Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels are performing in Ohio this weekend. But instead of playing the Agora Theater or the Beachland Ballroom, the octogenarian Rock and Roller will be playing the slightly more intimate venue: Wooster High School's Performing Arts Center. That's all because of an effort by Wooster High School's Class of 1971. Class member Carolyn Robinson joined The Ohio Newsroom to explain a concert nearly six decades in the making.
On the original concert
So in 1968, we were lowly freshmen at Wooster High School, and the senior class decided to enter a contest that the Cleveland radio stations, I think it was WKYC at the time, had for the American Heart Association. Whichever school raised the most money for the heart association would win a hometown concert by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Mitch Ryder at the time had "Devil with the Blue Dress." He was top of the charts.
Well, then one day we heard Wooster High School won. We beat all the Cleveland schools. All of a sudden, a few days beforehand, we got another announcement that the concert was canceled. It just became this kind of running comment at every class reunion, 'Hey, remember when Mitch Ryder was gonna come? Yeah, he didn't come. He owes us one,' kind of thing. So that was the backstory.
On the effort in 2023 to bring him back
Actually it was one of my class members who wanted to have the Class of '71 to do something to raise money for the Lyric Theater in downtown Wooster [where Robinson was Executive Director]. So I said, in the note [to my classmates], "If we raise the money that was our target goal for this, if we actually do that, I'll reach out to Mitch Ryder and see if he'll come to Wooster to fulfill his promise from 57 years ago." Lo and behold, once again our class comes through and we actually did raise all this money. So all of a sudden we had a real concert on our hands.
On her class's reaction to the concert
It almost feels like we're going back in time to the same contest that we had before, but we're really excited. And the more that the word spreads, people are like, "Oh yeah, I remember that!" and, "Oh I didn't know he was still performing." And so it should be quite an evening for everybody who's there.
On Mitch's perspective
So when we finally signed the contract and everything, he learned more about why we were doing it. Now he's really into it and he loves it. So we went to Detroit a couple weeks ago to interview Mitch Ryder at his home. As we were interviewing him and asking him about some of these questions, this is what he said to me:
"When you're young, as y'all were, and you had that pride — I had it in my school — and you make this effort to attain this carrot they're holding out, and you do succeed, and then you have somebody snatch it away from you, that's gotta rub you really the wrong way. Disappointment is difficult to deal with, but you know what? You just gotta keep going. And obviously for 57 years nothing has deterred you. I'm sorry it took so long."
