Ready For a Brand New Beat

June 3, 2013
In 1964, Motown, a little record label from Detroit, grew into a voice for a generation, releasing, according to Kurlansky, “60 singles, of which 70% hit the Top 100 chart and 19 were #1 hits.” Kurlansky (Salt) deftly chronicles the story of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street, ”a Motown song that made the transition from the early to late 1960s—from hope and idealism to urban riots and the escalation of war in Vietnam. In meticulous detail, he tells the story of the song itself: Ivy Jo Hunter, Mickey Stevenson, and Marvin Gaye wrote a new track that Stevenson had promised to his wife, Kim Weston. Released in August 1964, “Dancing in the Street” climbed up the Billboard charts to reach the #2 spot by October. The song’s lyrics had different meanings for different audiences—many white listeners heard it as a party song, while many black listeners embraced it as a song of liberation and revolution. Enduringly popular, “Dancing in the Street” has been covered at least 35 times, by musicians from the Grateful Dead and Van Halen to Ramsey Lewis and Laura Nyro, and its opening riffs inspired the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

June 1, 2013
Fascinating but flawed, the latest from Kurlansky (Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, 2012 etc.) suggests that not only was the Martha and the Vandellas' hit the anthem for a time of profound change, but a call to arms for rioting militants in its "invitation across the nation." The author is on solid ground when he keeps a tight focus on Motown, Berry Gordy and the hit machine the mogul established in Detroit along the lines of the city's automobile industry: "A bare frame of a street singer could go through the Motown plant and come out a Cadillac of a performer." He shows how Gordy got rich, his artists got famous, and his studio musicians and some of his songwriters got shafted. He explains how Motown's changes reflected a changing America, as dreams of integration shattered with the King assassination, the rise of Black Power and the rioting in the streets. "It was also suggested that the popularity of the song 'Dancing in the Street' had encouraged people to take to the streets," writes Kurlansky in an oddly passive construction that proceeds to cite a "rumor" that the hit was banned from the airwaves. Plainly, change was in the air, and to overload this one hit with too much revolutionary significance in a 1964 that also gave the world "The Times They Are A-Changin" and "A Change Is Gonna Come" blurs cause and effect. And then there are all the nit-picky errors: that "(Michael) Bolton achieved stardom in the 1980s with his hard rock band Black Jack [sic]," that the sophisticated, debonair Chuck Berry was "a wild-looking black man...who hopped around the stage madly," that Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" was "swing." Perhaps the book's biggest howler lies in the understatement that "many people were affected by the King murder." An ambitious thematic arc, but the devil's in the details.

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Starred review from June 1, 2013
In July 1964, nearly 23-year-old Martha Reeves walked into a house in Detroit with a hand-painted wooden sign above the door that declared Hitsville U.S.A. Indeed, Motown was her home away from home. In this compelling, fascinating, and entertaining biography of Martha and the Vandellas' classic Dancing in the Street, versatile Kurlansky (Birdseye, 2012) manages to tell not only the story of a song but also a record label alongside a social history of 1960s America. The famous names associated with Motown are here, including its founder, Berry Gordy Jr., and one of its most iconic singers, Marvin Gaye. But other stories frame the rise and popularity of Motown and form the backbone of the book, including the civil rights movement, the freedom riders, the 1963 March on Washington, the British invasion, the Gulf of Tonkin, the riots in Watts and in other cities across the U.S., and white flight. In addition, Kurlansky discusses the song's various interpretationsparty song, civil rights anthem, black nationalist anthem, feminist anthemas well as other songs that seem to mimic its lyrics, from the Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man to Bruce Springsteen's Racing in the Street. A rousing history of an iconic song.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2013

As written by Marvin Gaye, record producer William "Mickey" Stevenson, Motown songwriter Ivy Jo Hunter, and others and recorded by Martha and the Vandellas, "Dancing in the Street" had an infectiousness that really did make you want to dance. (I can sing every word.) But upon its release in July 1964, with Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, and the Civil Rights Act in the forefront and escalation of the Vietnam War in the offing, it took on deeper meaning and became a true American icon. So argues Kurlansky, who can give real dimension to things like cod and salt and also wrote 1968: The Year That Rocked the World.

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