RobertZ
09-15-2015, 08:43 AM
Note mentions of Motown and specifically Dr. Martha Reeves -
From today's NY Times:
Detroit in the early 1960s was a symbol not of urban decline and Rust Belt blight, but of high hopes and youthful dreams. Coveted cars didn’t have model numbers then but names that spoke of flight and fantasy and raw animal power — the Ford Galaxie, Thunderbird and Mustang, the Plymouth Barracuda, the Chevrolet Impala — and they were rolling off the Detroit assembly lines at a record pace. The country was dancing to the beat of Motown’s irresistible pop-soul groove, and with hit after hit by Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and the Four Tops rolling off his assembly line, Berry Gordy would proudly proclaim Motown “the sound of young America.”
In his elegiac and richly detailed new book, “Once in a Great City,” David Maraniss — the author of biographies of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Roberto Clemente — conjures those boom years of his former hometown with novelistic ardor. Using overlapping portraits of Detroiters [[from politicians to musicians to auto execs), he creates a mosaiclike picture of the city that has the sort of intimacy and tactile emotion that Larry McMurtry brought to his depictions of the Old West, and the gritty sweep of David Simon’s HBO series “The Wire.”
But Mr. Maraniss does not aim to break a lot of new ground here or to delve too deeply into any one aspect of early-‘60s Detroit; his goal is something more impressionistic and zeitgeist-y. And at this, he succeeds with authoritative, adrenaline-laced flair. He gives us “the musical luminescence of Detroit,” explaining its “unmatched creative melody” by pointing not only to its gospel and blues heritage [[thanks to its many migrants from the South, who brought with them “an oral, life-singing tradition”) and the vitality of a local black-owned radio station, WCHB, but also to the public school system’s inspiring music programs and the availability of pianos for working-class families [[a result of “steady auto jobs, disposable income, single-family housing” and the reach of a remarkable music store and piano maker called Grinnell’s).
Mr. Maraniss cuts among story lines about the auto industry, the civil rights movement and City Hall, and among subplots involving Ford’s development of its top-secret new car [[the singular Mustang), the police commissioner’s efforts to get the goods on the mobster Tony Giacalone and Berry Gordy’s construction of a hit factory with Motown. The result is a buoyant Frederick Lewis Allen-like social history that’s animated by an infectious soundtrack and lots of tactile details, and injected with a keen understanding of larger historical forces at work – both in Detroit and America at large.
Along the way, Mr. Maraniss gives us some clear-eyed portraits of influential Detroiters like the Rev. C. L. Franklin, the civil rights activist and father of Aretha; the city’s mayor Jerome Cavanagh, who could “charm birds out of trees”; Martha Reeves, whose rise reflected “the soul of Detroit and the magic of its music;” Henry Ford II, who set about reshaping the image of his family’s car business; Lee Iacocca, who reportedly pitched the Mustang as a “little pony car” that “would give an orgasm to anyone under 30”; and the visionary Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, who presciently spoke in 1963 of the impact that technology and automation would have on labor and the country in the years to come.
By the close of Mr. Maraniss’s book, dreams of hosting the Olympics have been scuttled; urban renewal has uprooted many traditional, predominantly black neighborhoods; police reforms that might lead to greater racial harmony have stalled; and efforts to transform the city through the Model Cities and War on Poverty programs have run aground, fueling tensions that would explode in the 1967 riot.
That riot would accelerate white and middle-class flight to the suburbs and bring a radical contraction in the city’s population. The United States Census in 1960 had put Detroit’s population at 1,670,144; by 2010, the city’s population had fallen, shockingly, to 713,777. This shrinking tax base, along with auto industry woes, growing deficits and startlingly inept leadership would force the city to declare bankruptcy in 2013 and turn Detroit from Johnson’s “herald of hope in America” into a symbol of vulnerability and decay.
Mr. Maraniss’s evocative book provides a wistful look back at an era when those cracks were only just beginning to show, and the city still seemed a place of “uncommon possibility” and was creating “wondrous and lasting things.”
