Cityscape

More than Motown: The Struggle for a R&B Hall of Fame and Museum in Detroit

December 11, 2016, 3:45 PM by  Alan Stamm

Detroit music historian Carleton Gholz builds an impassioned case for why this city should be the site of a proposed Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Writing in BLAC Detroit magazine, the local DJ and director of the nonprofit Detroit Sound Conservancy says:

Detroit was a key maker of the moves, sounds and politics of R&B – but other cities, it seems, may reap the rewards of tourism.

Despite a recent announcement of the proposed $50-million dollar expansion of the Motown Museum, Detroit has an acute deficiency of spaces to honor its musical legacies – especially R&B, which was central in providing a firmament to Berry Gordy’s imagination and talent to Motown. Yet the Motown legacy, both real and imagined, continues to suck the air out of the room.

But it shouldn’t. . . . It’s time to pool some resources, visions and activism.


Lamont Robinson: "My heart is in Detroit. But I’m leaning towards Philly."

The concept has been pushed since 2010 by Lamont Robinson, a Detroit entrepreneur and former basketball player whose uncle, Gus Hawkins, played saxophone with the O'Jays. Robinson is engaged to Cheryl Ruffin, daughter of  the late Temptations singer David Ruffin.

Gholz, who spoke with both of them at Avalon International Breads, writes:

What started out as a way of dealing with Robinson’s childhood love of music and his own expanding R&B memorabilia collection in Cleveland, where he grew up, has now turned into an annual award show. . . .

[But] Robinson is clearly frustrated, as he tells me what he perceives is a lack of financial support from the local business community and City of Detroit.

“Detroit breathed it into life,” he says. But now he . . .[and Ruffin] are considering offers from other cities. . . . “My heart is in Detroit. But I’m leaning towards Philly."


Carleton Gholz: "It’s time to pool some resources, visions and activism." (Facebook photo by Barbara Barefield)

The local music scholar also quotes Dan Austin, a former aide to Mayor Mike Duggan and a spokesman for the R&B Hall:

“For those who say ‘Detroit already has Hitsville, so it doesn’t need a larger hall of fame to honor all of R&B music,’ I’d say there is most certainly room for both. . . . An R&B Hall could help the Motown Museum by bringing in more tourists who want to see them both.” 

Nearly 140 rhythm and blues performers, songwriters, DJs and industry executives are members of the virtual Hall of Fame.

The roster includes Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Brown, Bettye LaVette, the Temptations, rhe O’Jays, the FourTops, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Chubby Checker Rena Scott, Smokey Robinson, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Bootsy Collins, Fats Domino, the Royal Jokers, the Falcons, Mack Rice, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Sugar Chile Robinson, Wilson Pickett, Little Willie John and the Supremes.

Mary Wilson of the Supremes hosted the fourth annual induction ceremony and fundraiser last August at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Theater in Dearborn, where new inductee Eddie Floyd performed “Knock on Wood,” his 1967 hit.


Read more:  BLAC Detroit Magazine


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