New American Girl Doll Hails From From Detroit!

New for 2016 is American Girl Doll Melody Ellison, who hails from Deeeetroit City!


From American Girl's Website:

Melody Ellison is an optimistic, enthusiastic girl growing up in Detroit, Michigan during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Because February is Black History Month, your daughter may be learning about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement in school. But even in our own changing times, civil rights issues and the social climate of the 1960s may be difficult for her to fully understand. That is why we are so proud to introduce our compelling new BeForever™ character, Melody, whose story reflects the changing face and history of the nation during that important era.

Nine-year-old Melody is growing up in Detroit in the mid-1960s, a time of great energy, optimism, and change for the African American community. She is a singer and loves to perform in church, with her family, and in her community. Her stories are set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, which was gathering momentum, and the music scene, including the success and popularity of Motown Records and its artists.

As Melody gains more awareness of racial inequality and her sense of community grows from her extended family to include her neighborhood and, ultimately, all African Americans, she is inspired by Dr. King to have a dream of her own: to lift her voice for fairness and equality.

Because many girls are interested in music and performing, as well as starting to find their own "voice" and express their opinions, they'll find Melody's stories engaging and entertaining. You'll love that they're educational, too, helping your girl connect with the past on a more personal level. Come meet Melody Ellison and introduce her to your girl today!

After 50 Years, Motown Endures In Detroit

By Rob Lever
AFP

Fifty years after the birth of Motown, the music lives on as a legacy for a city that has seen more than its share of hard times in the past decades.

The Motown record label launched in January 1959 by onetime auto worker Berry Gordy with a loan of 800 dollars from his family became a worldwide phenomenon that still influences today's music.

The Detroit label quickly became the largest producer of 45 RPM singles, with more than 180 number one hits, and grew into the largest black-owned business in the United States.

From a tiny studio in Berry's home on Grand Boulevard, Motown produced songs that became a virtual sound track for American baby boomers: from the Temptations' joyful "My Girl", to Marvin Gaye's landmark "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", to Smokey Robinson's soulful "The Tracks of My Tears".

Motown discovered 11-year-old Stevie Wonder singing on a street corner, and launched the careers of stars such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Four Tops and the Jackson 5 with its child star Michael Jackson.

The anniversary is being marked by a series of events this year at Detroit's Motown museum and elsewhere by Universal Music, which now owns the Motown label.

A half-century after its founding, Motown is still seen as a force in the music world and in Detroit that many say helped break down racial barriers.

"I think Motown is one of the most positive things the city has produced," says Suzanne Smith, a Detroit native and history professor at George Mason University who authored a book on Motown, "Dancing in the Street", named after the hit song.

"It's an African-American success story that continues to inspire people."

Gordy was inspired by his experiences, including his work on the assembly line at a Lincoln-Mercury automobile plant.

"Every day I watched how a bare metal frame, rolling down the line would come off the other end, a spanking brand new car," he said in a 2007 speech.

"What a great idea. Maybe, I could do the same thing with my music."

Motown, which drew mainly from home-grown Detroit talent, created music that crossed racial boundaries.

"The common denominator is the universality of the lyrics. The simplicity of the lyrics," says Audley "Kano" Smith, chief executive of the Motown Museum located in Berry's former home and studio.

He said Motown evolved with the times including a period of tremendous upheaval in American cities.

"I think that Motown was clearly one of the most important social movements that existed in tandem or parallel to political activism in the streets that as well as things that were happening," said Audley Smith.

"When you think about the lyrics of Marvin Gaye's (Vietnam War protest song) 'What's Goin' On?' or Steve Wonder's social anthems about the struggles going on in the cities, and the passion in which those lyrics expressed the concerns of everyone.

"By the same token when Martha Reeves sang 'Dancing in the Street', that was for everyone, and that kind of music resonated across racial and economic lines."

Some argue that Motown became a victim of its own success and that it lost its soul when it moved from Detroit to Los Angeles and became part of big music conglomerates.

"Motown is as symbolic of dreams frustrated as it is to great music," writes Nelson George in book "Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound."

"Motown is no longer about the specific accomplishments of a Detroit-based record label but about a musical moment in time," writes Suzanne Smith.

