Martha Reeves, the lead singer of Martha and the Vandellas, liked to nail a song in a single take, and one day in May 1964 she believed she had done a decent job first time around on a new song called Dancing in the Street. But then a voice came from the control booth in the Motown label’s Detroit studio, apologetically asking her for one more try because the tape machine had not been turned on.
An exasperated Reeves began it again, this time with an extra edge in her voice: “Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand-new beat? Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street …” When she finished, she saw the producers high-fiving each other. They had bluffed her into giving a more urgent performance on what would become not just a worldwide hit and one of the records that best defined the Motown Sound but, albeit unwittingly, a call to arms for civil rights protesters that summer and in those that followed.
