Motown Memories

The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Temptations, and The Miracles in 1965 beginning their twenty-one city tour of the United Kingdom tuning the British ear to the Motown sound.

One of the must-see attractions in Detroit is Hitsville USA--the Motown Museum on West Grand Boulevard--also named Berry Gordy, Jr. Boulevard. The museum was opened in 1985 by Berry's sister Esther Edwards and has been going strong ever since.

Everyone knows the Motown music and the legendary performers, but the thing that fascinated me most about the guided tour was Berry Gordy's story and his original business model.

When I went to Hitsville USA, I heard the story of how Berry got started in the music business. From a modest $800 Gordy family business loan and a two-story frame house, he built a music empire that shaped the history and direction of pop music and helped integrate American culture.

Musical magic was born in a converted garage called Studio A, while the Gordy family lived in the second floor flat. I went upstairs and saw the small apartment where Motown records was born. The kitchen table where the family ate, often found Berry Gordy with his friend Smokey Robinson stuffing newly pressed warm vinyl into record jackets and rushing them off to local Detroit DJs and record stores. Gordy's first big hit was "Money." Motown's business was literally built from the ground up. Not bad for what started as a
cottage industry that developed into a corporate colossus.

One of Gordy's early jobs was on the assembly-line at Ford's Lincoln-Mercury plant, wrestling with automobile upholstery. He would get ahead on his production quota to create small pockets of time to compose songs and develop melodies in his head. If Berry liked what popped into his mind, he wrote it down in a spiral notebook he kept in his back pocket. Once the mind-numbing repetition of the assembly-line became second-nature, his mind was free to create and dream about creating a music factory that brings in raw talent at one end and produces a seasoned performer at the other end. Motown was not so much an assembly-line as a hit factory of skilled craftsmen and women turning out a consistently high-quality product known the world over as the Motown Sound.

Berry Gordy outside Hitsville USA--2648 W. Grand Boulevard.

For anyone who is a Motown fan, the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" tells the behind the scenes story of the Funk Brothers from their first-hand accounts like nothing else can. This small band of studio musicians played on all of the Motown hits. The documentary won four film awards and two Emmys in 2002.


Here is a recent link to Motown song writer Lamont Dozier reminiscing about writing some of the greatest Motown hits ever recorded: https://youtu.be/AUx86C-xOuI

Inside the Mind of The Curious Incident of the Dog

Last week, I saw an amazing play in New York with the most creative use of theater space I've ever seen. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a National Theatre production based on a 2003 mystery novel of the same name by Mark Haddon. The original London production--now running on Broadway--won seven Olivier Awards in 2013. 

What first appears to the audience as the chaotic thoughts and erratic behaviors of a fifteen-year-old male with Asperger syndrome, proves to be a journey through the mind of someone who is a math savant. But this is neither a play about Asperger syndrome nor math. It is about Christopher Boone's investigation into the pitchfork murder of his neighbor's dog that leads to a larger mystery he is determined to solve.

Several days after I saw the play, I was thinking about the inventive set. Duh! It finally struck me. The stage is a representation of Christopher's mind. The mystery unfolds on stage with the background, left and right sides, and the floor configured like graph paper. The open ceiling shows the limitless night sky and the scope of the boy's ambition. The lighting effects and the tech work behind this production are an eye-popping assault on the senses.

This metaphoric construct depicts the inner reality of an autistic teenager who discovers much more than he could ever imagine. He can interpret only the literal and not the figurative. When Christopher sets out in search of his mother, he must interact with the London Underground system for the first time in his life. Navigating the subway for most people is nothing more than a routine nuisance, but for Christopher, it is a harrowing ride towards self-discovery.

I expect this mystery drama will do very well Sunday night at the 2015 Tony Awards. http://www.curiousonbroadway.com/