Terry Knight

Although he did not make enduring music, Terry Knight holds an important place in the history of 1960s and early-'70s Michigan rock as both a performer and an entrepreneur. In the mid-to-late '60s, often recording with the Pack, he had several big hits in Michigan (and smaller ones nationwide), which were usually covers of songs by major and more significant performers, or blatant attempts to ape such performers with derivative original material. Prior to trying his hand at singing and recording, he was also a popular disc jockey on several Michigan-area stations. He is most known, however, for assembling Grand Funk Railroad, which included two members of the Pack, bassist Mark Farner and drummer Don Brewer. In the late '60s and early '70s, Knight served as Grand Funk's producer and manager, although those relationships were severed in 1972. Knight entered the music industry as a radio DJ while still a teenager in the early '60s, doing stints at Flint's WTAC and then building a big following at CKLW (based in Windsor, Ontario, though actually for the most part serving the Detroit audience). At CKLW he managed to get away with playing the Rolling Stones' "Little Red Rooster" over and over for an hour, in the days when you could still do such things on AM radio. During the early '60s he also began to play guitar, sing, and write music; then at the end of 1964, he quit his CKLW gig to concentrate on music. One account has it that he gave his reason for leaving as planning to move to England to become the sixth Rolling Stone. That didn't happen, and he struggled to build a career in Flint, teaming up with a local band, the Jazz Masters. The Jazz Masters -- with Farner, Brewer, and three other musicians -- became the Pack, who backed Knight on his debut 1965 single, "Tears...