Detroit Scene
Detroit’s engines are humming.
Building on the past glory of Motown and automotive victory, Detroit now has three new casinos, a Riverwalk and the new Comerica Park for the Detroit Tigers. Downtown’s Greektown is a hopping zone for nightlife and dining while the Woodward Avenue Theater District is a high-energy street for performance art. The birthplace of Motown music (the Motown Historical Museum is a must), techno and countless major musicians, Detroit still has the country’s top live music venues. Soak up Detroit history at the central Hotel Pontchartrain (site of an old French fur trading fort on the Detroit River) while experiencing the new Detroit.
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Featured Book
Home in Detroit
Editorial Reviews
Description
Foreword
My name is John J. George, a life long Detroiter. Twenty years ago we started the Motor City Blight Busters in an effort to help stabilize, revitalize, beautify, and repopulate the city of Detroit with homeowners. Our aim is to restore the city to the state of great prominence it once held. We believe that inviting everyone to participate in this worthwhile effort will add up to Detroit’s rebirth.
Home in Detroit details the lives of the most talented Detroiters with current day photographs of where they lived in Detroit. While the book celebrates their lives, we feel it also celebrates the neighborhoods where they lived and the memories attached to their homes. By supporting Blight Busters you will possibly help the neighborhood where you grew up, or maybe where your love ones lived, or maybe an area that has been forgotten, we need your involvement!
This book represents the best who have lived in Detroit, it is all our challenge to ensure that Detroit neighborhoods continue to produce great people for generations to come, together, we can accomplish anything! A portion of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Motor City Blight Busters so that we can expand and continue our work here in the city of Detroit.
Author
T. Burton
The City Of Detroit
Fox Theater lights up ‘Foxtown’ in downtown Detroit
Live music has been a prominent feature of Detroit’s nightlife since the late 1940s, bringing the city recognition under the nickname Motown. The metropolitan area has many nationally prominent live music venues. Concerts hosted by Live Nation perform throughout the Detroit area. Large concerts are held at DTE Energy Music Theater and The Palace of Auburn Hills. The Detroit Theater District is the USA’s second largest and hosts Broadway performances.[45][46] Major theaters include the Fox Theater, Music Hall, the Gem Theater, Masonic Temple Theater, the Detroit Opera House, the Fisher Theater and Orchestra Hall which hosts the renowned Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The Nederlander Organization, the largest controller of Broadway productions in New York City, originated with the purchase of the Detroit Opera House in 1922 by the Nederlander family.[12]
Movie studios are planned for the metro area. Motown Motion Picture Studios with 600,000Â square feet (56,000 m2) will produce movies in Detroit and the surrounding area based at the Pontiac Centerpoint Business Campus for a film industry expected to employ over 4,000 people in the metro area.
Greektown Historic District in Detroit.
The city of Detroit has a rich musical heritage and has contributed to a number of different genres over the decades leading into the new millennium. Important music events in the city include: the Detroit International Jazz Festival, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, the Motor City Music Conference (MC2), the Urban Organic Music Conference, the Concert of Colors, and the hip-hop Summer Jamz festival.
In the 1940s, blues artist John Lee Hooker became a long-term resident in the city’s southwest Delray neighborhood. Hooker, among other important blues musicians migrated from his home in Mississippi bringing the Delta Blues to northern cities like Detroit. Hooker recorded for Fortune Records, the biggest pre-Motown blues/soul label. During the 1950s, the city became a center for jazz, with stars performing in the Black Bottom neighborhood.[48] Prominent emerging Jazz musicians of the 1960s included: trumpet player Donald Byrd who attended Cass Tech and performed with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers early in his career and Saxophonist Pepper Adams who enjoyed a solo career and accompanied Byrd on several albums. The Graystone International Jazz Museum documents jazz in Detroit.
Other, prominent Motor City R&B stars in the 1950s and early 1960s was Nolan Strong, Andre Williams and Nathaniel Mayer – who all scored local and national hits on the Fortune Records label. According to Smokey Robinson, Strong was a primary influence on his voice as a teenager. The Fortune label was a family-operated label located on Third Avenue in Detroit, and was owned by the husband and wife team of Jack Brown and Devora Brown. Fortune, which also released country, gospel and rockabilly LPs and 45s, laid the groundwork for Motown, which became Detroit’s most legendary record label.
MGM Grand Detroit.
Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records which rose to prominence during the 1960s and early 1970s with acts such as Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, the Jackson 5, Martha and the Vandellas and Marvin Gaye. The Motown Sound played an important role in the crossover appeal with popular music, since it was the first African American owned record label to primarily feature African-American artists. Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles in 1972 to pursue film production, but the company has since returned to Detroit. Aretha Franklin, another Detroit R&B star, carried the Motown Sound; however, she did not record with Berry’s Motown Label.
Local artists and bands rose to prominence in the 1960s and 70s including: the MC5, The Stooges, Bob Seger, Amboy Dukes featuring Ted Nugent, Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, Rare Earth, Alice Cooper, and Suzi Quatro. The group Kiss emphasized the city’s connection with rock in the song Detroit Rock City and the movie produced in 1999. In the 1980s, Detroit was an important center of the hardcore punk rock underground with many nationally known bands coming out of the city and its suburbs, such as The Necros, The Meatmen, and Negative Approach.
In 1990s and the new millennium, the city has produced a number of influential artists, for example Eminem, the hip-hop artist with the highest cumulative sales, and hip hop producer J Dilla. Detroit is cited as the birthplace of techno music.[18][52] Prominent Detroit Techno artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson. The band Sponge toured and produced music, with artists such as Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker. The city has an active garage rock genre that has generated national attention with acts such as: The White Stripes, The Von Bondies, The Dirtbombs, Electric Six, and The Hard Lessons.