She said Motown logically grew out of Detroit, with its long music tradition in jazz, and the large black middle class that emerged from the auto industry.

"There was a configuration of things, the public school system was strong, music education was strong, so Detroit was uniquely able to produce this phenomenon," she said.

Now, she says, "the Motown sound primarily acts as a commercial trademark used by corporations to evoke a nostalgia for the 1960s."

Still, Motown veterans say the music lives on.

"Motown is a classic sound that has stood the test of time," says Dennis Coffey, a guitarist who played on many Motown recordings as part of largely white backup band "The Funk Brothers."

Adds Frances Nero, a singer who recorded on the Motown label from 1965 to 1967.

"It's a sound that's here to stay and will be appreciated, maybe for another 50 years."

Stevie Wonder honoured by President and First Lady

http://blogs.thetimes.co.za

Last night Barack Obama presented Stevie Wonder with America’s highest award for pop music at a ceremony at the White House - Library of Congress’ Gershwin prize. President and First Lady hosted a concert to honor Stevie Wonder, a man whose music they said brought them together. “Love was in the air at the White House”, said the pool reporters there.

Here are some edited notes from the pool report:

“Michelle opened the event, and explained that she grew up listening to Stevie Wonder’s music with her grandfather. Years later, she said she “discovered what Stevie meant when he sang about love. Barack and I chose the song, ‘You and I’ as our wedding song.” A chorus of “awws” from the crowd.

Obama, when presenting the award, called Stevie Wonder’s music “the soundtrack of my youth,” saying he found in it “peace and inspiration, especially in difficult times.” He then mirrored his wife’s comments, saying: “I think it’s fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me. We might not have married. The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship.”

The award was presented, and after a long ovation, Wonder spoke. “President and Mrs. Obama, I’m so excited to know that I was a part of” – he said, pausing for some laughter from the audience. “I needn’t say more.” Obama, standing to Wonder’s left, sported a broad smile, and then looked down to his wife in the front row.

Wonder thanked his friends and family, and said he accepted the award for his mother. If she were here, Wonder said, “She’d say, ‘Let me give him a peach cobbler.’” Wonder then spoke of his excitement over the president who honored him tonight, saying that through him “America has a chance to again live up to the greatness that it deserves to be seen and known as.”

He closed by saying that he looked forward to the president being able to unite the world, “so that in my lifetime I can write some more songs about love, about unity, and real songs of passion.” And then he added: “You know, maybe I’ll be a part of creating some more of those babies.” The audience roared with laughter and applause.

The pool of journalists exited shortly after, but as they were leaving they could hear Wonder saying that he had thought about inviting Obama to sing “Michelle My Belle” with him. Sadly, he did not. Instead, Wonder struck up “Signed Sealed Delivered,” a staple of the campaign trail.”

Four Tops will receive a lifetime achievement award Sunday at the 51st annual Grammy Awards

Associated Press

Abdul "Duke" Fakir cried joyful tears when he learned that the Four Tops will receive a lifetime achievement award Sunday at the 51st annual Grammy Awards.

He's also been on an emotional high as Motown Records, the label that recorded and released his group's biggest hits, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

But the banner year is bittersweet, as the 73-year-old entertainer marks the occasions and accolades without his longtime bandmates of more than four decades. He became the Four Tops' lone surviving original member in October, when frontman Levi Stubbs died, following the death of Renaldo "Obie" Benson in 2005 and Lawrence Payton in 1997.

"I just wish my partners were here to see the acclaim the world has given us," he said recently from the room at the Motown Historical Museum that served as the label's studio from 1959 until 1972, when the company moved to Los Angeles.

Fakir was at the Detroit museum last month to help kick off a year of festivities for the label that also spun out chart-topping hits by the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, the Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and many others.

The Four Tops, whose hits included "Reach Out (I'll Be There)," "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" and "Baby I Need Your Loving," held a distinction unmatched by most of their peers — the original lineup lasted well into the 1990s. The group signed with Motown Records in 1963 after nine years together and produced 20 top-40 hits during the next decade.

Fakir said the quartet shared many honors over the years, including being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and securing a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But the group never won a Grammy and was nominated only once, for "It's All in the Game" in 1970.

