Detroit - Like a tumbleweed blowing through a ghost town, a brown White Castle bag floats down the sidewalk, riding the cold wind of another cloudy day in the Motor City.
Cars move fast down W. Grand Boulevard as the few people on the street attempt to cross the lanes, heading toward the brightest thing on the dreary January afternoon - a sign reading "Hitsville USA."
It's been decades since the beat of No. 1 tracks echoed through the house at 2648 W. Grand Blvd., but Motown Records is still very much alive.
Its heartbeat is heard through scratched records - collectors' items today - and is kept within the walls of Motown visionary Berry Gordy Jr.'s first house.
"Motown Records really starts from this dining room table," said Jerome Meriwether, a tour guide at the Motown Historical Museum, which now occupies the house.
Leading visitors from across the nation, Meriwether, with his thick black sunglasses and leather cap, points at black-and-white photos of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Martha Reeves.
"Stevie Wonder sat right here," Meriwether said, pointing to the wooden floor, wide eyes following his hand.
The final leg of the tour at the Motown Historical Museum is Studio A - where the magic happened.
"Every major artist in Motown worked in this room," he said. "Songs like 'My Girl' and 'ABC' and 'My Cherie Amour' were all recorded right here."
Motown, founded in 1959, left the Midwest in 1972, attracted by the warm sun and galvanizing glamour of Los Angeles, where artists such as Brian McKnight and India.Arie now appear on the label.
But it was in Detroit that Motown had its greatest effect on music, from the way artists present themselves to the respect of the electric bass guitar.
The record label was an expert at taking artists - mostly straight from high school or from Detroit's projects - and grooming them to play anywhere and for any audience - rich or poor, black or white.
"They had a grooming department. They taught them how to sit, how to talk, how to respond in interviews, how to walk onto the stage, how to exit a limousine, how to eat," said Isaac Kalumbu, an MSU music assistant professor who teaches a course on Motown music. "There was a need to succeed that drove Berry Gordy to groom his artists."
Success for Gordy meant taking music based on jazz, blues and gospel and marketing it to a wide audience.
"This is a music based on black musical roots and yet it was performed and packaged in a way that everybody could relate to," Kalumbu said.
And the music changed a lot of things - about society and the industry alike. In an age when segregation was the norm, Motown pushed black singers to great success. It also took women performers and turned them into stars.
"One of the things I have found out as far away as Zimbabwe, is that black women were getting inspiration from seeing other black women in these kinds of roles," Kalumbu said.
Allan Slutsky, producer of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," a new documentary about the legendary backup band The Funk Brothers, saw the changes firsthand growing up in Philadelphia.
Slutsky's film opens in Mid-Michigan tonight at the Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbott Road in East Lansing.
"In school, I hung out with all the black guys and I used to get the crap beat out of me all the time by white kids who called me 'nigger lover,'" said Slutsky, who is white. "But when Motown became the hippest thing, I was in this black band all of a sudden and I was cool.
"All of a sudden, it was like, 'Hey soul brotha slide me five.'"
But Slutsky said the integration resulting from Motown's popularity was a good thing.
"It brought black people in the lives of white people for a lot of good and stupid reasons," he said. "It made them less threatening, though they never were in first place, but all of a sudden with clean-cut guys they could relate to them. But those artists weren't any different than any of the guys in the ghetto, they just had clean clothes."
And they were phenomenal musicians.
"There's a reason why Motown makes you feel good," Slutsky said. "These guys were such exceptional jazz musicians that this music was below them. It was so easy to play and that effortlessness was transported to the audience and made them relax and have a good time."
