Ready For a Brand New Beat
Page 24
The song lives because it keeps meaning different things to different people in different circumstances and with different experiences. When Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary was asked what he thought of “Dancing in the Street,” he said:
It had such a marvelous groove. I loved Motown music. I love the spirit of Motown. The spirit was that it was a home where music developed. It was played with such joy and you could hear that they liked and admired each other. It felt like they really cared about each other. We had that, too. It’s more than just playing together.
For any meaning, the song offers an energy and drive that gets people on their feet. On November 7, 2012, Michael Bolton had been watching election returns on television in his home in Westport, Connecticut. Barack Obama had just been reelected president and a crowd had gathered at Chicago’s McCormick Place waiting for the president to arrive. Watching this on television Bolton recognized a familiar tune in the background. They were playing Martha Reeves’s recording of “Dancing in the Street.” Bolton thought, “This is what you want to do. Write songs that are going to outlast you. It’s a form of celebration. There are a lot of up-tempo hits but that one keeps coming up. It’s such an important theme in my life. Already five generations have embraced it, this one in particular being played in celebration after the election. In my work, which I think of every day of my life, I am constantly aware that there is a body of work that is continually embraced. Not everyone has a song that is going to live on like that. I remember how the song made me feel when I first heard it. That was not so much different than hearing it now. The enduring power is how it makes you feel. Uplifted.” No doubt that is why Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, had also used the recording in his campaign.
As for the meaning of the song, that is always in the mind of the listener. Bolton said that he did not think about what songs mean. “I am not saying I know the ultimate intention of the lyricists. You as a composer can assert. You can intend to win over a certain segment of population and later let them find out what it means. I just love the way it makes me feel.”
In the twenty-first century it is still meaningful to twenty-year-olds, but it does not mean the things that it did in the 1960s. In America, we often act as if the old work is finished, that racism has been vanquished, and that integration has at last been achieved, especially since a black man was elected president. But most social research shows a different story: in the fall of 2012, the Associated Press released a survey claiming that 51 percent of Americans still felt comfortable openly expressing racist attitudes toward African Americans.
That is one reason why it is important to remember history and to remember the historic role of this “crossover” music, to recall it as Obama did that night in the White House. Martin Luther King called it “a cultural bridge” that brought blacks and whites together. In August 1967, during that summer of riots, he addressed black deejays at the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers in Atlanta and talked about this music, saying, “School integration is much easier now that they share a common music, a common language, and enjoy the same dances. . . . It is quite amazing to me to hear the joyful rhythms, which I found time to enjoy as a youth here in Atlanta years ago, coming back across the Atlantic with an English accent.” He told the black deejays that promoted the music, “You have taken the power that Old Sam had buried deep in his soul and through our amazing technology performed a cultural conquest that surpasses even Alexander the Great and the culture of classical Greece.”
Bolton said, “A lot of barriers were removed because of what came out of Hitsville U.S.A. That is historically more important, a more profound statement—music that created unity and made us all feel so good and made white America more appreciative of black America. Here is a revolution that happens from an evolution of mankind. Music has been a great uniter.”
That is what Martha Reeves and almost everyone who performed at Motown had said they were doing. Reeves kept performing and always singing that song. In 2005 she started a new career after being elected to the Detroit City Council. She would show up for city council meetings as she had for Motown in her chauffeur-driven Cadillac—an early 1980s model from back when they were still really long—and designer clothes. Politicians found her overdressed and too showy to be taken seriously but she said, “The women in the city government were fat and badly dressed.”
In 2009, to her great happiness, she failed to get reelected and returned to a full concert schedule. “I never get tired of singing ‘Dancing in the Street,’” she said. “Every time you sing it, it is different. Different musicians, different crowd, a different happy. It makes me happy to sing it. My greatest joy is to walk out of a dark wing into the lights. Everything else is all right.”
Part of the strength of the original recording, as Berry Gordy observed when he first heard it, is that it hooks the listener so incredibly quickly. As Michael Bolton put it, “You get eight bars of Martha and you’re feeling good.” Many listeners would say even less than eight bars.
