music: "Psychedelic Used Car Lot Blues" - Southbound Freeway (sample courtesy Carl Pellegrino)

Fred Saxon continued to produce for Tera Shirma after Ernie was gone. 

The Patti Young thing was a dead issue and I can't remember what happened with her after 'Head and Shoulders'. 

Anyway, as we moved on, Fred picked up a group known as The Southbound Freeway, a rather quirky, hippie group. One of the things recorded was a rather unusual song titled...'Freakout Freddie's Psychedelic Used Car Lot Blues'. 

Well the song was hot. I used to get my records pressed through RCA. They had contacted me to tell me they were having equipment problems and that the pressings would be delayed a couple of weeks. Fred was desperate to get the song out and wanted to put the group on The Robin Seymour Saturday afternoon TV show.

Robin cast a lot of influence in the Detroit music scene, so it was an important show to do. As I remember it (at this point Fred may have a different slant on the story...it's all from a perspective of a lot of years ago) I wanted to wait until the records came in.

Fred talked me into it and the group appeared on the show doing the song. Everyone freaked...including Robin...who when the group ended the song, proclaimed loudly...THAT'S A HIT!!!!

Well momentum is everything. I didn't have any records to back up the fervor, and once the records finally arrived interest seemed to be waning and we lost out.

It was only recently I learned that the group had gotten a couple of other deals with other labels over the song but again nothing  happened. So apparently, as I learned from Richard Norris in England, there are several labels out there with the same song. He told me that it is quite a collectors item. 

Over the years I wondered if I had waited until the records came in, would the song have happened?

All speculation and water under the bridge.

Continued