Motor City Memories--Remembering Motown : Label’s old site draws thousands to see where Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson got started

Esther Edwards remembers the old days when the Temptations used to work out their dance steps on the front porch of an aging two-story stucco house in inner-city Detroit. She says she can still see the Supremes sitting outside on the grass, playing cards.

“You never realize you’re making history at the moment you’re making it,” Edwards says, standing inside that same old house on West Grand Boulevard--the building where Berry Gordy launched Motown Records in 1959. “In the old days, I don’t think anyone in the company ever considered the extent of what Motown’s music might mean around the world.”

Dressed in a yellow blouse, white heels and a matching green linen skirt and jacket, Edwards was parceling out nostalgic tidbits to a group of tourists--part of about 16,000 fans a year who pay $3 each to see the place where Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and little Michael Jackson all got their start. Once a vice president of Motown, she now volunteers her days as an administrator at the Motown Museum.

For many Motown fans around the world, the small house--boldly declared “Hitsville USA” by the young Gordy--stands today as a musical shrine. It not only houses Gordy’s old office, but the original Motown recording studio. The landmark currently serves as the headquarters for the Motown Museum Historical Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by Gordy’s sister, Esther Edwards. Because of her efforts, Hitsville USA was designated an official State of Michigan Historical site in 1987.

During her tours, Edwards tells visitors not just the musical history of the old Motown days but the social history as well. “Few forces have cut across ethnic lines like Motown did. What happened in this building is truly an American phenomenon,” she explains.

Edwards stands beneath a poster of the Supremes and brandishes a stack of guest books filled with thousands of signatures from travelers from countries as far away as Kenya, Norway, France, Japan and Brazil. Among the Americans who have paid visits: Jesse Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr. and Motown discoveries Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.

“I felt we owed it to the fans,” Edwards says. “If the music of Motown means so much to people that they are willing to hop on a plane and cross the ocean just to get a glimpse of the grounds, then we ought to have something here for them to see.”

Until 1967, when Motown moved its business headquarters to a high-rise on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit, Gordy’s house served as the company’s sole recording studio and office. After Motown abandoned Detroit for Los Angeles in 1972, Gordy pulled the plug on the West Grand Boulevard recording studio and turned the building into a Midwest public relations and promotions office.

Still, for 13 years the old house continued to attract a steady stream of visitors from around the world. Indeed, so many fans showed up unannounced at Hitsville USA’s door that in 1985 Edwards decided to convert the defunct Detroit headquarters into a museum.

“Most Detroiters realize that the company moved to Los Angeles in 1972,” Edwards says. “But everyone else in the world thinks Motown is still in Detroit.” At the request of his sister, Berry Gordy donated the house and all the 1960s memorabilia he owned. With the help of volunteers and a $125,000 contribution from ex-Motowner Michael Jackson in 1988, Edwards has initiated cosmetic improvements and upgraded the museum’s air conditioning.

“Frankly, in the beginning, I never thought it was all that important,” Gordy says, speaking by phone from his Hollywood office. “Esther’s the pack rat of the family, the one who keeps everything. I suppose I was too busy moving forward with commercial thoughts and creativity and new ideas and all. I thought all the stuff from the old days there was junk.

“But, you know, whenever artists like Smokey (Robinson) or Michael (Jackson) would stop by the museum, they would just call me up in tears, saying, ‘Oh, I’m here and I feel this and I feel that.’ And it moved me.”

In 1987, Gordy decided to go back and see what his sister had created.

“You know how sometimes you have these deja vu feelings?” he says, his voice softening. “Well, that’s how it was the first time I visited the museum. Looking at the walls, at the sheet music, at the linoleum in the control booth, all worn out where we used to sit and pat our feet during recordings. Because, even as everything else has moved and grown, Hitsville has always remained a constant--the spiritual grounds for the entire Motown thing.”

At this point, Hitsville USA is a bare-bones operation--a simple museum in which Edwards has transformed her brother’s former living quarters into a gallery of memorabilia.

Hallways are covered with silk-screened concert posters and cardboard cut-outs of Motown acts. The walls are lined with rare press releases, gold records and sheet music. Motown artifacts like Michael Jackson’s glove, Diana Ross’ old bank receipts (with a $2 balance in her bank account), and a bounced check from Smokey Robinson’s lean years are displayed in glass cases. Out-of-print Langston Hughes and Stokely Carmichael album covers compete with European road-show broadsides for wall space.

Golden oldies by the Miracles, the Temptations and the Four Tops provide an uninterrupted sound track for visitors as they peruse cabinets of 8x10 glossies, newspaper clippings and historic documents. Gordy’s kitchen functions as a souvenir shop.

Of all the historic exhibits in the West Grand Boulevard house, Studio A is certainly the most significant. It has been said that the sound produced by this room was valued so highly by Motown that executives considered dismantling the entire studio and reassembling it in Los Angeles when the company moved in 1972.

With its hardwood floors and acoustically tiled walls and ceilings, the entire room is not much bigger than a tiny Midwestern basement. “The unit we recorded on back then was certainly a lot different than the ones people record on now,” Gordy explains. “But it was fun because it was all so pure and honest. Artists had to be able to sing and perform to make it in those days. All of us had a lot of fun together making mistakes.

“Because that’s what really happened there--Hitsville was a beautiful place.”

In 1959, Gordy--who had co-written hits for Jackie Wilson (“Lonely Teardrops,” “Reet Petite”)--decided to create his own label. Just 29, he borrowed $800 from a family trust, bought a used two-track tape recorder from a local deejay and purchased the house on West Grand Boulevard.

By the mid-1960s, Gordy’s company was pumping out pop hits like a Ford assembly line. Outside of the Beatles, few hit-makers could match the consecutive chart-topping strength of the Motown sound. In the decade between the Miracles’ 1961 “Shop Around” and the Temptations’ 1971 “Just My Imagination,” Hitsville USA produced more than 100 Top 10 hits.

Motown’s company motto, “The Sound of Young America,” was no mere public relations ploy. At its peak, Gordy’s payroll on West Grand Boulevard supported 450 non-artist staff members, with an average age of 23. For many Detroit teen-agers, Hitsville USA came to symbolize their ticket out of the ghetto.

“Poor kids from broken homes would rush here after school and hang out all night. Between 1959 and 1972, this little house was like home for a lot of kids,” Edwards says. “Without Motown, most of the talent discovered in this building would have been overlooked by society.”

Another one of Motown’s major accomplishments was its ability to consistently sell black music to mainstream audiences. “Race was never an issue with us, because we were always thinking about creativity, about trying to create great commercial music,” Gordy says. “In terms of opposing the business Establishment, I did take a stand as far as an independent company versus the major record companies. It just so happened that all the majors were white and we were black.

“In the old days, the only thing we were really concerned about was the honesty of the music. We never thought about black or white or anything,” Gordy says. “We had no idea that Motown would go as far and as wide as it did, that people from all over the world would end up having such an intimate relationship with the house and the music that came from there.”