Abstract
This article focuses on the music education and enculturation of Motown musicians who grew up in greater Detroit. The early musical lives of Motown musicians are described—in the home environment, in schools and in black urban neighborhoods. Schools are shown to be spaces of musical nurturance, both in the context of the formal curriculum and in the school culture at large. The story provides a positive example of urban music education that can inform and inspire music education today. It helps identify factors that strengthen relationships between school and community; it highlights the ecological nature of school music located within a complex network of social and cultural institutions that contribute to music education; and it illustrates how schools and individual teachers can provide a space for students to perform music of popular idioms. It also provides evidence of the power of music in the lives of students as well as of the capacity of young people to generate and contribute to musical culture and to effect social change through their music-making.
Strong public school music programs and community support of young people’s music-making in Detroit were two of the factors that helped produce the phenomenon known as Motown.
Motown musicians and singers honed their talents on the streets and through the institutions of an industrial city; public housing projects, public schools, local churches, jazz and blues clubs, and street corners all contributed to what became Motown’s sound.
1
Motown was a musical and cultural movement that developed in black urban neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan, in the late 1950s. It expanded its reach beyond Detroit in the 1960s and thereafter to achieve global influence and popularity. Its founder, Berry Gordy Jr., derived the name Motown from the Motor City, a nickname used to describe Detroit because it was the center of the American auto industry. Motown had many faces: a record label, a music recording studio and commercial enterprise, a place called Hitsville, USA—Motown’s first headquarters, located at 2648 West Grand Boulevard—and a genre of music that came to be known as “The Sound of Young America.” 2
One of the unique features of the Motown company was its dependence on the artistic talents of young, local black musicians. They were key to its success, bringing to that small house on West Grand Boulevard their creativity, performing skills, enthusiasm, and ambition. Other features that influenced the development of Motown were the sociopolitical context of Detroit in the mid-twentieth century, the rich and diverse musical culture of the city, access to strong public school music programs, and the leadership of Berry Gordy—his genius for recognizing and providing training for musicians as well as nurturing the development of a new musical style that would appeal to young people.
How does a story of Motown artists intersect with the interests of school music educators? The intersections are many, but at the center is the synergy that grew between a city with a vibrant and diverse musical life, an urban public school system that developed exemplary music programs between 1920 and 1950, and an unprecedented musical phenomenon called Motown.
Education in urban schools has been the subject of much discussion in recent decades. Urban education is typically portrayed as a problem area in need of more administrative support, additional curriculum resources, and improved student motivation and teacher retention. However, this was not always the case. Urban school systems in the first half of the twentieth century had a reputation for administrative efficiency, innovative programs, and high educational standards. They provided an avenue for upward mobility for large numbers of poor and immigrant children. 3 The tide turned as the demographics of inner cities changed midcentury and economic conditions deteriorated in a postindustrial age; this change was reflected in a January 1970 special issue of the Music Educators Journal edited by Charles Fowler and titled “Facing the Music in Urban Education.” 4
The story of Motown helps identify factors that strengthen relationships between school and community. 5 It highlights the ecological nature of school music located within a complex network of social and cultural institutions that contribute to children’s music education. 6 Furthermore, it illustrates how schools and individual teachers can provide a space for students to perform music of popular idioms, a curricular focus that was gaining significance in the 1960s and continues to be addressed today. 7 Above all, in this story, the power of music in the lives of students is evident, as well as the capacity of young people to generate and contribute to musical culture and to effect social change through their music-making.
Music, Education, and the Rise of Motown
The overall success of Motown was influenced by a combination of factors that developed in Detroit in the first half of the twentieth century—economic, demographic, educational, and musical. The expansion of the auto industry in the early 1900s contributed to a strong industrial economy and attracted black and white migrant workers from southern states as well as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. By 1920, Detroit was the fourth-largest city in the United States, a rank it held until 1950, when the population peaked at almost 2 million. 8 It was a progressive city in many ways. The nation’s first urban freeway was built in Detroit in the early 1940s, and during World War II the city was the primary producer of war goods.
