Following the devastating 1967 rebellion in Detroit, Frank Waterman searches his soul for what he can do to give his family and community hope. Negroes have become blacks, whites have taken flight to the suburbs and the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit wants to close nearly all of its inner-city schools, including Visitation, where the Waterman family attends school and church. But the Watermans have a different idea save the schools save the children! Frank has quit the security and comfort of his position as an insurance salesman in order to direct a yet-to-be-established City Club community center near Dexter Blvd. on Detroits west side. Things heat up for the Waterman family as heroin use explodes in Detroit like an atomic bomb and the police seem to run amuck under a new tactical unit called STRESS. Meanwhile Mike, the eldest of the three Waterman children, and his St. Martin DePorres (newly merged) basketball team prepare to compete for the city title against neighborhood rival Central High School. Some of the elders in the neighborhood warn the children Be careful where you step, its a mine-field out there. But Frank tells his family and community to Keep pushing... we can reach our higher goal, because Detroits got soul.
First in the award-winning soul music trilogy—featuring Motown artists Diana Ross & the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and others. Detroit 67 is “a dramatic account of twelve remarkable months in the Motor City” during the year that changed everything (Sunday Mail). It takes you on a turbulent journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political, and interracial disputes. It is the story of Motown, the breakup of the Supremes, and the damaging clashes at the heart of the most successful African American music label ever. Set against a backdrop of urban riots, escalating war in Vietnam, and police corruption, the book weaves its way through a year when soul music came of age and the underground counterculture flourished. LSD arrived in the city with hallucinogenic power, and local guitar band MC5—self-styled holy barbarians of rock—went to war with mainstream America. A summer of street-level rebellion turned Detroit into one of the most notorious cities on earth, known for its unique creativity, its unpredictability, and self-lacerating crime rates. The year 1967 ended in social meltdown, rancor, and intense legal warfare as the complex threads that held Detroit together finally unraveled. “A whole-hearted evocation of people and places,” Detroit 67 is “a tale set at a fulcrum of American social and cultural history” (Independent).
A young college grad buys a house in Detroit for $500 and attempts to restore it—and his new neighborhood—to its original glory in this “deeply felt, sharply observed personal quest to create meaning and community out of the fallen…A standout” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Drew Philp, an idealistic college student from a working-class Michigan family, decides to live where he can make a difference. He sets his sights on Detroit, the failed metropolis of abandoned buildings, widespread poverty, and rampant crime. Arriving with no job, no friends, and no money, Philp buys a ramshackle house for five hundred dollars in the east side neighborhood known as Poletown. The roomy Queen Anne he now owns is little more than a clapboard shell on a crumbling brick foundation, missing windows, heat, water, electricity, and a functional roof. A $500 House in Detroit is Philp’s raw and earnest account of rebuilding everything but the frame of his house, nail by nail and room by room. “Philp is a great storyteller…[and his] engrossing” (Booklist) tale is also of a young man finding his footing in the city, the country, and his own generation. We witness his concept of Detroit shift, expand, and evolve as his plan to save the city gives way to a life forged from political meaning, personal connection, and collective purpose. As he assimilates into the community of Detroiters around him, Philp guides readers through the city’s vibrant history and engages in urgent conversations about gentrification, racial tensions, and class warfare. Part social history, part brash generational statement, part comeback story, A $500 House in Detroit “shines [in its depiction of] the ‘radical neighborliness’ of ordinary people in desperate circumstances” (Publishers Weekly). This is an unforgettable, intimate account of the tentative revival of an American city and a glimpse at a new way forward for generations to come.
Motor City’s criminal underworld comes to life in the first three Detroit novels from the “pithy, punchy” four-time Shamus Award winner (The New York Times Book Review). In Edsel, it has only been two decades since Connie Minor was on top, but it feels like centuries. Once a journalist, Minor spent Prohibition with his finger on gangland’s pulse, a confidant of every rumrunner, boss, and triggerman in Detroit. But as the gangsters fell, Minor went with them, replaced by a generation of reporters more interested in the Nazi Party than the inner workings of the Purple Gang. Now it’s the 1950s, and after years writing mindless ad copy, Minor fears that his brain may be permanently atrophied—that is, until an exciting new job drops on his desk. Minor is hired to sell Ford’s most original creation, the Edsel, meant to take America by storm. But the job quickly reintroduces him to some ugly old Detroit faces. When he uncovers a conspiracy, his reporter’s instincts kick in. It’s been years since Minor gabbed with mobsters, but it’s never too late for an old newspaperman to get whacked. In Stress, for Paul Kubicek and the city of Detroit, 1972 ends in a haze of blood. A police officer in need of extra work, Kubicek spends New Year’s Eve moonlighting as a security guard at an upscale party. Just before midnight, he sees three black men, a shotgun, and a pistol. He takes out the would-be burglars in less than a minute. Only after they are all dead does he realize one man was unarmed. The police department asks Charlie Battle, one of its few African American officers, to head up the investigation into Kubicek’s shooting. As racial tensions threaten to tear Detroit apart, Battle tries to break through the department’s code of silence, fighting for truth in a city where lies are a way of life. And in Motown, rage simmers beneath the tranquil surface of 1960s Detroit. As the auto industry enjoys its last moments of prosperity, widespread discrimination infuriates the city’s black middle class. One of the most destructive riots of the twentieth century is around the corner, and Rick Amery is going to be right in the middle. A longtime cop forced out of the department on trumped-up graft charges, Amery shares Detroit’s obsession with muscle cars. It was the temptation of a white ’64 Thunderbird that cost him his badge, and it is for the sake of General Motors that he takes his first job as a private investigator, digging up dirt on a consumer advocate who calls GM cars death traps. Amery must work quickly, for no hot rod on Earth is fast enough to outrun the trouble that’s gaining on the Motor City.
