Dancing into History

MOTOWN’S INVESTMENT IN A DETROIT LANDMARK

Sometimes, it seems that almost everyone connected to Motown in Detroit has a Graystone story.

Probably the most familiar concerns “Battle of the Stars,” when several of the company’s artists performed in competition with each other at the historic ballroom on Woodward, such as the Supremes vs. the Velvelettes. The Supremes also sang there during their earliest days, when they were managed by Richard Morris and still known as the Primettes.

During his pre-Motown time, Lamont Dozier performed at the venue as a member of the Romeos. To ensure they had an audience, he handed out promotional flyers to everyone he knew, and to many he didn’t. “Man, I went crazy with those pamphlets,” he recalled in How Sweet It Is. The Romeos won the “up-and-coming” contest that night, and a first prize of $100.

Because Berry Gordy didn’t have time to see the Jackson 5 audition in person in July 1968, he asked Bobby Taylor to take them to the Graystone, where he “kept a whole batch of video equipment,” remembered Mary Wilson, “and [to] tape their act for him to look at later.”

Motown’s tape library manager, Fran Heard, loved the Christmas parties held there after Gordy had bought the building in 1963. “They were very festive and very lively,” she recalled for me recently. “It gave us, the employees and others, the opportunity to wear our very best stunning outfits.”

Even years after the ballroom’s decline, Thomas “Beans” Bowles, one of Motown’s earliest musicians and talent managers, tried to sustain its legacy by supporting the Graystone Jazz Museum. “You have to remember that the Motown sound evolved from all the jazz musicians,” he told the Detroit Free Press in 1995. Some of them recorded at the Graystone. Immediately after the purchase, Motown used the site for sessions which required more space than was comfortably available at the West Grand studio – notably, those involving an orchestra or big band. Choker Campbell cut tracks there, for instance; so did jazz trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and piano prince Johnny Griffith.

The five-storey, neo-Gothic building opened its doors at 4237 Woodward Avenue in 1922, soon becoming Detroit’s “ultimate hot spot for jazz,” as described in Kim Clarke’s insightful University of Michigan account, Backstage At The Graystone. “From the early 1920s to the late 1950s, it stomped and swayed with the music of Bix Beiderbecke, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie and other jazz luminaries,” she wrote. Among many highlights was a contest between Basie’s orchestra and that of Stan Kenton in August 1955, and a similar battle between the bands of Duke Ellington and Buddy Morrow the following February.

‘HE COULD DANCE. I WAS SQUARE’

Music filled the Graystone five nights a week, and thousands of dancing couples spun around a floor with an arc of 25,000 square feet. “It was the most beautiful ballroom,” Gordy recalled in David Maraniss’ essential Detroit book, Once In A Great City. “It was just bigger than life. And the people were dressed to kill. It was the place to go Monday nights.” (In a still-segregated America, that was the only day when Detroit’s black citizens were allowed into the Graystone for entertainment.) “And that’s where I would try to dance with girls,” Gordy told Maraniss, adding that he went with best buddy Billy Davis. “He could dance. And I was square.”

When big bands and ballroom dancing went out of style, the venue’s operators tried more modern music: Fats Domino and Ray Charles both played there in 1959, and a springtime ’60 show featured Bo Diddley, LaVern Baker, the Coasters, Clyde McPhatter and Lloyd Price, among others. In July 1961, Sam Cooke headlined a concert, with the Four Tops as openers. Then there was wrestling and boxing: three months before Gordy bought the building, Sonny Banks (“the only man to floor Cassius Clay”) fought there.

“The Graystone was a really fun place,” Claudette Robinson recalled for me recently, “where my cousin Jeanet and I loved to go to the dance parties, and see some major artists perform. This was before the ballroom was purchased by Motown. The first artist we saw there was Little Richard. He was awesome. However, we had never seen a man in full make-up before that. But he looked amazing, and his performance was dynamic.”

***The Graystone Ballroom, circa 1923 (photo: HistoricDetroit.org)***

Gordy’s acquisition reflected the rewards of his company’s growth – and this was before the Supremes’ breakthrough. (The $125,000 buyout price, as reported in the local press, is the equivalent of more than $1 million today.) “We intend to rebuild the image that the Graystone once had,” he said.

Aside from the ballroom and a large basement, the building housed four floors of 8,000 square feet apiece, suitable for offices or suchlike. Gordy said he would spend $25,000 on immediate improvements, and begin planning for other upgrades. His brother-in-law took over as general manager: accountant George Edwards was his sister Esther’s husband, and a Michigan state legislator. There was some discussion of changing the venue’s name, but it soon began to be billed as “the new Graystone” instead.

RECORDED, BUT SELDOM RELEASED

During the second half of 1963, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Liz Lands and the Miracles recorded there, among others. Almost none of that material was issued at the time, save for three tracks done for Christmas With The Miracles. Many of the numbers were Tin Pan Alley standards laid down with Campbell’s band, ranging from “Satin Doll,” “Harlem Nocturne” and “Peg O’ My Heart” (all by Wonder) to “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Try A Little Tenderness” and “Danny Boy” (all by Lands).