She traveled the world singing some of the old songs and some new material, but at a certain point right at the end of every concert, two trumpets would blare out, “TaDa dela Da da.” The audience would always rise to their feet and scream, sometimes clapping hands. They knew what was coming.
“Calling out around the world . . .”
November 3, 1964. At the top of the charts with “Dancing in the Street,” Martha Reeves (center) and the Vandellas, Betty Kelly (left) and Rosalind Ashford, arrive in London for their British tour.
Chuck Berry, a rock ’n’ roll pioneer who invented his own moves, performing in 1965.
2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit—the aptly named Hitsville U.S.A., the home of Motown.
Cholly Atkins (left) coaching the Four Tops in the basement of the Apollo Theater, New York City, in 1964.
July 1964 race riot in Harlem. This is why it was called “dancing in the street.”
Sam Cooke in 1964, in one of his last recording sessions.
Amiri Baraka, formerly LeRoi Jones, in 1965.
August 1965 in Watts with the Los Angeles police. Was it a race riot or a police riot?
August 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. in Watts.
April 22, 1960. Elvis on Frank Sinatra’s TV special. Can Elvis be as mainstream as Frank? Can Frank be as cool as Elvis?
The Beatles with Ed Sullivan in 1964.
Berry Gordy in 1965 with the Supremes at the NBC studios preparing to do the Hullabaloo television show.
July 24, 1967—Detroit explodes.
Songwriter/singer Marvin Gaye.
David Bowie and Mick Jagger performing in the video of “Dancing in the Street” in 1985. What was it supposed to mean?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AS LONG AS YOU ARE THERE
First and foremost a huge thank-you to Ace Lichtenstein for his kindness, generosity, and invaluable assistance. I also want to thank my friend Clifford Carter, the great keyboardist, for his advice and assistance, and the great drummer Steve Jordan for his help. A special thanks to the wondrous cellist Jessie Reagan Mann, who has taught me so much about music. A warm thank-you to Martha Reeves, who shared her time and stories, showed me her town, and introduced me to some of her old friends. And a grateful appreciation for all the musicians who spent time helping me understand.
Thanks to the people at that exciting house, Riverhead: Laura Perciasepe for a million things, Rebecca Saletan for all her advice, editing, and polishing, and especially Geoffrey Kloske for his support, advice, editing, and flawless and thrilling publishing. And as always, thanks to my agent and dear friend, Charlotte Sheedy.
I especially want to thank my unstoppable wife, Marian Mass, for all her research, enthusiastic beyond my control, and my daughter, Talia, who also lovingly contributed a great deal. Somehow this book became a family project and I am grateful to my smart and lovi
ng family.
APPENDIX ONE
TIMELINE OF THE SUMMER OF 1964
APRIL 22 The New York World’s Fair opens and young black militants shut down their cars on the Long Island Expressway to create a “stall-in” to block the fair.
APRIL 26 SNCC activists form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as an alternative to the state Democratic Party, which excludes blacks.
FEBRUARY TO JUNE Four of the six songs to occupy the number 1 slot on the charts during this period were by the Beatles. Only Elvis Presley surpassed this, in 1956.
JUNE 1 The Rolling Stones leave for their first U.S. tour.
JUNE 11 St. Augustine, Florida, police arrest civil rights demonstrators, including Martin Luther King Jr.
JUNE 14 Hundreds of volunteers report to Oxford, Ohio, to receive training to register voters in Mississippi.
JUNE 17 Motown releases “Where Did Our Love Go” by the Supremes, and it rises to number 1 on the summer charts.
JUNE 17 The Ku Klux Klan burns down the Mount Zion Church in Longdale, Mississippi. It was to be one of twenty black churches to be burned this summer. The FBI starts to investigate under the code name MIBURN, for “Mississippi burning.”
JUNE 19 At 7:49 p.m., the Civil Rights Bill passes the Senate by a vote of 73 to 27.
JUNE 19 In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment.
JUNE 21 The first two hundred SNCC volunteers leave Ohio for Mississippi.
JUNE 21 Three young men working with the Mississippi summer project—James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—are reported missing.
JUNE 22 The FBI begins to investigate the three missing in Mississippi.