The black population in Detroit increased from 1.2 percent in 1910 to 9.1 percent in 1930 and 28.9 percent by 1960. Racism dominated social planning and dictated where blacks lived, the jobs they held, and the schools they attended. At the same time, it had the effect of creating a vibrant and distinct black culture within the city and spurring a powerful sense of racial solidarity. 9 Migrant black families were able to create a life for themselves that was better than the life they left in the South and to develop a sense of pride and dignity in the culture and traditions that they brought with them. For example, Aretha Franklin grew up in Detroit in the late 1940s and 1950s, “surrounded by the people and the institutions that were giving African Americans a new sense of place and mission.” 10 Conversely, the rapid integration of tens of thousands of immigrants and migrants intensified segregation and caused social and racial tensions, evident, for example, in the race riots of 1943.
Musical Life in the City
Detroit was a city with a rich musical and cultural life in the early and middle decades of the century, with influences from European immigrants, black and white migrants from the South, and its English and French heritage. A rising black middle-class population assumed values that included an appreciation for classical music. The city had a broad spectrum of centers used for musical entertainment: ballrooms, jazz clubs, blues clubs, Orchestra Hall, the Fox Theatre, and, later, the Ford Auditorium. Motown singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye said, “Detroit was jamming. Detroit was alive.” 11 Music was alive also on the street corners, alleyways, parks, and neighborhood meeting places where young people socialized. Otis Williams of the Motown group the Temptations recalled that as he was growing up, “Detroit was a real music town. You heard it everywhere, from radios and record players, outside the doors of the clubs that kids like us were too young to enter legally, from guys and girls standing out on the street singing. It sounds like a scene out of a musical, but that’s truly how it was.” 12 And it was in this musically vibrant town with a developed school music program that future Motown musicians discovered and developed their musical skills in formal and informal settings.
Public School System
The Detroit Public Schools system was renowned for its leadership and excellence beginning in the 1920s. 13 The business interests of the city supported public education. When subjects associated with “the fads and frills” were eliminated from the curriculum during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Detroit fared better than other cities. Although racism was evident in the distribution of schools and resources, a strong black community was vigilant and vocal about inequities in schools in black neighborhoods. 14
As the Detroit Public Schools system grew to be exemplary in many ways, so also did its music programs. Several factors contributed to this development: the economic well-being of the city, strong music administrative leadership from the 1920s to the 1960s, 15 a professional music teaching staff, and a unified music curriculum in the schools across the system. 16
Musical Influences in Home and Community
Music in the Home and Family
Many children were under the musical influence of adults in their lives, from immediate family to neighbors, relatives, and friends. Berry Gordy grew up in a musically rich environment. He was particularly influenced early on by his “Uncle B.A.,” who had been a concert pianist and later a piano teacher in Detroit. He gave Gordy lessons and performed classical music for him. Although Gordy resisted learning scales and music theory, he later acknowledged the foundation that such training afforded him for compositions. He gradually moved away from formal music lessons and began to play everything by ear, especially what he heard on the radio. 17
William “Smokey” Robinson, one of the great songwriters of the Motown era and lead singer of the Miracles, describes his home life as being like a musical:
I had such a great jazz influence in my life as a child growing up. I had two older sisters and my mom, and music was played in our house all day long—all kinds of music. There was gospel, there was classical, there was jazz, there was blues, there was everything.
18
Autographed print of the Miracles (Photo courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Al Abrams Papers)
Steveland Morris (Stevie Wonder) showed strong musical interest and ability from a young age. Many individuals supported his musical development. His uncle bought him a harmonica, and he began playing and singing his own tunes. A neighbor who was moving out of her home gave him a piano, and the Detroit Lions Club donated a set of drums. He was often to be found playing drums and listening to rhythm and blues music (R&B) on his front porch, something that led to hours of joy for him as well as attracting the attention of the neighborhood. 19 It was Ronnie White of the Miracles who heard Stevie perform and brought him to Hitsville to audition for Gordy. Impressed with his musical performance, Gordy called him “Little Stevie Wonder.” At Motown, resident musicians the Funk Brothers coached him 20 ; and he spent hours playing with their drummer, Benny Benjamin, and pianist, Earl Van Dyke, who himself had studied at the Detroit Conservatory of Music. The kind of music education that Gordy, Robinson, and Stevie Wonder received in the home and family context combined formal training and informal induction into musical cultures. For other Motown musicians, their participation in church choirs laid the foundation for their music careers. 21 These stories reflect the tight communal support and musical network that dominated black communities and the exposure that young musicians had to a wide variety of musical genres during their childhood.
