Music / Press & broadcasting
Cub Koda
1948–2000 · singer, guitarist, songwriter, DJ, music writer
Detroit-born rocker who wrote and sang Brownsville Station's 1973 hit "Smokin' in the Boys Room" and later became a respected blues writer and record compiler.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Chelsea, Michigan
aged 51- Birth name
- Michael John Uszniewicz
- Detroit years
- 1948–1960s
- Field
- Music, Press & broadcasting
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Michael Koda was born Michael Uszniewicz in Detroit and lived in the city with his family before moving to Manchester, Michigan, where he formed his first band in high school. In 1969 he co-founded Brownsville Station in Ann Arbor, a hard-working bar and concert band on the Michigan rock circuit. The group released its first album in 1970, and in 1973 Koda's tongue-in-cheek anthem of schoolboy rebellion, "Smokin' in the Boys Room," reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold more than two million copies. After the band split in 1979 he played with his own groups, worked as a radio DJ and turned into one of rock's most knowledgeable writers: he co-wrote and edited the All Music Guide to the Blues and wrote liner notes for reissues by artists such as Jimmy Reed and the Kingsmen. He died of kidney disease in Chelsea, Michigan, in 2000, aged 51, and was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame in 2016.
Highlights
- Wrote and sang "Smokin' in the Boys Room" (No. 3, 1973)
- Co-founded Brownsville Station in 1969
- Co-wrote and edited the All Music Guide to the Blues
- Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame (2016)