No Wonder People Were Dancing in the Streets

Hey you people. So far, this blog has touched on how your life can suck. We’ve touched on relationships, love, coffee, anchovies. Wow, it’s been a ride. But we haven’t really touched on examples of changing your sucky lives. This post is going to change that. Today we’re going to look at a genre, an artist, a music community, and one song that looked adversity in the eye and said Screw It. It’s amazing to see how other people take a pretty shitty time and work their asses off to make it better for them and generations to come, and we can all use it as motivation to do the same thing in our lives. So without further ado, let me all take you on the Soul Train that is Motown.

Let’s start with the basic of what Motown is. I wish I didn’t have to explain it because it’s only the BEST MUSIC EVER. That’s obviously not subjective or anything. But I digress, Motown is an American Record Company that was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in 1960 after receiving a small loan of 1 million dollars from his family. Um, I mean a small loan of 800 dollars from his family. Detroit had been coined “Motor City”, and Berry thought the word “town” conveyed a better feel of soul and warmth than “city” did, so he called the company “Motown”.

Motown was a new platform to give African-American artist the full spotlight, where before, they would often, at best, take a backseat to white artists. 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan became “Hitsville U.S.A”, the headquarters of Motown. There quickly became a “Motown Sound” that was easily recognizable and is described by a style of soul music with a distinct pop influence. Berry Gordy Jr’s first signed act was the Matadors, who immediately changed their name to the Miracles. Miracles lead singer William "Smokey" Robinson became the vice president of the company. They had no idea this small company in a house in Detroit would blow up to be a national powerhouse. They had a dream, and some guts.

Don’t be deceived. This would be no small company. This wasn’t just a hometown outlet to make African-Americans feel better about themselves. This was a breakthrough. Some popular names is Motown are Diana Ross & The Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, the Marvelettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Lionel Richie & the Commodores, and Teena Marie. Yeah. Most everyone will recognize at least one of those names, okay. Motown Records have claimed more than 180 world number one hits.

It would be an injustice to talk about Motown’s history and not talk about the social and political climate that surrounded it. The start of Motown was only part music. Motown stands for more than just music. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing during the birth of this company. For reference, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus where the colored people were supposed to sit just a mere FIVE YEARS before Berry Gordy Jr broke ground on Motown. The year of Motown’s creation, sit-ins were happening at colleges all across the south. As if Berry needed a bigger hill to climb starting a new business, he needed to deal with the fact that a portion of America would not listen to anything to come out of his business, just because of the color of him and his artist’s skin.

There was one song that had a momentous part in the Civil Rights Movement. Released in 1964, "Dancing in the Street," by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas emerged at an explosive time in American history. John F. Kennedy had been killed the year before. The U.S. was on the brink of major combat in Vietnam. Racial tensions continued burning hot in the Deep South, and "race riots" were causing chaos in urban areas from coast to coast. The U.S. was like a major shitstorm right now. It was cray.

“But dude, what does a song about dancing have to do with war and racism and assasinations?”

Wooooah, random citizen, I’m getting there.

Civil rights activists began playing "Dancing in the Street" at rallies before they spoke to excite their audiences. In 1965, following another summer of urban racial clashes, an article in the black activist magazine Liberator read, "We are coming up! And it's reflected in the riot-song that symbolized Harlem, Philly, Brooklyn." The song to which Liberator was referring, of course, was "Dancing in the Street”. Of course, reporters were gonna ask Martha Reeves if her tune was "a call to arms”. Reeves didn’t like that question. Berry Gordy Jr and Motown Records agreed that they did NOT want to become political at all. Yet there were still of these accusations that Gordy and Reeves were abusing their platform to force feed white America a pile of nonsense. Um… no. That wasn’t the intention. But activists still took the song as an anthem.

This was a very hard time for Motown Records. It was practically the start of this new project, and success was booming. But all of a sudden, cultural interpretation came into play and Motown was labeled as an invalid business that fights against authority. This could’ve been a crumbling point. Gordy could’ve succumb to the pressure and terminate contracts and burn everything and FREAK. But no. He looked adversity in the face and said, “Screw it”.

On the point of screwing adversity, let’s talk about an artist in Motown that had several reasons to stop trying, but he pushed through and is still prevalent today.

Stevie Wonder is one of the most influential artists in the last century. Let’s address the elephant in the room. Stevie Wonder is freaking blind. He became blind because he was born premature and in the hospital, the doctors gave Stevie too much oxygen and it caused blindness. Talk about how life can suck. Did that stop him, no. He was picked up by Motown Records at the age of ELEVEN. Literally everything about this is crazy. Not only does Stevie sing, he plays instruments and helps produce his own music. He has done some insanely impressive things in his career: the youngest to have a No. 1 album, the first to reach that summit with a live recording, the first American to have an album debut at No. 1, and the only one to receive the Grammy for Album of the Year for three consecutive releases. Okay, I’ll stop fangirling about one of my favorite artists of all time.

Stevie Wonder is a perfect example of the type of hard-working, insanely talented people that Motown produced. Stevie Wonder, Berry Gordy Jr., Martha Reeves, and so many others stood up in the face of danger and loss and poverty and oppression and said “No more. Screw you”.

And that, my friends, is how you deal with the cruddy hand life deals.