Music in Urban Neighborhoods
Motown musicians often spoke of the richness of music-making in the urban neighborhoods where they grew up. Smokey Robinson described the quality of street music in his neighborhood as “extremely high.” 22 Abdul “Duke” Fakir of the Four Tops wrote, “In that time in our lives in Detroit [referring to high school years], singing in groups, that was the thing to do, as well as playing sports. So everybody was singing in different groups at that particular time.” 23 Some Motown musicians grew up in public housing projects built for blacks in the 1930s. According to Smith, living in these environments and participating in the institutions of an industrial city, such as public housing projects, public schools, and local churches, all contributed to what became Motown’s sound. 24
The Supremes grew up in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, the first federally funded black public housing project in the country. The houses were located in the middle of a concrete landscape on the east side of the city. It was there that the members of the Supremes first met and formed the doo-wop group they named the Primettes. In a black environment like Brewster-Douglass, the rhythms of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and the doo-wop groups “provided the soundtrack of everyday life,” and this soundtrack went “wherever the kids went, on the roofs, in the stairwells, in the gymnasium of the Brewster recreation center.” 25 Young people transformed the “empty pockets” of city buildings—whether a stairwell or hallway—into “performance sanctuaries” and, in the process, produced “a distinctly urban culture.” 26
Stevie Wonder introducing man and boy to Peter “Herman” Noone and Phelps outside Hitsville, USA (Photo courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Al Abrams Papers)
Public Schools as Spaces of Musical Nurturance
Scholars who studied the lives of Motown musicians conclude that public school music programs played a key role in educating and supporting the development of Motown musicians. Gerald Early argues that Motown could not have happened without a strong public school music education program in Detroit. 27 Suzanne Smith notes that Motown artists received their first formal training and encouragement in the schools. 28 It is in this context that connections are made between public school music programs and the musical development of individual Motown artists.
Formal Curriculum
Biographical (and other) writings on Motown musicians make reference to elementary as well as junior and senior high school music education. Several different high schools are highlighted, among them Cass Technical, Northern, Northeastern, Northwestern, Pershing, and Sidney Miller (the first school in the city with a predominant black student population in the 1930s). Cass Technical and Northeastern offered a performing arts curriculum, and Sidney Miller was renowned for its concert and swing bands. 29 It is noteworthy that renowned music programs were not limited to schools with a performing arts focus, such as Cass Technical.
