wherever he went.

So is you gotta know language.

It's it's like you, you know, as a, as a, as a black man getting a job in, Google or something.

You have to understand language that the people are talking, you know, within your environment in order to be able to, to that's for people.

That's right.

All black, white owners, once again, enjoy yourselves.