DESTINATIONS — THE US
Motown Museum
production of the F-150 pick- up truck. Visitors can watch the action on the factory floor, getting the chance to try tools and test engines as they learn about the manufacture of the best-selling vehicle in the US. Tickets start at $13.50. The site also hosts the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, featuring indoor and outdoor exhibits of Americana including the Rosa Parks bus and the chair in which Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was assassinated.
l MOTOWN SOUNDS The Rouge Factory may have employed more people, but one of Detroit’s most successful production lines was found in a modest house a few blocks from the Fisher Building. Fresh from the factory, songwriter and aspiring producer Berry Gordy put a sign reading ‘Hitsville USA’ on his house and built a recording studio in his garage, figuring that he could apply some of the assembly line processes to music. The Motown studio was open 24/7, and artists didn’t just record there, they were turned into stars, with lessons in choreography and even deportment. The Motown sound took America by storm, blending jazz rhythms with gospel’s call- and-response patterns, and adding reverb effects by pumping the sound through a specially created echo chamber. Gordy borrowed $800 to start his business. Within eight years, it was pulling in $20 million. Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles in 1972,
and now Hitsville is the Motown Museum and a mecca for anyone who’s ever tapped their feet to Dancing in the Street or wailed along to Tears of a Clown. You can see the desk where Diana Ross worked as a secretary before becoming one of the label’s most successful stars, and the sofa in Gordy’s private apartment where Marvin Gaye would stretch out for a few hours’ sleep after a long recording session. A glass case contains the black fedora and sequined glove from the Billie Jean video where Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk, and there’s even the original candy machine – complete with chocolate bars – where little Stevie Wonder would drop his 10 cents knowing his favourite Babe Ruth
bar would always be in the same slot. In the legendary Studio A, our guide Peggy wouldn’t let us leave until we’d all sung in the same spot as the Motown greats – it’s a good thing Mary Wells wasn’t around to hear us murder My Guy.
l NEW DETROIT It’s easy to be distracted by Detroit’s past
glories, but that does a disservice to the
current community. The city may have been down, but it’s definitely not out. The Downtown districts – while still looking rather eerily empty to a Londoner’s eyes – are enjoying a resurgence, with loft apartments filling up as fast as they’re redeveloped. A new hockey stadium and entertainment district is in progress, and by the end of next year, a streetcar will link Downtown to Midtown. A five-minute wander from our hotel is Harmonie Park, where local bands play al fresco gigs twice weekly, and the grand
Fox Theater, which still pulls in big names. Apart from an odd McDonald’s or Starbucks, most shops are independents, reflecting a young and creative demographic – yoga studios and salad bars with signs on windows advertising coding bootcamps. More than 70 restaurants have opened in the past two years. Detroit is no longer the playground of big industry, rather a hotbed of entrepreneurship, where a community of small businesses is pulling the city up by its hipster bootstraps. Nowhere is this more
evident than at Eastern Market on a Saturday morning. The market has been there since 1891, but
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travelweekly.co.uk — 2 July 2015
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