Bernadette: rip to Lamont Dozier
the D in HDH
When my nephew was in town a few weeks ago, I took him by the Motown building even though it's closed right now; I can give anyone the tour from outside on Grand River Ave. at this point. Anyway, I told him that the first time I got there I literally hugged the building because I was so happy to be there and stand there and feel all of it, all of the music and magic and energy that was created on that particular block of Detroit. Motown!
My friend was driving me back from dropping my car off at the mechanic this morning and I hadn't yet looked at The Internet so that was how I found out that Lamont Dozier had joined his ancestors. I've been tinkering with the following piece for a long time and it's not done but it should get printed today. May his journey thrive.
BERNADETTE!
5, 6, 7, 8, 9...I don’t remember the radio not being on. I don’t remember not having a radio in my room, my mother’s ancient GE radio from her teenage bedroom, yellowing plastic and gold lettering and the dial and the clockface already dull with smoke. I would twist the dial until I heard something I liked or that sounded interesting.
BERNADETTE!
It was early, so early that I stopped twirling the dial because I had a friend in school named Bernadette, the only Asian child in the entire school, back when my brother and i were the only Jewish children in the entire school. This was Michigan, the middle of nowhere, that we moved to when my father got a job in the below-pinky corner of the state.
BERNADETTE!
It wasn’t hard to fall in love with Motown, echoey, spacious, lush and orchestral, sounding beautiful and grand. The hairdos and the clothes would confirm all of this when I would begin to catch glimpses of the artists I heard singing on the radio, American Bandstand and then Soul Train, clicking through the television dial on a bored Saturday afternoon.
BERNADETTE!
When we came back east, I would again stay up past my bedtime, lying in the dark, turning the radio. WCBS, 101, crackled onto the dial. Here was Bernadette and The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Runaround Sue and Come See About Me, and what seemed like a million other songs I had never heard. You didn’t have to tell me that they were old. But the sounds were familiar.
BERNADETTE!
It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I have just climbed out of the subway at Union Square, quickly ducking across the street to get away from the park, heading towards the Palladium, walking underneath the marquee, past Disco Donuts to the corner of 3rd and 14th. I cross the avenue and turn right down Third Avenue. I cross the avenue before I turn because I am not walking on the same side of the street as the Photoplay Theater. I hear a familiar sound coming out of the transistor radio on the shoulder of a guy wearing gym shorts and a tank top, rollerskating up the sidewalk.
BERNADETTE!
It sounds like summer and it sounds like your distant past, even if you are only 7 or 14 or weren’t even born when the song came out. It is the definition of yearning being given a voice.
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