JULY 2 The Civil Rights Act is signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
JULY 13 TO 16 The National Republican Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco writes a conservative platform, marginalizes the liberal wing of the party, and nominates Barry Goldwater for president.
JULY 16 The first major uprising of the summer erupts in Harlem and the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn after a white police officer kills a black teenager. The disturbance lasts more than five days.
JULY 31 Motown releases “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas on the Gordy label.
AUGUST 2 The destroyer U.S.S. Maddox engages with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin.
AUGUST 4 A second naval engagement that may have been a misreading of radar is reported from the Gulf of Tonkin.
AUGUST 4 The bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman are found in an earthen dam.
AUGUST 7 Congress votes President Johnson the right to go to war with North Vietnam without a further declaration of war.
AUGUST 11 Race riots erupt in Elizabeth and Paterson, New Jersey.
AUGUST 19 The Beatles arrive and play to 17,130 people at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.
AUGUST 22 “Dancing in the Street” enters the Top 100 chart at number 68.
AUGUST 24 TO 27 The National Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, nominates Johnson but alienates the left wing of the civil rights movement by not seating the Mississippi Freedom Party.
AUGUST 29 Race riot in Philadelphia.
SEPTEMBER 20 After twenty-five stops and thirty-one performances, the Beatles end their tour at New York’s Paramount Theatre. In all, they have performed live for 425,950 people in North America.
SEPTEMBER 24 The Warren Commission presents its report to President Johnson, saying that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in Kennedy’s assassination. Three days later, the findings are made public, but the report does little to calm public suspicion.
SEPTEMBER 29 Veterans of the Mississippi Freedom Summer refuse to have their activities curtailed on the UC Berkeley campus, leading to the first of many student campus demonstrations.
APPENDIX TWO
THE DISCOGRAPHY OF THE SONG
RELEASED
GROUP
JULY 31, 1964
Martha and the Vandellas
JANUARY 25, 1965
Cilla Black
FEBRUARY 15, 1965
Brenda Lee
MARCH 5, 1965
The Kinks
1965
The Everly Brothers
1965
Petula Clark
1965
The Rokes
DECEMBER 1965
The Walker Brothers
1966
Red Squares
AUGUST 1966
The Mamas and the Papas
1967
Ramsey Lewis
1971
Little Richard
NOVEMBER 17, 1971
Laura Nyro and Labelle
1976
Michael Bolotin
1976
The Royals
1976
Donald Byrd
JULY 27, 1977
The Grateful Dead
1979
Teri DeSario and K.C.
1979
Nohelani Cypriano
DECEMBER 1979
Neil Diamond
1981
Tim Curry
1982
Van Halen
1982
The Who
AUGUST 12, 1985
Mick Jagger and David Bowie
1985
Kingfish
1993
Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble
1996
Günther Neefs
1997
Kim Weston
1999
The BB Band
2000
Jimmy Barnes
2001
Atomic Kitten
2002
The Power Station
2003
Dynamo’s Rhythm Aces
2004
Sugar Beats
2004
The Charades
JANUARY 27, 2005
René Froger & Maud
OCTOBER 14, 2006
Human Nature
MARCH 21, 2007
The Condors, featuring Miu Sakamoto
2009
Asian Sensation
DECEMBER 2, 2010
Sandrine
AROUND THE WORLD—FOREIGN-LANGUAGE COVERS
1965
“Dans tous les pays” by Rich
ard Anthony (French)
1980
“Hakaniemeen tanssinmaan” by Eero ja Jussi (Finnish)
1989
“Dansen op het strand” by Reginald & BRT Big Band (Danish)
1990
“Makuuvaunussa” by Clifters (Finnish)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Abbott, Kingsley, ed. Calling Out Around the World: A Motown Reader. London: Helter Skelter Publishing, 2001.
Ashford, Jack, with Charlene Ashford. Motown: The View from the Bottom. New Romney, England: Bank House Books, 2003.
Baldwin, James. Early Novels and Stories. Washington, DC: Library of America, 1998.
———. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York: Dial Press, 1961.
Beschloss, Michael R. Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
———. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1998.