Best Of Bob Seger Views

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As a locally successful Detroit-area artist, he performed and recorded as The Bob Seger System throughout the 1960s. By the early 1970s, he had dropped the System from his recordings, and he continued to strive for national success with other various bands. In 1973 he put together The Silver Bullet Band, an evolving group of Detroit-area musicians, with whom he became most successful. In 1976, he achieved national fame with two albums, the live record Live Bullet, and the studio record Night Moves. On his studio albums he also worked extensively with the Alabama-based Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, appearing on several of Seger's best selling singles and albums.

Bob Seger has stated that Little Richard was the first one that really got to me. Little Richard and, of course, Elvis Presley. [1] The following decade Seger listened to James Brown and said that, for him and his friends, Live at the Apollo was their favorite record following its release in 1963. Come Go With Me by The Del Vikings was the first record he bought. Seger also named Van Morrison as being one of his influences and covered one of his lesser known songs I've Been Working on his albums Back in '72 and Live Bullet. Mentioning Frankie Miller, Graham Parker, John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen, Seger remarked: There's a whole little clique of male vocalists. We're just sort of all connected. I think every last one of us has a connection with Van Morrison. [1]

Bob Seger arrived on the Detroit music scene in 1961 fronting a three-piece band called the Decibels. The Decibels recorded an acetate demo of a song called The Lonely One, at Del Shannon's studio. As well as being Seger's first original song, The Lonely One was Seger's first song to be played on the radio, airing only once on an Ann Arbor radio station.[3][4] After the Decibels disbanded, Seger joined the Town Criers, a four-piece band with Seger on lead vocals, John Flis on bass, Pep Perrine on drums, and Larry Mason on Lead guitar. The Town Criers, covering songs like Louie Louie , began gaining a steady following. The band,The Decibels was made up of Bob on guitar, piano, keyboards, vocals, Pete Stanger, guitar and H.B. Hunter on drums. They all went to Ann Arbor High. Bob and Pete were in the same grade but H.B. was a year or two behind them.

As the Town Criers began landing more gigs, Bob Seger met a man named Doug Brown, backed by a band called the Omens. Seger joined Doug Brown & the Omens, who presumably had a bigger following than the Town Criers. While Doug Brown was the primary lead vocalist for the group, Seger would take the lead on some songs—covering R&B numbers.[3] It was with this group that Seger first appeared on an officially released recording: the single TGIF backed with First Girl, credited to Doug Brown and the Omens. Seger later appeared on Doug Brown and the Omens' parody of Barry Sadler's song Ballad of the Green Berets which was re-titled Ballad of the Yellow Beret and mocked draft dodgers. Soon after its release Sadler and his record label threatened Brown and his band with a lawsuit and the recording was withdrawn from the market.[5]