A mix of history and inventive remembrances, Summer on Fire recreates six weeks in the intense summer of 1967. Riots, rock and roll, shootings, marches, and bomb plots shake Detroit, reminding us that today's turmoil is a mirror of that era.
The ideal handbook for every rock-n-roll pilgrim, Music USA tours the musical heritage of America, from New York to Seattle, stopping at all the shrines of sound in between. Coverage includes background on the development of local music styles, with details on clubs and venues, radio stations and record stores nationwide.
Detroit Rock City is an oral history of Detroit and its music told by the people who were on the stage, in the clubs, the practice rooms, studios, and in the audience, blasting the music out and soaking it up, in every scene from 1967 to today. From fabled axe men like Ted Nugent, Dick Wagner, and James Williamson jump to Jack White, to pop flashes Suzi Quatro and Andrew W.K., to proto punkers Brother Wayne Kramer and Iggy Pop, Detroit slices the rest of the land with way more than its share of the Rock Pie. Detroit Rock City is the story that has never before been sprung, a frenzied and schooled account of both past and present, calling in the halcyon days of the Grande Ballroom and the Eastown Theater, where national acts who came thru were made to stand and deliver in the face of the always hard hitting local support acts. It moves on to the Michigan Palace, Bookies Club 870, City Club, Gold Dollar, and Magic Stick -- all magical venues in America's top rock city. Detroit Rock City brings these worlds to life all from the guys and dolls who picked up a Strat and jammed it into our collective craniums. From those behind the scenes cats who promoted, cajoled, lost their shirts, and popped the platters to the punters who drove from everywhere, this is the book that gives life to Detroit's legend of loud.
I was almost as hard headed as it gets while repeatedly insisting on missing and ignoring the entire point that Mom and a few others tried to get me to realize. GET YOUR EDUCATION!!! I still had some great times here and there every now and then, and I can only imagine how beautiful-my-life-would-have-been if I would have followed the The Golden Rules. Some wonderful things have happened to me even though I still feel that I truly did not deserve or even know how to sincerely enjoy thoroughly, but on the other hand, some not so wonderful things have happened to me that I basically brought on myself as a direct result of not following The Golden Rules. EDUCATION IS A MUST!!! I know my family was not the only family that has gone through a divorce, and I know there are millions of kids who went through divorce without a scratch. I am not blaming any of my failures as a man on the pitfalls of divorce, but I can clearly see now that my character flaws were a direct hit stemming from the casualties of my parents divorce. I did not ask to be me, and I certainly did not ask or expect to be stuck on stupid for almost three tenths of a century. It was what it was! If I would have known their divorce would eventually effect me which I believe set the wheels in motion that turned towards me turning out the way I have, I would have started Praying that night. But I had no idea it would, and neither did they. I can only imagine how beautiful my life would have been if their marriage was meant to be, but it was not about me. Brooke!
Reflections on the life of Aretha Franklin captured in exclusive photographs by her friend, photojournalist Linda Solomon. "Aretha was private. I respected this and she trusted me." Linda Solomon met Aretha Franklin in 1983 when she was just beginning her career as a photojournalist and newspaper columnist. Franklin's brother and business manager arranged for Solomon to capture the singer's major career events—just as she was coming back home to Detroit from California—while Franklin requested that Solomon document everything else. Everything. And she did just that. What developed over these years of photographing birthday and Christmas parties in her home, annual celebrity galas, private backstage moments during national awards ceremonies, photo shoots with the iconic pink Cadillac, and more was a friendship between two women who grew to enjoy and respect one another. The Queen Next Door: Aretha Franklin, An Intimate Portrait is a book full of firsts as Solomon was invited not only to capture historical events in Aretha's music career showcasing Detroit but to join in with the Franklin family's most intimate and cherished moments in her beloved hometown. From performance rehearsals with James Brown to off-camera shenanigans while filming a music video with the Rolling Stones, from her first television special to her first time performing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, to her last performance with her sisters at her father's church and her son's college graduation celebration. In the book's afterword, Sabrina Vonne' Owens, Franklin's niece, honors her aunt, a woman who was an overwhelming supporter of civil rights, women's rights, and fundraising campaigns that helped to benefit her hometown. There was a time in her career—when Franklin was more in demand than ever before—when she insisted that if someone wanted her to perform, they had to come to Detroit. During this time all of her major concerts, national television specials, music videos, and commercials would happen in Detroit. Aretha Franklin showed her respect for the people in the city who championed her from the very beginning when she started singing as a young girl in the church choir. Franklin used to say, "I am the lady next door when I am not on stage." The Queen Next Dooroffers fans a personal and unseen look at an extraordinary woman in her most natural moments—both regal and intimate—and highlights her devotion to her family and her hometown Detroit—"forever and ever."
