• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 565 0

Betty Carter, who shredded convention with radical tonal and time changes, while guitarist Kenny Burrell epitomized cool swing, gracing records by all the greats of his day (Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington among them). Of course, Detroit is more known for Motown Records, the label that changed the music business in the sixties. Visionary Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records in 1959 in a recording studio housed in a small two-story home on West Grand Boulevard. Gordy made stars overnight—the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas (all Detroit talent)—as well as launched Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson 5. Gordy was the original hip-hop entrepreneur, nurturing and packaging black urban talent for mainstream consumption and cultural domination. He created the Motown sound: pop with soul, both precocious and innocent. The Motown sound spoke to teenagers because it reflected both sides of teenhood, and the operation became the most successful black-owned company in the nation.

In the late sixties and seventies, Detroit was duly dubbed Detroit Rock City. During that time, it birthed Grand Funk Railroad, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger,? and the Mysterians, and the original American punk rockers: MC5 and the Stooges. These latter two bands eschewed hippie idealism to confront the dark realities of the times, such as the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and nationwide racial unrest. These bands echoed acts from across the Atlantic, from Black Sabbath to the English punk rock scene that emerged by the end of the seventies. As the image of the counterculture was sold into commercialism in that decade, from the shaggy fashions that became mainstream to the appropriation of the hedonistic side of hippie culture in the music scene at the expense of its egalitarian ideology, MC5 truly called for revolution, while the Stooges deflated the bloat of rock and roll and the idol worship begat at the dawn of the arena rock era. In America Iggy Pop and the MC5 did not become widely recognized for their influence for nearly two decades, when their experiments with feedback, distortion, and rhythm were celebrated by alternative rockers. In their day they remained fringe artists; MC5 played their final gig at Detroit’s Grand Ballroom for just $500.

In the 1980s, Juan Atkins sent dance music leagues ahead with just one song, 1982’s “Clear,” recorded with Rick Davis as Cybotron. The pair infused the hip-hop groove of the electro music blasted by break-dancers with a chilly expansive quality as wide and craggy as the bowels of the city. Under a host of names, Atkins and peers such as Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May established a scene that was so underground, early local fans had no clue that the music was even made in Detroit. Through Atkins’s label, Metroplex, and a club, the Music Institute, the scene grew, nurturing techno’s second wave: artists such as Richie Hawtin, Carl Craig, and Stacey Pullen, all top artists in dance music today.

Detroit seems as unaware of its groundbreaking cultural contributions as the rest of the country. There is little remnant of any of these creative microcosms left in the city, aside from the efforts of industrious citizens. Detroit seems to consume its relics with little ceremony, reflecting the city’s roots as an industrial center where the production of goods takes precedence over the production or the development of anything else. The legendary Black Bottom neighborhood, where the city’s rich blues and jazz tradition developed, was destroyed in the 1950s to make way for a new interstate. It is now alive only in the re-creations of a museum exhibit, the memories of those still around to tell about it, and a short list of books. The Motown studio and headquarters on Woodward Avenue are boarded up and vacant, as they have been since Gordy moved the company’s headquarters to L.A. in the 1980s. The only echo of the mighty Motown is the Hitsville Museum, originally a very modest affair that opened in 1988 and comprised two houses on West Grand Boulevard