"I was talking to my son just before Christmas," said Fakir, who learned about the award by phone from Recording Academy President Neil Portnow. "I was saying ... 'We've done everything possible you can do in this business. But one thing slipped away from us, and that's a Grammy.'

"About a week later, I got that call. I broke out in tears. To me, there was a little hole that was missing. Not that I wasn't grateful for what we have. But from the recording industry, we really didn't get the award that's the highest acclaim."

Fakir will be performing Sunday as part of a Four Tops tribute with Robinson, Ne-Yo and Jamie Foxx. He arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday and was scheduled to rehearse every day before the show.

Working with Robinson, whom he described as a longtime competitor and a close friend, was a thrill.

"It kind of takes you back quite a few years," he said by phone Thursday morning, after the first run-through the day before. "All we did was laugh and joke. We talked about golf the whole time."

Fakir hasn't let up despite the loss of his mates or the lure of the links. He plays about 100 shows a year with the reconstituted Tops, which includes Payton's son Lawrence Payton Jr., Ronnie McNeir, a former Motown singer and Benson's co-writer, and Theo Peoples, a one-time member of the Temptations in the 1990s.

"It's almost like an extension of the Four Tops," Fakir said.

Some artists scoff at lifetime awards, considering them consolation prizes for days gone by. Not Fakir, who sees it as a way to celebrate an enduring career forged by four high-school friends in Detroit during the 1950s.

"To me, (it's) greater than one Grammy, two or three," he said. "It says for your life ... you've done well. I just wish again, the guys were here to accept that."

The Grammy Awards will be presented live from the Staples Center on CBS.

Rock Hall wishes MOTOWN Happy 50th Anniversary with a new exhibit

http://www.rockhall.com/

www.flickr.com/photos/rockhall/

Cleveland, OH - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will launch the new year celebrating the golden anniversary of Motown’s contribution to the world with its newest exhibit MOTOWN: The Sound of Young America Turns 50. The Motown exhibit will open January 1, 2009, in the Museum’s Ahmet M. Ertegun Main Exhibit Hall.

In an incredibly short amount of time, the Motown label produced 14 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees (list appears below).

The Motown exhibit features instruments, clothing, programs, posters, sheet music, original music scores, contracts, recordings and more. Items from Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, the Jackson 5, Rick James, Martha and the Vandellas and many others will be featured.

“While Motown was lauded as ‘The Sound of Young America,’ it was actually the sound of all of America and a good portion of the world,” said Howard Kramer, director of curatorial affairs for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Featured collections pieces include:

• Stevie Wonder’s glasses and Superbowl 1999 “African American” outfit

• “Red Hot,” an outfit worn by Mary Wilson of the Supremes on the Ed Sullivan Show

• James Jamerson’s upright bass played on all of his Motown recording sessions until 1963

• A graphic representation of all of the Motown family of labels

Berry Gordy founded and presided over the Motown musical empire. As a young African-American man working in a challenging environment, Gordy reached across the racial divide with music that touched all people, regardless of the color of their skin.

Motown became a model of black capitalism, pride and self-expression and a repository for some of the greatest talent ever assembled at one company. The list of artists who were discovered and thrived at Motown includes the Supremes, Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5 and Martha and the Vandellas. But the artists alone were not the whole story by any means.

Motown’s staff songwriting and production teams (e.g., Holland-Dozier-Holland) and in-house musicians (including Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Benny Benjamin (drummer) and James Jamerson (bassist) as well as bandleader/keyboardist Earl Van Dyke) contributed immeasurably to the Motown sound. The idea of a self-contained operation exuding soul from its every pore was all part of Gordy’s grand design.

The rags-to-riches story began in Detroit’s inner city, where Gordy, born in 1929 as the son of a plastering contractor, dreamed of making his mark on the world. Stints in the army, as a boxer and a record-store manager preceded his entree into the creative and entrepreneurial side of the music business.

In the mid-Fifties, Gordy began writing songs for local R&B acts and quickly acquired a local reputation as a songwriter, producer and hustler. His first break came in 1957, when Brunswick Records purchased his composition “Reet Petite” for Jackie Wilson.

