Ready For A Brand New Beat, Kurlansky - B

                                          This short book is an homage to one of the true great and fun songs from the '60's -- "Dancing In The Street", by Martha and the Vandellas.  It's hard to imagine a Boomer out there who doesn't know the lyrics to this two minute forty second classic. I suspect most GenYers and Millennials know it too.  The song came out of Berry Gordy Jr.s Hitsville USA studio on West Grand Blvd. about a half-a-mile from the old GM headquarters building.  Motown may have been one of, if not the most productive record studios in history and this song came out in the summer of 1964, when they were at their peak. Interestingly, Martha Reeves was not supposed to sing it, but happened to be there that day and was asked to do the demo version that usually preceded the final take by the chosen singer. The producers knew they had a winner and asked the Vandellas to do the background the next day.  The book loses some of it's mojo when the author tries to make the point of its subtitle, 'How Dancing In The Street Became The Anthem For A Changing America'. The summer of 1964 was a bit of an inflection point: the Tonkin Resolution and the deaths of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, foreshadowing the  turmoil and violence of the next four years. Even almost fifty-years later, it is shocking to think of massive summer urban riots, campus shut-downs, Vietnam spiralling out of control, the Civil Rights movement turning violent, crime in the streets, and  assassinations becoming a kind of normalcy. H. Rap Brown and the Black Panthers may have liked the song, but I'm not sure it became an anthem for change. Nonetheless, it remains a fabulous song and one in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for records that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States."