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REVIEWS
"Though we would all count Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas and Marvin Gaye among Motown's greatest recording artists, Suzanne E. Smith would add another: Martin Luther King Jr...[Smith] is correct when she says it has become all but impossible to separate what happened in Detroit in the 1960s from the music that was playing when it did: as Norman Whitfield, the producer who replaced Holland-Dozier-Holland as the label's primary hitmaker, put it in a song he wrote for the Temptations, it was a 'Ball of Confusion.' Thirty years later, we're still unraveling it, and Dancing in the Street affords valuable insights to those of us who were there and those of us who weren't...It is fascinating reading for anyone who believes the sound of young America was not incompatible with the sound of struggle."
"Suzanne E. Smith investigates the connections between music and a positive force: civil rights. Smith's compelling work depicts the exponential growth of the Motown recording company and reveals its role in shaping the civil rights movement in the urban North."
"A finely rendered history of the storybook success of the 'Motown Sound,' arguably the most resonant cultural development of its time, within the localized context of urban turmoil and the civil-rights struggle...Relying on primary sources and on the recollections of Motown's acts, employees, and session players, Smith touchingly captures the industrious determination of a cultural community whose ambitions were underwritten by social cohesion and a generations-strong work ethic...She captures the spirit of this exciting time by focusing on individuals (Nat King Cole, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Motown discoveries like the Supremes and Marvin Gaye) whose actions were central to their era's cultural and civil-rights triumphs. More sobering is her re-creation of events leading to Detroit's 1967 riots, when intransigents on both sides of the color line overrode more moderate, conciliatory factions, leading the city toward a conflagration that permanently sundered the region's black and white communities. This reconstruction of Motown's meteoric popular rise during an era of fractious social division is compelling and informative for both aficionados of the music and students of American urban history."
"That Detroit birthed a black music style, Motown, that conquered the white market at a time of unprecedented racial and social upheaval has attracted much comment. Investigation, Smith observes, has concentrated on how a black company, Motown Records, succeeded with white audiences and on the civil rights movement's effect on that success by fostering 'broader cultural integration.' Smite probes deeper...Tough stuff for a pop music book, but Smith answers rationally and evocatively in a serious book about the music biz that is excellent for pop music collections and downright obligatory for serious pop culture collections."
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