Motown artists participated in music programs in a number of different schools across the city. Smokey Robinson began learning both his musical and songwriting skills in public school programs. His songwriting began in elementary school, encouraged by a teacher who set up a writer’s club for students. He had opportunities to have his song lyrics featured in school plays. In fifth grade, he joined the glee club and continued singing in choirs at Hutchins Intermediate and Northern High School. “We’d be chirping everywhere,” he wrote. “Even wrote our eighth-grade graduation play, a musical, about the consequences of dropping out of school too soon.” 30 Robinson started the Five Chimes group (later the Matadors) with Ronald White and three other classmates in 1955 at Northern High School. 31
Raynoma Liles, first wife of Berry Gordy and influential in the quality of early Motown recordings, was a musical child prodigy who attended Cass Technical, where “she majored in harmony, theory, and composition.” 32 It was in her intensive music classes at Cass Tech that she developed an understanding of music theory that made it possible for her “to pick up almost any instrument and play.” 33 Mary Wilson, a founding member of the Supremes, writes that her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Shufelt, encouraged her to join the glee club, and she continued singing in school glee clubs through junior high school. She recalls one early singing experience in elementary school: “When we participated in a citywide choir competition at the Ford Auditorium,” she wrote, “I felt like the luckiest six-year-old in town.” 34 Later on, Wilson attended Northeastern High School, where choir director Abraham Silver mentored her. 35 Another founding member of the Supremes, Florence Ballard, also attended Northeastern High and was mentored by Silver, who, like other music teachers, felt she had “considerable technical polish for one so young.” 36
Martha Reeves of the Vandellas recalls that as early as third grade, she was chosen from among the thirty or thirty-five students in her class to sing solos by her music teacher, Mrs. Wagstaff. 37 Reeves had considerable musical training in the public schools, including study with Abraham Silver at Northeastern High. Silver, she recounts, was “very influential in the training of my voice. He taught me how to use my God-given talents and encouraged me to join various choral groups at school.” 38 In her senior year in 1958, she had the opportunity to perform as soprano soloist when her school choir performed Handel’s Messiah for a radio broadcast before an audience of four thousand at Detroit’s Ford Auditorium. 39
When young vocalists began recording at Motown, the Funk Brothers were the resident musicians who provided the instrumental backing to Motown hits. The Funk Brothers included many different members over the years. One long-standing member, James Jamerson, moved to Detroit with his mother in 1953 as part of the great black migration to the North and benefited from the kind of music education unavailable to most Southern blacks. He attended Northwestern High, where he played string bass in William Helstein’s class. The choice of instrument allowed him to function in both classical and jazz worlds. While he was still attending high school, he was playing regularly in jazz clubs. Another member of the Funk Brothers, drummer Uriel Jones, credited music with saving his life. He attended Moore School for Boys, a school that functioned for Detroit public school boys with discipline problems. Moore had a strong music program, and it was there that Jones found a positive outlet for his energy and a medium for self-expression that contributed to his developing interest in music. 40 Many Motown musicians participated in school music programs during their childhood and youth and later recognized the positive influence of music teachers on their development as artists. 41
Musical Culture in Schools
In addition to providing students with a strong musical foundation in theory and developing their performance skills, music teachers encouraged them in their budding professional music careers. 42 Furthermore, there is evidence that students found a receptive space and supportive environment in some schools to rehearse their popular music, doo-wop. Many singing groups were formed and held rehearsals in high schools, including the three major early Motown groups: the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Miracles. 43 Talent contests held in high schools afforded young musicians an opportunity to stage their musical acts and gain recognition in musical circles outside of school, including Motown.
Abraham Silver’s choir at Northeastern High School, Spring 1960 (Photo courtesy of Lisa Silver)
Martha & the Vandellas (Photo courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Al Abrams Papers)
One striking example of the close network that existed between schools and Motown is the story of the Marvelettes. Gladys Horton and Georgia Dobbins were the lead singers, with backing vocalists Georgeanna Tilman, Juanita Cowart, and Katherine Anderson. As teenagers, they attended Inkster High School, located in a suburb west of Detroit, where they sang together in the glee club and started a doo-wop group named the Casinyets (or “Can’t Sing Yets”), later the Marvels and the Marvelettes. In 1961, the quintet entered the Inkster High School talent show. The three best groups were granted an audition at Motown. Although the Casinyets finished fourth, a school administrator felt they worked too hard to miss out on the audition and declared them also as winners. The Motown audition that followed was a success, and the group was signed up as Motown artists. In the same year, they had a number-one recording with “Please, Mr. Postman” while they were still attending high school. 44
Other examples of Motown artists who were recognized in talent shows, albeit in settings other than school, include Berry Gordy, who won a local talent competition with one of his songs, “Berry’s Boogie” 45 ; the Four Tops, who started out singing in talent shows as teenagers 46 ; and Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, who first met at a junior high school talent show and later sang as the Primettes, winning first prize at the 1960 Detroit/Windsor Freedom Festival talent contest. 47 Aware of the talent show as a place for identifying potential Motown artists, Gordy sent scouts to such shows to recruit musicians. 48
Music, Youth, and the Making of Culture
The story of Motown is testament to the power of music in the lives of children and young people and the role that schools can play in educating and empowering students to participate in musical cultures around them. Moreover, the rise of Motown illustrates how popular music can serve to cross racial lines in its global appeal. Smokey Robinson was aware of music as a social force when he said, “I recognized the bridges we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers we broke down with music.” 49 Mary Wilson of the Supremes experienced the breakthroughs when she traveled south with Motown Revue on a ten-week bus tour in 1962 during the civil rights movement: “When it came to music, segregation didn’t mean a thing in some of those towns, and if it did, black and white fans would ignore the local customs to attend the shows.” 50
Florence Ballard signing autograph for two children (Photo courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Al Abrams Papers)
The story of Motown, “The Sound of Young America,” then, is a story of American students and American music that needs to be told in music classes across the nation. It has enormous curricular possibilities, using the music itself as a starting point. 51 Through critical discussion of the music and its cultural and political contexts, today’s students can develop a deeper understanding of the power of music in effecting positive change. Students can identify with the hope and idealism of young musicians who were “calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat?” (“Dancing in the Street,” 1964), sending a message of unity and harmony in place of the hatred and racism that they likely witnessed in their lives.