In 1959, Gordy ventured into independent production with singer Marv Johnson, enjoying a few modest hits such as “Come to Me.”

In 1960, Gordy leased another hit single - “Money,” by Barrett Strong - to Anna Records, a label owned by his sister. He then launched his own company: Tammie Records, which was changed to Tamla and eventually joined by the Gordy, Soul and Motown imprints.

He ran his business from a house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit that Gordy dubbed “Hitsville U.S.A.”

The first hit of any size for the fledgling company belonged to the Miracles, a vocal group led by Smokey Robinson. “Way Over There,” released on Tamla in 1960, sold a respectable 60,000 copies. Its followup, “Shop Around,” reached Number Two on the pop charts and launched Motown into the national market.

Overseeing the whole operation from its founding in 1959 to its sale in 1988 was Berry, who insured that Motown’s stable of singers, songwriters, producers and musicians took the concept of simple, catchy pop songs to a whole new level of sophistication and, thanks to the music’s roots in gospel and blues, visceral intensity.

At Motown, notions of “formula” were transformed into works of art in the hands of singers like Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Smokey Robinson, Levi Stubbs (of the Four Tops), David Ruffin, Dennis Edwards and Eddie Kendricks (of the Temptations), Diana Ross, Martha Reeves and Stevie Wonder.

Gordy touted Motown as “the Sound of Young America.” Its roots may have been in gospel and blues, but its image was one of upward mobility and good, clean fun. At Gordy’s insistence, Motown’s men and women of soul attended in-house finishing school, where they learned how to comport themselves onstage and in social situations.

Gordy, by all accounts a stern taskmaster, instituted an internal program of “quality control,” including weekly product evaluation meetings, that he modeled after Detroit’s auto-making plants. At the same time, the working environment was sufficiently loose and freewheeling to foster creativity. In Gordy’s words, “Hitsville had an atmosphere that allowed people to experiment creatively and gave them the courage not to be afraid to make mistakes.”

Motown generated literally hundreds of hit singles, but one statistic bears especially eloquent testimony to Motown’s success. In 1966, the company’s “hit ratio” - the percentage of records released that made the national charts - was 75%, an awesome figure.

In its Sixties heyday, Motown’s parade of hits revolutionized American popular music. After Motown, black popular music would never again be dismissed as a minority taste. For more than a decade, Berry Gordy and his talented team translated a black idiom into the Sound of Young America. Aesthetically and commercially, Motown’s achievements will likely remain unrivaled.

About the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is the nonprofit organization that exists to educate visitors, fans and scholars from around the world about the history and continuing significance of rock and roll music. It carries out this mission both through its operation of a world-class museum that collects, preserves, exhibits and interprets this art form and through its library and archives as well as its educational programs.

The Museum is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. On Wednesdays the Museum is open until 9 p.m.

Museum admission is $22 for adults, $17 for seniors (60+), $13 for children (9-12) and children under 8 and Museum members are free.

When you become a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the world of rock and roll becomes yours to explore.

Call 216.515.1939 for information on becoming a member.

For general inquiries, please call 216.781.ROCK.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees Produced by the Motown Record Label

PERFORMERS

The Four Tops

Marvin Gaye

The Jackson Five

Michael Jackson

Gladys Knight and the Pips Smokey Robinson

The Supremes

The Temptations

Martha and the Vandellas

Stevie Wonder

NON-PERFORMERS

Berry Gordy, Jr.

Holland-Dozier-Holland

SIDEMEN

James Jamerson

Benny Benjamin

Motown turns 50 while Gordy revitalizes purpose

by Scott Thorn

MLive.com

Berry Gordy, Jr. created the record label that brought Detroit soul into the spotlight.

Divorced, unemployed and broke, Berry Gordy, Jr. borrowed $800 from his family to start a record label, Motown Records. 15 years later, it became the largest and most successful business owned by an African-American in the United States, despite the roadblocks of racism and pre-civil rights.

Now, 50 years later, Gordy and Universal Motown records will celebrate the iconic Deroit record label with a 50th anniversary party Monday at the Motown Historical Museum when it will be declared "Motown Day" by city and state officials.

