Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George

Abstract

122 MichiganHistoricalReview Nelson George. Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound. 1985; repr., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Pp. 312. Discography. Index. Photographs. Preface. Paper, $24.95. For those who missed Nelson George's excellent history ofMotown Records when itwas first published in 1985, the University of Illinois Press recendy issued a paperback edition ofWhere Did Our Love Go? The Rase andFall ofthe Motown Sound. Unfortunately, the preface for the new edition does not include more current information about what happened to Berry Gordy and Motown in the years since the book's first publication. Nor does the volume include endnotes to identify sources. Still,George's book offers a definitive history and analysis of one of the most important record companies in the history of popular music. The story ofMotown is in large part the story of Berry Gordy, Jr., the company's founder and guiding force. George begins by examining Gordy's family background. Berry learned from his parents the lessons of self-reliance and entrepreneurial ability, as well as the importance of family, all ofwhich contributed to the birth and growth ofMotown. Gordy began his music career as a songwriter in the late 1950s, writing hits such as "Lonely Teardrops" for Jackie Wilson. He then branched out as an independent record producer, eventually founding his own record company in 1959. Within a decade he owned and operated amusic empire that included Motown Records, several other labels, Jobete Music Publishers, and International Talent Management. Gordy and hisMotown enterprises left theirmark on pop music, the entertainment industry, and American culture. Gordy dubbed his Detroit headquarters "Hitsville, USA" and boasted that the "Motown Sound" was the "sound of young America" (p. 103). To a large extent, it was. The original Motown roster included future superstars such as Smokey Robinson and theMiracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Temptations, Mary Wells, Martha Reeves and theVandellas, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder, as well as top-notch songwriters and producers such as the aforementioned Smokey Robinson, Holland-Dozier-Holland, and Norman Whitfield. Not only did the "Motown Sound" leave its imprint on popular music, but the rise ofMotown also reflected and helped shape the civil rights movement and black enterprise in the 1960s and early 1970s. Nelson George's excellent history tells the entire Motown story, explaining Gordy's role aswell as the stories behind important hits and groups. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in music, African American history, or recent America. It offers a detailed Book Reviews 123 look at an important chapter inMichigan history?the rise and fall of Detroit's "Motown Sound." Richard Aquila Penn State University, Erie Steven High and David W. Lewis. CorporateWasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008. Pp. 192. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Photographs. Paper, $18.95. In Corporate Wasteland, Steven High explores the historical landscape of deindustrialization from a variety of perspectives, offering cultural, aesthetic, and class analyses of issues often relegated to the realm of economics. High considers the cultural side of industrial decline through the prism ofmemory and place. Contributing to the ongoing consideration of memory inmaterial-culture circles, he sees historical understanding of plant closings and decaying industrial sites as shaped by issues of class and community. In other words, middle-age blue-collar workers living in Detroit, Michigan, form a different historical understanding of General Motors's shutdown of the Fisher Division's Fort Street Plant than do a younger generation ofwhite-collar urban explorers. Different memories and different interactions with a particular place compete with one another to shape a broader historical interpretation. After introducingDavid W. Lewis's photographs of postmodern ruins and "modern gothic" (p. 9), High turns to the aesthetics of deindustrialization and the phenomenon of postindustrial urban explorers, those who investigate decaying industrial sites in somewhat the same way nineteenth-century transcendentalists interacted with natural landscapes. Urban explorers tend to experience the "technological sublime" (p. 52) outside of any historical context and certainlywithout any framework of labor history. Emphasizing class-based responses to deindustrialized sites, High notes "these were not the sons and daughters of mill and...