Sound, Smells, and Sights: Black Americans in the 70s.
Search Terms: Sounds, Motown Sound, Black Music Sound, Regional Sounds, Smells + 70s,
The 1970s were a pivotal era for black Americans. The rise of the black power movements, Jett and Ebony Magazine, and the increase in black pride music through Motown Records, Stax, and Atlantic Records. Within this blog post I wanted to follow the lifestyle of Black Americans during the 1970s, explicitly highlighting on the Motown “Sound” and the different smells and sights of historymakers in their childhood.
THE MOTOWN SOUND
Motown Records has become a staple within black history and black culture. Bringing many famous and now classic black artists to the spotlight, such as Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, The Jackson Five, and many more. But Motown was known for something else other than its artist. This segment started with an interview with Anthony Samad, a journalist, and political scientist professor who described the sights, sounds, and smells from his childhood. “…Motown sounds. I think Motown [Motown Records] was just jumping off in 1962 ‘63 [1963], and so certaintly those are the soundtracks of my life.” This was not the first interview to recall the “Motown Sound” from their childhood. Federal District Court Judge and TV Personality, Gregory Mathis mentioned this, “Yeah, who can forget the Motown sound? I grew up under that and what you find, even when I was five, seven years old - I can remember that you had all the teenagers and adults, on the corner, singing. Everyone wanted to harmonize…There’d be three or four of them, passing the wine back and forth, just harmonizing, coming up with sounds ‘cause everybody thought they could be the next Temptations, or the next Four Tops, or the next Motown Star.”
There is some context on what the “Motown Sound” is, coming from Otis Williams, one of the original Temptations members, “… you know, a strong, heavy, thick bass with a tambourine, you know. But we were kind of shooting in the dark. And as time developed into becoming a Motown Sound. Because you know, when I would be out on the road and hear Stax [Stax Records] sound, you would hear the Philidelphia [Pennsylvania] sound, and you would hear other labels. But when Motown came, you said ‘Oh thats Motown.” There is also a marketing perspective on the Motown Sound from Music Executive Mickey Stevens, “You'll never forget the beginning. Whether you're gonna stay there or you're gonna grow, you know, so that was, it's the same thing with the Motown sound [Motown Records] to me. If you, if you think about it, you never really heard blues, blues with us. We, our music had another level to it, you know. It was a combination of jazz and R and B, and all locked in. Right down to the strings and you know it was all, take it to another place.” He follows this quote up with an example, “but I had blues singers that I like, little Sammy, Singin' Sammy Ward, I mean nobody could out sing him with the blues, but there was a limit to the buyers of that, you know what I'm saying where music there's no limit you know. There's no, no box, you're out of the box when you do music. If you do blues, you're in the blues box, so that was a thing for me, you know in my head and I think it was all ordained personally the whole nine yards.”
Singer Katherine Schaffner, an original member of The Marvelettes sums of the legacy of Motown records, “Motown was the first black music record company in, in all of that, so. And they had to go through trials and error too. So then, I don't know that it could have been done any differently. And I wouldn't expect that it would have been done any differently because everything is learning as they go along; they learn as they were going along.”
THE SMELL
Singer Aja Gordon discusses the smells within her childhood home, “…and just growing up always smelled like incense. I remember the smell of incense always makes me think of growing up. My parents were artistic, the ‘70s [1970s] parents, you know, that was just music.” History Professor, academic advisor, and foundation executive Earl Lewis add to the smells within his home, “Smell would actually be coming into the house, my mom would be calling for us to come and eat. And, and, and, she would have cooked something from scratch, and one of our favorites was she made this meatloaf. And so it was the meatloaf that she would make that would be a mixture of ground beef and green pepper, onion, tomatoes, bread crumbs, and then with a, a sort of ketchup tomato paste over the top and then three strips of bacon over the top of that and, and then oven-cooked. And you walk in the door and the aroma, it was not a big house and so you walk in the door, probably 1400 square feet, 1600 square foot home, you walk in the door and you go boom, I mean, there you are.” He adds, “There was this powerful sense that you were home and there always would be cornbread to go along with it and probably some green, some kind of greens as well. And so that's a smell I have been trying to replicate and after thirty years.” These are some of the many historymakers who have an emotional connection to certain types of smells.
Musician and Singer Ray Chew also talks about the connection with smell to his mothers cooking, ““the smells, you know, just my mother cookin', you know, and, and, and goin' to relatives' house Thanksgiving and Easter.” But interestingly, he also discusses the smell of Harlem, New York where he grew up, “I think after the '60s [1960s] in..when the--after Martin Luther King [Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.] got shot and, and, and the--and it was a lotta unrest and people demon--did that in their own neighborhoods, and they start redlining ‘em and then the--you know, during the early '70s [1970], it went down, and the smell of Harlem was really bad because they weren’t keeping it up, you know. Or so, so, if you--if the smell that I would remember of Harlem be one that you--it's a stench--it was bad. It’s cleaned up now because of very valuable real estate now, but it was a stench.’
THE SIGHTS
Archivist Hernan “Skip” Mason discusses the sights of his childhood, mainly a couch his mother use to have, “That reminds me of my childhood? Colorful lights, music, well we're doing sight, not sound. Gold, the color gold, plastic, my mom [Deloris Harris Hughes] had bought some new furniture, I'll never forget, from Carson's or Levitz [Levitz Furniture Corporation; Levitz Furniture, Inc.], she kept the plastic on it, I mean, and we weren't supposed to sit on it at all, the matching lamp shades, I mean it was really for me avant garde. As I look back now, I say, "Mom what were you doing this kind of fancy furniture in this house that we lived in," but it was very nice. But I remember that plastic and seems like everybody's house we went over to they had plastic. I guess that was just the thing, you had to protect that.” He also discusses more centerpieces from his childhood home, “in the '70s [1970s], they had these glass panels. You could buy these square panels and put 'em on the wall. Well my mother used to call herself an interior decorator of some sorts and when we moved into a much larger home she just went berserk with glass and all and then one of her girlfriends called and told her you ought to break up the glass and then create designs. I could see my mother breaking glass up and gluing and creating designs and all that kind of stuff.”
Television Anchor Maureen Bunyan also discusses the sights from her childhood, “The sights for me besides near our house and my school, on the weekends we, you went to church and all Sunday was devoted to church. And then after church before you went home for dinner you'd go for a drive and my favorite drive was to drive to the airport. Aruba had a tiny airport then of course and I used to go, I loved to go to the airport because I would go to the airport and we would sit outside the airport and watch the planes coming in and out. And I would make up stories in my head about where the planes came from and who the people were coming off the planes and then when people would get on the planes and they would depart, I'd make up a story about who was on the plane and where they were going.”