ONCE IN A GREAT CITY
A Detroit Story
By David Maraniss
Illustrated. 441 pages. Simon and Schuster. $32.50.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/books/review-once-in-a-great-city-chronicles-detroits-glory-days.html?ref=arts
From today's NY Times:
Detroit in the early 1960s was a symbol not of urban decline and Rust Belt blight, but of high hopes and youthful dreams. Coveted cars didn’t have model numbers then but names that spoke of flight and fantasy and raw animal power — the Ford Galaxie, Thunderbird and Mustang, the Plymouth Barracuda, the Chevrolet Impala — and they were rolling off the Detroit assembly lines at a record pace. The country was dancing to the beat of Motown’s irresistible pop-soul groove, and with hit after hit by Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and the Four Tops rolling off his assembly line, Berry Gordy would proudly proclaim Motown “the sound of young America.”
In his elegiac and richly detailed new book, “Once in a Great City,” David Maraniss — the author of biographies of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Roberto Clemente — conjures those boom years of his former hometown with novelistic ardor. Using overlapping portraits of Detroiters [[from politicians to musicians to auto execs), he creates a mosaiclike picture of the city that has the sort of intimacy and tactile emotion that Larry McMurtry brought to his depictions of the Old West, and the gritty sweep of David Simon’s HBO series “The Wire.”
But Mr. Maraniss does not aim to break a lot of new ground here or to delve too deeply into any one aspect of early-‘60s Detroit; his goal is something more impressionistic and zeitgeist-y. And at this, he succeeds with authoritative, adrenaline-laced flair. He gives us “the musical luminescence of Detroit,” explaining its “unmatched creative melody” by pointing not only to its gospel and blues heritage [[thanks to its many migrants from the South, who brought with them “an oral, life-singing tradition”) and the vitality of a local black-owned radio station, WCHB, but also to the public school system’s inspiring music programs and the availability of pianos for working-class families [[a result of “steady auto jobs, disposable income, single-family housing” and the reach of a remarkable music store and piano maker called Grinnell’s).
Mr. Maraniss cuts among story lines about the auto industry, the civil rights movement and City Hall, and among subplots involving Ford’s development of its top-secret new car [[the singular Mustang), the police commissioner’s efforts to get the goods on the mobster Tony Giacalone and Berry Gordy’s construction of a hit factory with Motown. The result is a buoyant Frederick Lewis Allen-like social history that’s animated by an infectious soundtrack and lots of tactile details, and injected with a keen understanding of larger historical forces at work – both in Detroit and America at large.
Along the way, Mr. Maraniss gives us some clear-eyed portraits of influential Detroiters like the Rev. C. L. Franklin, the civil rights activist and father of Aretha; the city’s mayor Jerome Cavanagh, who could “charm birds out of trees”; Martha Reeves, whose rise reflected “the soul of Detroit and the magic of its music;” Henry Ford II, who set about reshaping the image of his family’s car business; Lee Iacocca, who reportedly pitched the Mustang as a “little pony car” that “would give an orgasm to anyone under 30”; and the visionary Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, who presciently spoke in 1963 of the impact that technology and automation would have on labor and the country in the years to come.
By the close of Mr. Maraniss’s book, dreams of hosting the Olympics have been scuttled; urban renewal has uprooted many traditional, predominantly black neighborhoods; police reforms that might lead to greater racial harmony have stalled; and efforts to transform the city through the Model Cities and War on Poverty programs have run aground, fueling tensions that would explode in the 1967 riot.
That riot would accelerate white and middle-class flight to the suburbs and bring a radical contraction in the city’s population. The United States Census in 1960 had put Detroit’s population at 1,670,144; by 2010, the city’s population had fallen, shockingly, to 713,777. This shrinking tax base, along with auto industry woes, growing deficits and startlingly inept leadership would force the city to declare bankruptcy in 2013 and turn Detroit from Johnson’s “herald of hope in America” into a symbol of vulnerability and decay.
Mr. Maraniss’s evocative book provides a wistful look back at an era when those cracks were only just beginning to show, and the city still seemed a place of “uncommon possibility” and was creating “wondrous and lasting things.”
ONCE IN A GREAT CITY
A Detroit Story
By David Maraniss
Illustrated. 441 pages. Simon and Schuster. $32.50.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/books/review-once-in-a-great-city-chronicles-detroits-glory-days.html?ref=arts