Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Monday 17 July 2017
Detroit’s ‘67 riots halted music, helped recalibrate sound

By JEFF KAROUB the floor of the apartment
Associated Press building — we didn’t want
DETROIT (AP) — It wasn’t to be want to be hit,” he
sweet music that brought said. A few days later, he
Martha Reeves to the mi- remembers taking a drive
crophone at the Fox The- through “the city that was
atre that day in July 1967; it under fire and on fire,”
was brutal reality. and he wanted to see for
Detroit was burning. himself “if they didn’t burn
Headlining a string of shows down Motown.”
for a hometown crowd, “Amazingly enough ... it
the singer of “Heatwave,” was untouched,” Williams
‘’Dancing in the Street” said. “I could not believe
and other hits announced that Motown didn’t suffer.
that rioting had spread It was almost like some-
through the city. Leave body said, ‘No, you can do
calmly, she said, and return whatever else to Detroit,
safely to your homes. but leave Motown alone.’”
Fifty years later, the leader Claudette Rogers Robin-
of Martha and the Vandel- son, a member of the Mir-
las still can’t quite believe acles who was then mar-
it happened. “Imagine go- ried to Smokey Robinson,
ing out there lighthearted recalls living on the city’s
and ready to work,” she northwest side blocks from
said. “My heart was beat- This Jan. 20, 2006 file photo shows 45’s and photographs, including Marvin Gaye and Stevie Won- Livernois Avenue, a riot-
ing so fast after returning to der in a photograph at right, displayed at the Motown Museum gallery in Detroit. stricken major thorough-
the dressing room.” Associated Press fare. “This guy was rolling
In the days that followed, a baby grand piano out
Motown’s “Sound of Young the Vandellas, as well as the Billboard Hot 100 that “basically turned around of the store and down the
America” — on the stage Smokey Robinson and the week, including two songs at the door” by Motown street,” she said. “Every-
and in the studio — was Miracles, the Supremes, in the top 20 and a cou- founder Berry Gordy Jr. one was saying, ‘Don’t go
silenced by the sights and Stevie Wonder, Marvin ple more that were cov- The man who founded the out, don’t go out,’ but I’ve
sounds of sirens, gunshots, Gaye, Temptations, Four ered by others. Although label in 1959 with an $800 always been way too cu-
fires and military tanks Tops and others. The riot- Motown tunes continued family loan told his em- rious. ... I only saw a small
along Detroit’s streets. For ing, the deadliest of doz- to play on the radio dur- ployees that, much to his portion of it — I went back
about a week, as the city ens that raged that sum- ing those deadly days of
was convulsed in violence mer in U.S. cities, raised unrest, it was the first time
that began when police consciousness and even in years that the studio at
arrested black patrons at recalibrated the music 2648 W. Grand Boulevard,
an after-hours bar, the stu- alongside the Vietnam famous for manufacturing
dio went dark. War and assassinations of music around-the-clock,
Motown was near the epi- Martin Luther King Jr. and had gone quiet for such a
center but largely spared Robert Kennedy. long period.
during unrest that envel- At the time of the riots, Motown’s recording ses-
sion logs, now kept in a
New York City vault main-
tained by the Universal Mu-
sic Group, show work halt-
ed on July 22 and didn’t re-
sume until July 31, accord-
ing to company officials. In this July 1967 file photo, firefighters spray water into a burning
As chaos descended, loyal building after rioting in Detroit.
Motown staffers thought it Associated Press
would be business as usual.
“All day Sunday ... TV was dismay, the sonic assembly home because Smokey
totally involved in cover- line had stopped. was not happy with me
ing as much as they could “Berry says, ‘You’re putting doing that.”
— in spite of that there your lives in danger. What The Miracles “were the
were some of us who got are you doing here?’” love singers” not “message
up Monday morning and Cosby recalled. “He was singers,” Robinson said, but
In this Friday, Oct. 19, 2007 file photo, Berry Gordy Jr., center, made our way to work,” both proud that we were her group responded to
stands with Smokey Robinson, left, and Detroit Councilwoman said Pat Cosby, who remaining true to the task, the violence in its way. A
Martha Reeves outside Hitsville U.S.A. and the Motown Museum worked in the studio’s tape but at the same time it year later, the Miracles re-
in Detroit. library. “We did hear gun-
Associated Press was like, ‘You better get in corded “I Care About De-
fire as we’re on the Lodge safe harbor.’” Otis Williams, troit” as a public service in
oped 25 city blocks and Motown truly was “Hitsville (freeway) and even then the lone surviving original a bid to promote harmony.
claimed 43 lives. USA.” According to au- we’re thinking, ‘I got to get member of the Tempta- The act also scored a hit in
What happened in the thor and Motown expert to work.’ We did not real- tions, recalls hearing “a 1969 with a cover of Dion’s
streets was a wake-up Adam White, the labels ize the overall destruction .50-caliber machine gun “Abraham, Martin and
call for many at the label that comprised the com- that was going on.” Cosby being fired” on the street John,” which memorial-
that churned out hits by pany had eight singles in recalled that she and her where he lived. “My girl- ized slain leaders, including
colleagues were met and friend and I laid down on King and the Kennedys.q