Motor City Radio Flashbacks

Beyond Known for Pressing Hit Records, Motown Book Reflects of Its History, Cultural Relationship, and Racial Contributions to the Motor City

 

Music is an often heartfelt imitation of history. However, the discordant realities of history teach us that human beings usually strike the wisest notes only after all other options have been exhausted.

Consider the music and underlying truths of the legendary Motown Sound. There have been many book-length musical studies of Motown Records, its artists, recordings, and popular success, the best of them being author Nelson George’s “Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise And Fall Of The Motown Sound” (St. Martin’s Press, 1985). But there has never been an intimate, full-length history of Motown Records’ relationship with Detroit, whose African-American infrastructure of politicians, social activists, business owners, and industrial work force at the “Motor City” auto plants intermingled with the black music community and the corresponding strata of white Detroit to shape the cultural imperatives Motown expressed.

Now thanks to the publication of the fascinating “Dancing In The Street: Motown And The Cultural Politics Of Detroit” (Harvard University Press) by native-born author Suzanne E. Smith, music fans as well as lovers of social history can grasp for the fast time the unique nature of Detroit’s daily social scheme and its impact on the lives of those who embodied the Motown Sound during the parallel cresting of the civil rights movement.

While openly valuing the work of George and other chroniclers, Smith takes readers into the heretofore unexamined sphere of Detroit’s sidewalk-level social ferment from Motown’s founding in 1958 on through the city’s devastating riots in 1967 and the related early -’70s flight from its precincts of the two enterprises central to its modern identity. Those exiting businesses were, of course, the mammoth auto industry which relocated to the Michigan suburbs, and Motown, the most successful black business in America when it departed for Los Angeles in 1972, the year before Detroit elected Coleman Young its first black mayor.

“My fortune was the direct result of my city’s misfortune-of the same fear and loathing that had caused all my problems and Detroit’s problems in the first place,” reflected Young, as quoted by Smith in her skilled analysis of his ascendance. “I was taking over the administration of Detroit,” added Young, “because the white people didn’t want the damn thing anymore.”

Smith does a brilliant job of explaining the central role music plays in Detroit’s saga as far back as 1914, when Henry Ford’s announced daily plant wage of $5 moved bluesman Blind Blake to sing “Detroit Bound Blues” to help motivate Southern blacks to seek “a good job . . . in Mr Ford’s place.” Smith depicts the unique forces and individuals that gave rise to Motown in the years between the post -World War II rise of Detroit as “the Arsenal of Democracy, the industrial hero of the global conflict,” and the later economic and social setbacks Young tried to surmount as he struggled with racial polarization and the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. In a real sense, the mayor’s unofficial 1973 anthem was Stevie Wonder’s “Living For The City.”

If you’ve never heard about the Concept East Theater; or of WCHB, the first radio station built, owned, and operated by African-Americans; or never knew about organizations like the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; or the Freedom Now Party (the first all-black political party in the nation), Smith’s text will explain their rich legacies. And if you thought Martha & the Vandellas’ 1964 smash “Dancing In The Street” (from which the Rolling Stones borrowed a central lyrical/melodic passage for “Street Fighting Man“) was just a party song, or assumed the Supremes’ 1967 hit “The Happening” was only frivolous soul /pop, this book will open your eyes and ears. In the past, many have likewise been too hasty or facile in taking either Motown or ambitious founder Berry Gordy Jr. to task for not rallying to the cause of civil rights at critical stages when it would have aided leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X following his break from the Detroit-bred Nation of Islam. To her great credit, Smith does exactly the opposite, marshaling an avid researcher’s dogged thoroughness and a social historian’s grasp of underlying factors to show such pronouncements to be untrue or grossly oversimplified.