The Supremes cut an original, “Come On Boy,” written and produced by Gordy, at the Graystone that July. Planned for inclusion in an ultimately-unfinished album, The Supremes Sing Ballads & Blues, it stayed in the vault until one of three takes surfaced in the trio’s 25th Anniversary set in 1986, followed by a stereo mix in an expanded edition of Where Did Our Love Go in 2004. For her part, Mary Wells re-recorded several of her hits at the ballroom in August, intended for use (with overdubbed applause) on her forthcoming Recorded Live On Stage. One of them, “Strange Love,” came out instead on 2012’s Something New: Motown Lost & Found.

***Christmas ‘64 at the Graystone: the Supremes with Motown’s Phil Jones (l) and visitor Clive Stone***

If Fran Heard vividly remembered Motown’s Christmas parties, so did Tamla Motown Appreciation Society founder member Clive Stone. The Briton visited Hitsville and the Graystone – where he saw Martha & the Vandellas and the Velvelettes, in rehearsal – in December 1964, and wrote about it for the fan club’s next newsletter. “To see so many people in complete unity and to feel the warm genuine happiness that radiated the room was wonderful,” Stone recalled in January ’65.

That same month, there was an inference that Motown’s corporate HQ might even relocate to Woodward Avenue. “With Berry Gordy Jr. zooming out front,” reported Jet magazine’s January 14 edition, “Motown Records, with its impressive stable of talent, is about to burst out of its original building, which has mushroomed to three. The future, Gordy says, will see the most successful Negro record company’s move into the New Graystone building, which is also owned by the firm.”

In the event, Motown further expanded sideways and across the street on West Grand Boulevard; its headquarters’ move downtown (to another location on Woodward Avenue) did not take place until 1968. Still, in that initial glow of ownership, the firm certainly made use of the ballroom’s facilities for recording, rehearsals, and even market research. In To Be Loved, Gordy recalled how he grabbed a pre-release acetate of Martha & the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave” as he was heading to the Graystone. “I knew we had something and couldn’t wait to see how the kids reacted to it at our weekly record hop.” They filled the dance floor in seconds.

AN IMAGE FOR INSPIRATION

Motown also started putting its stars there in concert. “We’d showcase our artists to young kids at the Graystone ballroom,” then-A&R director Mickey Stevenson told J. Randy Taraborrelli in Motown: Hot Wax, City Cool & Solid Gold, “and it gave us a chance to get the youngsters off the streets and see what our image was about…inspiring them a little to maybe live up to that imagery.”

George Edwards gave primary responsibility for ticket sales to Fran Heard. “I recruited several of my friends to help me at the boxoffice,” she said. “We had a lot of fun selling tickets.” And not only Motown talent was booked: an Easter weekend show on March 29, 1964 featured several acts signed to other Detroit labels – Theresa Lindsey, Emanuel Lasky, the Adorables, the Reflections – and OKeh headliner Walter Jackson.

***Christmas ‘63 at the Graystone: Diana Ross and Berry Gordy Sr. take to the floor***

“I also maintained a library at the building,” recalled Heard, “for masters that were purchased from outside sources.” These included Ed Wingate and Joanne Jackson’s Golden World Records in 1966. “Mr. Gordy purchased some of her inventory that I housed at the Graystone. Oh, and I vaguely remember that we had a printing shop there, but I don’t recall whether it belonged to Motown.”

The Graystone’s “Battle of the Stars” was certainly etched into Gordy’s memory. “I matched up everybody,” he wrote in To Be Loved. “The Supremes against the Velvelettes, Martha & the Vandellas against the Marvelettes, the Tempts against the Contours.” The Velvelettes’ Cal Gill remembered, too: “We won twice,” she told Lois Wilson in Record Collector. “They just enjoyed my voice more than Diana’s at the time.” But the “Battle” series was scrapped in ’64 after an awkward match between Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, when the former was seen as taking advantage of the disabled latter.

It does appear that Gordy lost interest in the Graystone as Motown’s success grew exponentially – or he was distracted by other matters. After all, the team at Hitsville was reshaping the music business and integrating it more than ever, whereas the ballroom could be said to represent an unfashionable, segregated era.

The company continued to hold occasional events there, but its talent moved on to other, more appealing venues in Detroit – the Fox Theater, the 20 Grand, the Roostertail – and, of course, the transition to California sealed the Graystone’s fate. In 1974, a fire damaged the interior and the roof, and the building decayed (and was vandalised) as time passed. There was the unsuccessful effort by jazz fans to turn it into a museum, but by the summer of 1980, Motown was pressured by the city to undertake repairs – or tear it down. So that August, the wrecker’s ball was summoned. “We’ll dance in our memories, but the ballroom’s time has come,” declared an editorial in the Detroit Free Press.

Decades later, the stories still resonate, but there’s no dancing any more at 4237 Woodward Avenue. Today, it’s a McDonald’s.

Music notes: more than 100 tracks were recorded by Motown at the Graystone between June 1963 and April 1964, and as noted above, almost none were released at the time. An expedition into the always-essential Don’t Forget The Motor City website will reveal more details, best accompanied by this thread from the Soulful Detroit online forum. The latest West Grand Blog playlist (for those with Spotify) also offers a sense of that material, mostly comprising tracks released more than 20 years later. The playlist includes a couple by the Supremes – that’s certainly a throaty Diana Ross – from their “Battle of the Stars” with the Velvelettes. The latter’s performance at the Graystone was made available on 2004’s The Motown Anthology, but that CD set doesn’t appear to have made the jump to digital services.