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Being descended from royalty carries with it both opportunities and responsibilities - something that Sandra Steinberg knows well

Until its sale to Salem Communications in October, the walls of the reception area of radio station WQBH on the 20th floor of Detroit’s Penobscot Building were hung with plaques and framed newspaper articles attesting to the long and varied career of Martha Jean “The Queen” Steinberg. In the studios, there were more plaques and awards - even a mounted Western Union telegraph from Rosel Hyde, Federal Communications Director under President Richard Nixon, commending Martha Jean on her “contributions to good community service and relationships.”
  As the daughter of The Queen, one of the most influential disk jockeys in the history of rhythm and blues, rock’n’roll, and gospel, former WQBH Vice President for Community Affairs and station co-owner Sandra Steinberg is the inheritor of her mother’s groundbreaking legacy in career, community and church.
   Sometimes called “Lil Queen” for her resemblance to her mother, Steinberg did not initially follow the family’s well-trod path in music and entertainment. In 1969 she was so anxious to start college that she began the summer session at Ferris straight out of high school.
   “I originally went up there to be a court reporter,” Steinberg says. “I watched Perry Mason and thought, ‘Hmm, that’s kind of interesting.’ So I had to find a school that offered court reporting and bingo! – there was Ferris.”
   Once in Big Rapids, however, Steinberg found herself drawn to hitting the textbooks…of her roommate.
   “My roommate was going to school to become an LPN,” Steinberg says. “She would come in and tell me about the things she learned in class and I said, ‘Really, that’s interesting. Tell me more.’ Then I found myself going to her books and reading.”
   Ultimately, Steinberg switched her area of study to Nursing, became an RN and worked for the Veterans Administration until her retirement.
   “Working for the VA was very good for me, because I could transfer. In addition to that, I loved working with the ‘Vets’. I lived in California then moved to Tennessee where my whole family was originally from. I wasn’t one of these kind of people who could move some place and just live there forever,” she says.
   Perhaps that restlessness is hereditary as part of the lifestyle of musicians, since Steinberg’s family played an important part in the development of what’s come to be called “roots music.”

The Royal Lineage
   The Steinbergs can boast of not one, but two family members who have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
   The Queen began her musical sojourn in Memphis on WDIA, one of the first radio stations to have African-Americans behind the microphone. The powerful 50,000-watt station could be heard not only in Tennessee, but throughout the south.
   “A 50,000 watt station in the 1950s was like cable TV today,” says Steinberg.
“ My mother, she was one of the first black female disc jockeys in the United States - actually, in the world.”
   WDIA was a seminal force in early R&B. In addition to The Queen, WDIA was home to such influential DJs as Nat D. Williams (who has been referred to as the “Jackie Robinson of radio”), Rufus Thomas and “Blues Boy” King - better known as B.B. King.
   It was at WDIA that Martha Jean was elevated to her status as The Queen.
   “One day a disk jockey was introducing her and said, ‘Next on this show we’re going to have Martha Jean,’ and one of the other DJs said, ‘The Queen,’ because everyone had a little hook.”
   Thanks to her popularity, The Queen was recruited by WCHB in Inkster, Mich., in 1963, and later by WJLB then WQBH, which she eventually owned. The Queen received widespread recognition for helping to diffuse the riots in Detroit in 1967, and her many honors included being named one of the Michiganders of the Year in 1995. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
   The family’s other Hall of Fame inductee is Steinberg’s Uncle Louis, original bassist for Booker T. and the MGs, and co-writer of one of the band’s biggest hits, “Green Onions.” The group was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1992.
   Steinberg’s father also was a musician. According to Steinberg, the Luther Steinberg Orchestra was the first black band to appear on television in the mid-south. The trumpeter played with such greats as Lionel Hampton and Bobby “Blue” Bland.
   The family’s musical genes can be traced to at least Steinberg’s grandfather, who played piano with blues pioneer W.C. Handy. Other notable musicians in the family include Steinberg’s Aunt Nan who sang with Fats Waller and Billy Holliday, and Steinberg’s sister Diane who acted and sang in the movie version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and also has sung background for a number of groups, including the Steve Miller Band in which her husband, Kenny Lee Lewis, plays guitar.
   When Steinberg says “We had music in the family everywhere,” it seems like the very definition of an understatement.

Sandra Steinberg (above) was Vice President for Community Affairs and co-owner of WQBH, the station on which Steinberg’s mother, Martha Jean “The Queen,” completed her groundbreaking career.