Smith makes it plain that while Motown did not issue Malcolm X’s 1963 Detroit “Message To The Grass Roots” speech or sponsor the business panel at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Conference where Malcolm spoke, the company’s roots in supporting local black enterprise were deep and vigorous. “In fact,” she writes, “Motown’s prosperity as a black-owned business achieved many of the economic objectives of black nationalism espoused by leaders such as Malcolm X.” Moreover, Smith effectively refutes the longstanding assertion that Gordy shrewdly issued its first spoken -word recording, “The Great March To Freedom,” merely to capitalize on the national publicity surrounding the King -led March on Washington. Deliberately released on the same day (Aug. 28, 1963) as the March on Washington, the “Great March” album preserved an earlier version of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech as delivered at the historic (and arguably larger and more politically pivotal) June 1963 Detroit Great March. Even King initially claimed the album used its “I Have A Dream” subtitle only after Motown “saw the widespread public reception accorded said words when used in the text of my address to the March on Washington.”

But Smith documents that Motown subtitled all 11 tracks on the album to reflect portions of the speeches, that King used the dream metaphor in his talks and writings as far back as 1960, and that since “Motown completed the album in mid-August . . . it would have been impossible for Gordy to know ahead of time that the `’I Have A Dream’ speech would catch on.” Tension and confusion over such matters led to a temporary court injunction by King against Motown before King dropped it. Motown was subsequently allowed to press an LP documenting the entire Washington version of King’s address, and he won a 1970 Grammy forhis album on Motown’s Black Forum label, “Why I Oppose The War In Vietnam.”

Smith, who was born in Henry Ford Hospital on Aug. 19, 1964, the sole
daughter of three children by one-time Chevrolet Gear and Axle assembly-line worker Gerald Smith and the former Caralee Narden, told this columnist her goal in writing “Dancing In The Street” was “to show that Motown came from a very vibrant and complex community whose racial and cultural struggle are nearly forgotten and yet still need to be understood — because it produced something marvelous.”

On Feb. 23, the Music Division of the Library of Congress held a book party for “Dancing In The Street” to raise awareness for a Center for the Study of Rhythm and Blues Music that would help support more scholarship like Smith’s. Meanwhile, as Motown proved, corporations are integral to the health and well-being of communities. In an era when the stockholders and the bottom line seem to justify any sort of consolidation or relocation in search of increased profit-taking, the music industry must remember that people still come first If there is a final lesson that burns through the pages of “Dancing In The Street,” it’s that Motown’s original meaning and mission will always be linked inexorably to the people and history of Detroit. In fact, the Motown Record Co. should consider returning to the Motor City, proposed site of an expanded Motown Museum, and finish what it started in 1958. END

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Credit source information (as published): Billboard, March 18, 2000

‘Dancing In The Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit’, by Suzanne E. Smith, can be found available at Amazon Books and eBay.

MCA, Boston Ventures Close $61 Million Deal

 

 

LOS ANGELES — The sale of Motown Records to the partnership of MCA Records and investment firm Boston Ventures closes the book on Motown’s history as America’s most prominent black -owned independent record company, but the deal has been structured to encourage at least partial minority ownership of the label.

After weeks of discussion, the purchase was sealed by the principals on June 28. According to Motown executive VP Al Bell, the sale price was $61 million. An informed source says the record label had sales last year of approximately $50 million.

Bell confirms that Berry Gordy Jr., founder and chairman of the 30-year old label, “has insisted that 20% equity ownership in the company be made available to minorities.”

The percentage of black ownership could go even higher: Jheryl Busby, MCA executive VP of talent acquisition and president of black music, who is the heir apparent to Motown’s presidency, may receive a 10% equity interest in the label as part of his contract.

Boston Ventures put up 80% of the purchase price, and MCA bought the remaining 20%. Taking into consideration the minority-ownership provision, Bell says, “MCA would end up with 20 %, Boston Ventures with 60%, and the minorities with 20%.”

Under this arrangement, says one source, the future minority shareholders would be able to buy equity from Boston Ventures at the “founder’s share” price – that is, at the per-share acquisition price.

The source adds that the terms of Busby’s stake in Motown are still under discussion; one scenario has part of the stock being given to him outright when he assumes the presidency, with the remainder being withheld as a performance incentive.

Busby’s appointment to the Motown post remains unconfirmed by MCA, which issued only a brief press release on the purchase. MCA Music Group president and chief executive officer Irving Azoff and MCA Records president Myron Roth were unavailable for comment.

