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"Motown Museum" Visit and Donation

Date confirmed in “Detroit Free Press” (Sunday [October 23, 1988]”)

“Detroit Free Press” (October 24, 1988) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

It was more a chiller than a thriller, but 2,500 Michael Jackson fans were willing to brave the rain and cold Sunday to catch a glimpse of the pop superstar as he paid a visit to the Motown Museum on W. Grand Blvd.

Even so, some complained that Jackson spoke to the crowd for less than a minute as he left the museum -- though he did shake a few hands on the way out.

"He was up there just a second," said Tika Guy, 13, of Detroit. "I thought he was going to talk more."

Jackson -- who performs sold-out concerts tonight, Tuesday and Wednesday at the Palace of Auburn Hills -- showed up to present a check for $125,000 and some memorabilia -- a hat, a rhinestone-studded glove and a stage uniform from 1972 -- to Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr., and his sister, museum President Esther Edwards.

"I'm very happy and proud to be back to the soil from which I came," said Jackson. "Berry Gordy is the man that made it all possible for me. I want to say thank you, Berry, and I love you."

Jackson, who recorded for Motown from 1969 to 1976 before setting a world record by selling more than 38 million copies of his 1982 album, "Thriller," now records for Epic Records. His check represents his net profits from tonight's concert, a Jackson spokesman said.

Jackson -- dressed in a navy blue-and-red military-style uniform -- also spent a half hour touring the museum. He joined Gordy, Edwards, Mayor Coleman Young and others for dinner at Gordy's mansion in the Boston-Edison district after the visit.

At the museum, Jackson chatted with Gordy and others, posed for pictures with museum volunteers, gazed at a Michael Jackson gallery that had been set up and sang while one of Gordy's sons played the piano.

Verbal tributes to Jackson flowed like the rain. Gordy was particularly effusive, calling Jackson "not only the greatest entertainer to have ever come from Motown, but the greatest entertainer to have ever come from any town."

Huddled under umbrellas and blankets, and contained by barricades and a large squadron of police, the crowd appeared to feel the same way about Jackson. There were random chants of "We want Michael!" and screams whenever a limousine pulled in front of the old Motown headquarters.

"I don't care if I catch pneumonia, as long as I see Michael Jackson today," said a drenched Nicole Allen, 9, of Detroit, who stood in front of the museum with her mother. "I love him. I want to marry him," she said.

"It's definitely worth it," Michelle Carter, 20, of Detroit, said of the wait in the rain.

The event had special meaning for Tammy Clark, 26, of Columbia, Ga. Clark, who is visiting a friend in Detroit, has glaucoma and is losing her vision; she wanted to see Michael Jackson before she went blind. "It's supposed to be 80 degrees at home, but I'm glad I'm here," she said. "In Columbia, you don't get anything quite as exciting as this."

Berry Gordy, unknown magazine snippet

Recently Michael came to Detroit to do a benefit for the Motown Museum. One of his requests was to go to my house in Detroit where they stayed when they were first with Motown. It has a swimming pool and an underground tunnel and a bowling alley and some other stuff. And when they would come to Detroit, that's where they would stay, on the third floor. So Michael said he wanted to have dinner with me there. Just he and I, and we'd take off our shoes, and we would run around like we sort of did years and years before. Michael has never lost that childlike quality. We had fun. We had dinner alone, and talked. He wanted to do some of the childlike things--[article cuts off]

“People” magazine (November 7, 1988)

By Michael Jackson's standards it was an oration—three whole sentences spoken in a single verbal burst. "It's great to be here," he began, peeking from behind his sunglasses at the crowd lining a Detroit street last week. Thousands of Jackson fans had braved a frigid downpour in hopes of catching a glimpse of him. But Michael wasn't there just to hear their screams—he's getting enough of those on his sold-out Bad tour. Jackson was delivering a $125,000 check for the modest museum dedicated to the Motown sound originated by Berry Gordy. "I'm happy and proud to give back to the soil from which I came," Jackson said. "Berry Gordy made it all possible for me, and I want to say I love you, Berry, and thank you."

With that, Jackson and his entourage hustled inside the rambling brick house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard. From the street, it doesn't look like much—just another aging building in Detroit's midtown. But between 1959 and 1972, the house was the home of Hitsville, USA, headquarters of Gordy's Motown record label. Some of the greatest black rock and soul artists of the last 30 years—the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and a group of fresh-faced Gary, Ind., kids called the Jackson Five—got their start in the back-room recording studio there.

Of course, it's been years now since Detroit was the music capital. Gordy moved the Motown operation to Los Angeles 15 years ago and sold the label last summer. Yet thanks to the packrat tendencies of Gordy's sister, Esther G. Edwards, the memories of Hitsville have been lovingly collected in the Motown Historical Museum, which opened in 1980. "Yesterday I noticed some sheet music on top of the piano," said Gordy recently. "It was an original copy of a medley for the Supremes. 'Baby Love.' I Hear a Symphony.' 'Where Did Our Love Go?' It's been there for over 20 years. Everything is intact."

If Edwards' mother lode is to be saved, professionals will have to catalog and maintain the hundreds of boxes that she obsessively stashed away, containing, among other things, music scores, posters and photographs. "We need what every museum needs, staffing and money," says Edwards. "A curator and a director are our first priorities. I know nothing about museums, but I know I want these things preserved." In fact, the museum needs help soon, since many of its prized possessions, including a spangled glove that Jackson donated last week, are merely stuck to the wall with pushpins. Michael's $125,000 check—the proceeds from one of his Detroit concerts—will help foot some of the bills.

In many ways the Motown Museum is a repository for Berry Gordy's personal history. "I get strong déjà vu feelings when I go back to that building," he says. "I see myself walking there 25 years ago. Diana Ross tapping me on the back. Marvin Gaye playing football on the grass when he was supposed to be recording. And Stevie Wonder. Whenever I'd go down to the studio, there was this little blind kid on the drums. I'd say, 'What is that noise? Get him out of there.' "

Gordy also has powerful memories of the first time he met Jackson. "He was a cute kid," he says. "He could sing well and he danced like James Brown." If Michael's talent was evident, so was his drive. "He stared at me all the time," says Gordy. "The other kids would play around, hit each other. But Michael would sit there and pay attention. He had nothing on his mind but learning."

Gordy had what it took to teach him plenty. Before starting Motown in 1959, he had pulled down $85 a week working on a Lincoln-Mercury assembly line. He borrowed the $800 down payment for the house on West Grand Boulevard and installed a secondhand two-track recording studio. He lived upstairs and made records downstairs, and what records they were. The Motown sound helped define a generation—and put the little house on the map. Even after the company left Detroit, people still showed up looking for Hitsville. "They stopped at all hours," says Edwards. "We'd tell them that the headquarters was in L.A., but they'd still say, 'Isn't this where it all started?' "

Motown's stars have largely scattered now; even the Jacksons left the label in 1975. Yet Michael remains good friends with Gordy and loves to visit the birds in the aviary at Gordy's Bel Air home. After the presentation of the check, Jackson, Gordy, Edwards and a small group of insiders retired for a quiet dinner at Gordy Manor, Berry's Detroit home, where Michael and his brothers once stayed for a while. There would be time for some laughs and some storytelling about good times past. Maybe they would "run around with no shoes on, go up to the attic where Michael used to sleep, play pool in the basement," said Gordy, anticipating the moment. In other words, it was a chance to be like kids again—just the kind of evening Michael would crave.