Lessons of Motown
In addition to curricular implications, what insights are revealed from this historical study from the mid-twentieth century? The story of Motown helps identify factors that strengthen relationships between school and community. A strong economy, a vibrant and diverse musical culture, and the presence of communal values that supported education and the arts contributed to the quality of school music programs. When all the instances of music education—home, neighborhood, school, and community—are considered together, it is clear that the public schools were a dominant partner in the urban network that inducted many young people into musical practices and developed their musicianship. It is important for music educators to adopt a holistic view of music education and to acknowledge that there are many ways in which students participate in musical culture and music learning contexts.
The story of Motown illustrates how schools and individual teachers can provide students the freedom to perform music of popular idioms. Although popular music was not recognized in the formal curriculum, students rehearsed their music in schools and performed doo-wop in school talent shows. As Motown was gaining power and popularity during the 1960s, the music education profession was struggling to respond to radical changes in society. Leaders met on several occasions to discuss contemporary issues and future directions—in particular, at the Yale Seminar in 1963 and the Tanglewood Symposium in 1967. Furthermore, the 1967 MENC North Central Division conference was held in Detroit, and the theme of the program was “Education in Music: A Process of Cultural Growth,” focusing on the processes by which education in music contributes to cultural growth.
At the same time that these conferences highlighted the fundamental changes taking place in music, society, and education, black young people in Detroit, many of whom participated in public school music programs, were contributing to social change through their music-making and their contributions to “The Sound of Young America.” Thus, we learn from this case that it is beneficial to look beyond the confines of the school and to listen to the pulse of popular musical cultures that form the soundscapes of school neighborhoods and their greater communities.
As music educators at all levels confront the realities of music education in urban schools today, this positive story of urban music education can serve as an inspiration for educational administrators in Detroit and elsewhere to commit resources to music in education. Motown shows how a strong school music curriculum can contribute not only to the development of school culture but also to the creation of a vibrant social and cultural life in the community and to the education of artists who contribute to musical development at large. Opera singer George Shirley grew up in Detroit in the 1940s and benefited from participation in music programs in the public schools. As a passionate advocate for music education in Detroit’s schools today, he observes that “the raw talent that produced noted personalities and performers” in Detroit in the twentieth century “still percolates through the streets of the city and its suburbs waiting to be guided, shaped, and developed in positive ways in order to achieve its limitless potential and attain the stature of its illustrious predecessors.” 52
The musical experiences of young Motown musicians provide testimony to the power of school music to motivate students, stimulate their musical creativity, instill respect and pride for their own and others’ artistic abilities, and above all, engender hope and lead students to effect positive social change through their music-making. Motown is a story of youth and resilience intertwined with music education and empowerment. It offers today’s students and teachers valuable lessons and reflections.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank George Shirley, the Joseph E. Maddy Distinguished University Emeritus Professor of Voice at the University of Michigan, for providing the inspiration for this article.