However, a source says that an  agreement with Busby to take up the Motown reins is “90% done,” and many in the industry – including the outgoing president of Motown Record Corp. – are already discussing his ascendancy to the new post as a fait accompli.

Asked if Busby has been chosen as his successor, outgoing Motown Records president Skip Miller says, `”Being inside, I’d have to say he is. He’s the guy they’ve been talking to. I don’t know if he has a deal yet.”

A Capitol Records source has denied that Step Johnson, Capitol VP and general manager of black music promotion, has discussed the assumption of Busby’s duties with the MCA executive.

It is clear that Motown will be staffed by new executive and managerial personnel.

Miller was to depart Motown July 1, while Bell and Motown Music Group president Lee Young Jr. will sign on with the Gordy Co., Gordy’s diversified entertainment firm.

Motown spokesman Mike Roskind confirms that the company is laying off employees in the wake of the sale. Saying that the size of the staff is “still in a state of transition,” he characterizes the staff cuts as “nothing extreme and nothing conservative.”

A source at Motown says that VP of marketing Miller London and VP of R&B promotion Ronnie Jones will be among a small number of current staff members to be retained in the coming weeks.

“We have placed a great deal of our staff with MCA,” Miller says.

The Motown purchase involves only a part of the large entertainment conglomerate built by Gordy.

Under the terms of the agreement, MCA and Boston Ventures will purchase Motown’s trademarks, its existing contracts (including those of Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder, the latter of whom agreed to continue with the label just before the sale), and its formidable catalog.

Not included in the sale is Jobete Music, Motown’s lucrative publishing company; the Hitsville studios; record pressing facilities in Arizona and Tennessee; a tape duplication plant in Michigan; and Motown’s film and television production companies.

Jobete, which some observers estimate is worth as much as $95 million, was reportedly included in the original sales discussions between MCA and Motown in late 1986, but was not a subject of the most recent negotiations.

Roskind says Hitsville will remain under Gordy’s ownership. “I’m not sure how [the pressing plants] will be disposed of,” he adds.

John Burns, executive VP of MCA distributing and manufacturing, says that in addition to handling the distribution of Motown product (an arrangement that began in July 1983), MCA will now manufacture Motown’s product.

“We’re going to use their tape facility for some of their overflow,” Burns says.

The sale of Motown climaxes three decades of glittering success and latter-day decline under Gordy’s leadership. The company, which enjoyed about 30 No. 1 pop hits between 1962 and 1971 (when the label moved its headquarters to Los Angeles), has been unable to develop the kind of major crossover acts it had in the heyday of the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and other top acts.

Last year, Motown was fourth on Billboard’s year-end list of top black singles labels and eighth among top black album labels; MCA placed first in both categories.

Ironically, the Motown sale was completed the week that its only recent hit album, Wonder’s platinum “Characters,” fell off the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart.

Observers view the sale of the label with both optimism and regret. “I’m very happy that Motown lives and will go on, because it’s an institution,” says outgoing president Miller.

“The realities say that Motown as a black enterprise has grown to the level of an institution,” says executive VP Bell. “Institutions grow to a point where they outgrow individuals or groups.”

Benny Medina, VP of A &R at Warner Bros. and a former Motown staff producer, says the sale was “a good thing based on the current state of affairs there creatively and economically.

This sale will keep alive a tradition of artistry and preserve those things that Berry Gordy built. Under Busby it won’t go by the wayside, as so many other black institutions have.”

Medina cites “a lack of creative vision” as the reason for Motown’s demise over the last 10 years: “Motown was based on first-rate creativity and the careful development of writers, artists, and producers.”

LeBaron Taylor, VP and general manager of corporate affairs for CBS Records Inc., whose Detroit-based Ric -Tic label was bought by Gordy in 1965, reflects on the sale with highly mixed emotions.

“I’m saddened by the fact that Motown was in the position that Berry had to sell or infuse the company with new capital,” Taylor says. “On the other hand, I understand it.

“Back in Detroit, it was our black company,” he continues. “There was a lot of pride – it was our culture. So we’re saddened by it, naturally.” END

Assistance in preparing this story
was provided by Iry Lichtman and Nelson George in New York.

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Credit source information: Billboard, July 9, 1988