Hitsville

Can you imagine five native Detroiters with a combined total of living 300 years in Michigan who have yet to set foot in the Motown Museum? Holy, Hitsville USA!

In late September, the five of us sought to redeem our sorry souls of that musical sacrilege by touring the museum, a small, two-story brick house in the middle of a residential section on Detroit’s West Grand Boulevard. Honestly, this place is a shrine to a magical time in pop history.

For good measure, we threw in a Detroit Tigers ballgame as penance to assuage our guilt. (OK, that was gratuitous and mean, even for me.) Sadly, they lost, 7-5.

We saw our Boys of Summer take on the Cleveland Guardians (a name I’m still trying to wrap my head around … sorry, Ohio cousins), but mainly witnessed a some baseball history: MLB’s Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera was playing in his final weekend home stand.

Miggy did not disappoint, going 3 for 4 with a walk in his last at bat of the day. Talk about Hitsville!

Best. Day. Ever. Two of my favorite things – music and baseball – in one fabulous Friday with some of my favorite people. And to determine which one of us could cheer the loudest from Section 126, Row 28, Seat 11. And by that, I mean Rebecca.

I felt so sorry for the three guys in front of us, here on business from Mexico and Denmark, that I gave one of them my bright orange “Fiesta Tigres” ball cap. He was elated, I think.

We first visited the Motown Museum. What a fascinating place. If you haven’t seen it, go. If you love Motown tunes, go. If you have any doubts that founder Berry Gordy was a musical genius, go.

It’s the best $20 for a personally guided tour you will ever spend.

According to our young tour guide with the booming voice, Motown founder Berry Gordy III worked at Ford Motor Co. for a short time, but he disliked doing a repetitive assembly line job. However, he understood the power of turning pieces of metal into beautiful vehicles and striving for perfection.

Sort of like turning budding talent into “superstars.”

In 1959, with encouragement from Miracles leader Smokey Robinson, Gordy borrowed $800 from his family to create an R&B record company, which later became Motown Record Corp.

Genius? Sure, but as they say, behind every great man there’s a woman. In this case, there were at least two of them.

The first was his business-minded older sister Esther Gordy Edwards, a company executive who ran the place. Known as “the mother of Motown,” she founded the Motown Historical Museum in 1985. She died at 91 in 2011.

And there also was Maxine Powell, an etiquette instructor and talent agent, who groomed unpolished youngsters with the right clothes and manners befit for meeting the Queen of England. Which some of them actually got to do. Berry Gordy dubbed it Artist and Personal Development, or A&R. Powell died at 98 in 2013.

The Motown office was open 24/7 because Berry Gordy believed that you “can’t put 9 to 5 on creativity.” The offices reflect how things were back in the day with 1950’s- and ‘60s-style furniture, an operator’s switchboard for rotary phone calls and even a 1964 calendar on the wall and yellowed newspaper on a desk.

You could almost hear the manual typewriter clicking amid voices of wannabe talent waiting sometimes hours to get their shot at fame. Imagine how many people walked through those doors.

Upstairs was Berry Gordy’s tiny apartment, restored to its original vintage look: original sofa, bedroom suite and kitchen table.

How did Berry Gordy rate a song’s chance of becoming a hit record: He would ask one question, “If you had your last $1, would you buy that record or a hot dog?”

Think about that dollar analogy next time you hear a song by The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the Pips, or Stevie Wonder.

He composed a few hits himself, including Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops” and “Shop Around” by The Miracles. He also wrote “I Want You Back” and “ABC” for The Jackson 5.

Our tour ended in Studio A. This was the room where it all happened.

We walked four steps down into a small area covered in acoustic tiles, crumbling pegboard and aging plaster. A baby grand piano, music stands and old-school microphones filled the room, along with a drum set and mics suspended from booms above us.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of recording sessions were held here with relentless finger snapping and toe tapping. So much of the latter that bare holes covered the linoleum floor in the control room, likely worn away by the stomping feet of the engineer and producer seated at the console. I swear, I could almost feel it.

Closing my eyes, I imagined familiar lead vocals and background harmonies striving for Berry Gordy’s perfection. Diana, Marvin, Gladys and Stevie. Incredible.

Now 93, Berry Gordy lives in Los Angeles where he moved Motown Records in 1972. In 1988, he sold his interests in the company and is worth more than $400 million. Not bad for a 29-year-old musical genius who turned a white and blue house into an empire.

I’ve got to say, visiting the Motown Museum makes me feel as if my life as a Detroiter is complete. It took 63 years, but I’ve been to the mountain – and it’s the little brick house that rocked the world.

As for the Tigers, there’s always 2024.