We drove 300 miles east from Chicago through Illinois to the state of Michigan and what they used to promote as the Motor City, then Motown, but now they're trying to label it as the Renaissance City. Just one target here - MOTOWN, of course! We travelled over from our hotel to 2648 West Grand Boulevard - HITSVILLE USA for our 11 am tour. It was pretty busy with tours round the 2 small houses every half hour:
Our tour guide took us round various wall exhibits and we watched a short film (not available elsewhere) featuring many artistes who passed through this famous location, including one Michael Jackson whose estate had just loaned his famous fedora and jewelled glove to the Motown Museum:
Motown operated many record labels and in the very early days the album covers didn't show any of the artistes in those days of racial discrimination - plus ça change:
We were treated to a demonstration of one of the two echo chambers and then we were led next door to the original building (Hitsville USA) and the famous Studio A where most of the magic happened:
The Andantes, a group of 3 session singers who allegedly featured on 20,000 recordings (as Rob D commented in his RDR show a week or two ago), were highlighted but nobody else in our group of roughly 20 had ever heard of them. Even more obscure were the Underdogs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underdogs_(American_band) - reportedly the first white band signed by Motown.
Naturally, the Funk Brothers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funk_Brothers) were mentioned several times. Here's Dennis Coffey's guitar and wah-wah pedal, as featured on the Temptations' Cloud Nine (and others):
Our final "treat" of the tour was for us all to sing the first verse of My Girl while doing the Temptations' Walk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg_kmPPSMfQ).
Stepping outside, there was a gig setting up - in honour of the legendary Funk Brothers' bass, James Jamerson, whose widow was present. It was Motown's annual Bass Day and an amazing 65 bass players were present, ready to do their thing:
Next stop Cleveland.
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