When interviewed, surviving member of the Four Tops, Duke Fakir, had this to say about Hitsville U.S.A.

January 09, 2009: Cleveland.com: "When we would go out on the road, as soon as we'd come back, they had tracks cut by the wonderful Funk Brothers," said Fakir, 73. "We would always say, 'Wow - it's another carpet to ride on!'

"It was so easy to sing to those wonderful tracks. All you had to do was just get into the groove of that track and sail on."

Gordy "wasn't just selling records," Fakir said. "He was really creating stars.

Other surviving member of The Four Tops, Otis Williams, remembers Gordy's strict work ethic and meetings that started at 9 a.m. sharp; after that you were locked out the room, no matter who you were.

But Williams also remembers a socially progressive side of Berry Gordy as well.

January 09, 2009: Cleveland.com:In other ways, business at Motown was anything but usual, particularly Gordy's equal-opportunity hiring practices.

"I would hear a lot of guys say, 'Hey, man, being a black guy, I would hire nothing but blacks, 'cause it's a black company,' " Williams said. "Berry didn't think that way. He would hire whomever was able to do the job. Berry had Hispanics working for him, whites, Jewish people.
According to Gordy, it was all about the music and a blind passion to put out the best artists and entertainment in the area. He was wholly unaware about the risky business venture he was undertaking.

January 9, 2009: The Detroit News: "I didn't know enough about economics to know," Gordy said. "I was involved in my stuff, and I took very little interest in anything other than my creative activities and the artists I worked with. I know the times were what they were, but I guess in those days I was more concerned about the whole social situation and the racial tensions. Now I'm a lot more aware of economics and how the whole thing works."

Although Gordy sold Motown in 1988 for $61 million, this septuagenarian is far from finished in the music business and industry.

January 9, 2009: The Detroit News: Along with launching Motown 50, he's overseeing a Broadway musical based on his life and a multi-part documentary film on what he did "and how I did it" at Motown, using extensive footage filmed during Motown's heyday. He's also emerging from retirement to manage a new singer, "one of the greatest I've ever met," whom he isn't ready to reveal just yet.

This is quite a statement from the person who brought us the likes of Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson, Martha & the Vandellas, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and countless others.

But perhaps one of the longer lasting and least focused upon aspect of his career was his influence on the civil rights movement in American, whether overtly or covertly, along with the courage of his artists.

January 9, 2009: The Detroit News: "Gordy also praises the courage of his artists who traveled by bus through the South with the Motortown Revue in the middle of the volatile Civil Rights era. "They were shot at; they were the unsung heroes," Gordy said. "All I'm doing now is what I've done for the past 50 years, protect the legacy because people were trying to rewrite Motown history."

It was Motown Records that released Dr. Martin Luther King's key Civil Rights speeches on records. It was Motown groups like the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas and the Temptations who insisted that the rope dividing their Southern audiences into black and white be taken down.

This sentiment is also echoed by Duke Fakir, one of the last surviving Four Tops, who sees even greater reason and perspective in this 50th anniversary, and why it is important that it is happening at this moment in time.

January 8, 2009: USA Today: As America prepares to inaugurate its first black president, Fakir heralds Motown's role in the long process that brought the country there. Motown's crossover success, he says, prompted white Americans to "begin to look at black America a little differently."

"It's one of the steps that took us up that ladder," he says. "Motown music was an integral part of softening the blow, little by little. And that's the part I'm really proud of."

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Motown, a week's worth of festivities and experiences have been planned by the city and special artists. Among the events are:

January 09, 2009: Cleveland.com: "Motown: The Sound of Young America Turns 50," a new exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, showcases Wonder's harmonica and glittering sunglasses, a chic red dress from Mary Wilson of the Supremes and an upright bass once played by James Jamerson of Motown's legendary in-house band, the Funk Brothers, among other artifacts; A new boxed set, "Motown: The Complete No. 1's," contains every chart-topping single issued by the company, lavishly packaged in a reproduction of the Hitsville facility.
The Detroit Free Press also has a listing of the week's scheduled events, including half price admission, reminiscing of the old days by Motown stars, and a two-hour documentary, produced by Berry Gordy Jr.