Cityscape

Berry Gordy Interview Overlaps With Family Legacy for Reporter Jeff Karoub

October 23, 2014, 1:47 PM by  Alan Stamm

Music is part of journalist Jeff Karoub's off-hours life and his family heritage. The Detroit reporter for Associated Press is the son of a former Motown Records backup musician.

So his latest assignment is particularly sweet -- an interview at the Motown Museum with Berry Gordy in legendary Studio A on West Grand Boulevard -- "just a few feet away from where my old man played horn during midnight sessions for Marvin, Stevie, the Supremes and many others," he posts on his Facebook page with the photo above by Carlos Osorio of AP.

Gordy, the founder and chairman who moved his label's headquarters from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1972, was in town for the Fisher Theatre debut of "Motown: The Musical," running through Nov. 16.

"Bringing 'Motown' to Motown is like the greatest gift in the world to me," Gordy tells Karoub in coverage posted Thursday afternoon by the Albany Times Union and elsewhere.

"This place was where I was that crazy little kid running around with all these crazy dreams. Now I bring it back in all its full glory. . . .

"So much stuff coming full circle. It's amazing."


Carl Karoub, the reporter's father, played in Motown recording sessions.

Even though he has been in Studio A for earlier coverage, Karoub tells Deadline Detroit that he still felt "the hairs rise on the back of my neck" when arriving to talk with Gordy on Tuesday.

The newsman's father, Carl Karoub, played French horn for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra during the 1950s and worked as a Motown session musician a decade later, "providing licks for Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and many others," the younger Karoub says via email. Here's more from that message:

We believe that’s him at the beginning of Gaye’s [1968] take of 'I Heard It through the Grapevine,' though some days he’s not sure. Can you blame him? It’s been nearly 50 years, and we haven’t uncovered absolute proof.

He knows he played for and discussed music with Gaye, and likes to point out how involved the icon was even in the background sounds of his songs. But this wasn’t the life-altering experience for my father as it would have been for me: He was sandwiching the sessions between his own evening gigs and day job as a music teacher. And pop really wasn’t my Pop’s thing. The former Detroit Symphony Orchestra member has always been more into classical.

The 45-year-old reporter, who lives in Dearborn and has been with AP since 2006, extends his family's musical tradition as a singer-songwriter with a 2013 folk-pop EP titled "Made By Motown."

The title song is "an autobiographical tribute to Detroit and my family’s role in it over a century," he explains. "I’m so honored I’ve been able to perform my song with [his dad] in the audience, occasionally joined by my cellist brother, Mike."

The musical family is gaining a new generation, Karoub adds: "At a few weeks shy of 84 -- the same age as Gordy -- my father continues to play his horn and teaches one of my daughters to play it as well."



Leave a Comment:

Photo Of The Day