Post by Diamond Girl on May 6, 2006 6:41:29 GMT -5
Elmer Smith | Martha & Motown, love for the Uptown
DETROIT CITY COUNCIL member Martha Reeves might have a hard time making the case for spending public money on a relic like the Uptown Theater.
It's not nearly as tough for Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas.
Reeves and a busload of apprentice stars cut their teeth at the art-deco palace on North Broad Street and at a dozen similar stops on a cross-country tour that introduced America to the Motown sound.
She talks about eating and sleeping on cramped buses, getting shot at by people who mistook them for freedom riders, traveling to nameless towns to sing for faceless crowds.
"Ninety-four straight nights on the road," she told me in an interview 12 years ago. "We had all those groups and Choker Campbell's 12-piece band on the same bus. Nobody ever got to lay down."
Her fondest memories, though, are the big-city stops like the Apollo in Harlem, the Howard in D.C.
And the Uptown.
"I remember Georgie Woods and Jimmy Bishop and being onstage with Patty Labelle," she told me this week, when I reached her at her City Council office.
"I remember going across the street to eat at Ethel's where she fed us all this good soul food.
"Philly was a big stop. I met the Crystals and the Orlons, thingy Clark and Jerry Blavat.
"I met Chubby Checker there. Gamble and Huff were as big to us as [Motown hit-makers] Holland-Dozier-Holland were.
"The Uptown was the center of it all for us. We need to preserve those places."
Linda Richardson of the Uptown Entertainment Development Corp. has been making that argument here for years. Their plan to restore the 2,100-seat theater is starting to get some traction.
Development in the area - including the $75 million Avenue North project being completed at Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, the renewal of Progress Plaza at Broad and Oxford and a $10 million city investment in street improvements along North Broad - is creating a setting that may make the project viable.
State Reps. Dwight Evans and Jewell Williams and state Sen. Shirley Kitchen are looking to include something for the Uptown in a state funding package that will finance a comprehensive development plan for the North Broad Street corridor.
Williams, whose legislative district includes the Uptown, has lined up about a half-million dollars in grants for improvements in the area of Broad Street and Susquehanna Avenue, where the theater is located. He and others are working to identify donors whose matching money will bring them closer to their goal.
But they are a long way from the $6 million a complete renovation of the theater is likely to cost. The site would include a media-production facility, office suites and ground-floor retail spaces.
Richardson seems confident that they will raise the money. But others have tried and failed.
While nostalgia may be a heady fuel for their renewal dreams, it can be a shaky foundation for a project this massive.
No one knows that better than Martha Reeves. She lived for years on the nostalgic notion that Motown's president Berry Gordy and the homegrown stars she grew up with in Detroit were her family.
It wasn't until she started taking care of business for herself that she got back on track. Today, after joining City Council in January, she's singing as many weeks a year as her schedule will permit, hiring her own crew. The Vandellas, the group she fronted as a girl, work for her now.
They are headlining a benefit concert, "Legends of Soul II: For the Love of the Uptown" on May 7 at the International House.
For Martha Reeves, it's a chance to pay homage to one
of the places where her life changed.
And to support its rebirth, in the way that it supported her so long ago: In music.
"We sang our way out of poverty in places like the Uptown," she said. "I can never forget that."
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DETROIT CITY COUNCIL member Martha Reeves might have a hard time making the case for spending public money on a relic like the Uptown Theater.
It's not nearly as tough for Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas.
Reeves and a busload of apprentice stars cut their teeth at the art-deco palace on North Broad Street and at a dozen similar stops on a cross-country tour that introduced America to the Motown sound.
She talks about eating and sleeping on cramped buses, getting shot at by people who mistook them for freedom riders, traveling to nameless towns to sing for faceless crowds.
"Ninety-four straight nights on the road," she told me in an interview 12 years ago. "We had all those groups and Choker Campbell's 12-piece band on the same bus. Nobody ever got to lay down."
Her fondest memories, though, are the big-city stops like the Apollo in Harlem, the Howard in D.C.
And the Uptown.
"I remember Georgie Woods and Jimmy Bishop and being onstage with Patty Labelle," she told me this week, when I reached her at her City Council office.
"I remember going across the street to eat at Ethel's where she fed us all this good soul food.
"Philly was a big stop. I met the Crystals and the Orlons, thingy Clark and Jerry Blavat.
"I met Chubby Checker there. Gamble and Huff were as big to us as [Motown hit-makers] Holland-Dozier-Holland were.
"The Uptown was the center of it all for us. We need to preserve those places."
Linda Richardson of the Uptown Entertainment Development Corp. has been making that argument here for years. Their plan to restore the 2,100-seat theater is starting to get some traction.
Development in the area - including the $75 million Avenue North project being completed at Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, the renewal of Progress Plaza at Broad and Oxford and a $10 million city investment in street improvements along North Broad - is creating a setting that may make the project viable.
State Reps. Dwight Evans and Jewell Williams and state Sen. Shirley Kitchen are looking to include something for the Uptown in a state funding package that will finance a comprehensive development plan for the North Broad Street corridor.
Williams, whose legislative district includes the Uptown, has lined up about a half-million dollars in grants for improvements in the area of Broad Street and Susquehanna Avenue, where the theater is located. He and others are working to identify donors whose matching money will bring them closer to their goal.
But they are a long way from the $6 million a complete renovation of the theater is likely to cost. The site would include a media-production facility, office suites and ground-floor retail spaces.
Richardson seems confident that they will raise the money. But others have tried and failed.
While nostalgia may be a heady fuel for their renewal dreams, it can be a shaky foundation for a project this massive.
No one knows that better than Martha Reeves. She lived for years on the nostalgic notion that Motown's president Berry Gordy and the homegrown stars she grew up with in Detroit were her family.
It wasn't until she started taking care of business for herself that she got back on track. Today, after joining City Council in January, she's singing as many weeks a year as her schedule will permit, hiring her own crew. The Vandellas, the group she fronted as a girl, work for her now.
They are headlining a benefit concert, "Legends of Soul II: For the Love of the Uptown" on May 7 at the International House.
For Martha Reeves, it's a chance to pay homage to one
of the places where her life changed.
And to support its rebirth, in the way that it supported her so long ago: In music.
"We sang our way out of poverty in places like the Uptown," she said. "I can never forget that."
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