{"id":80803,"date":"2025-02-28T09:03:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T14:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=80803"},"modified":"2025-02-28T09:03:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T14:03:41","slug":"1145846_how-motown-martha-and-the-vandellas-and-the-ford-mustang-wrote-music-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=80803","title":{"rendered":"How Motown, Martha and the Vandellas, and the Ford Mustang wrote music history"},"content":{"rendered":"

A classic snare riff kicks it off\u2014<\/span>bah, bada bah-bah bah-bah bah-bah<\/em>\u2014<\/span>and a chugging, urgent bass line propels the song forward. Three young women pop out from a wheel well, radiant in skirts and hair bands, beaming smiles and their hit song to a national network-TV audience. The bottle rocket that was Motown had taken flight; their latest single, \u201cNowhere to Run,\u201d put them at its helm.<\/span><\/p>\n

The women\u2014Martha Reeves, Betty Kelley, and Rosalind Ashford\u2014were doing their job; later, they would wonder if they had done something no one else had done before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For the moment, they marched alongside the factory line, lip-syncing to their song blaring over the speakers in the Dearborn Assembly plant, between and among workers fitting and painting body panels to another massive hit, the Ford Mustang. The car factory hummed along. No doubt, millions of Americans hummed along, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

To hear Reeves tell it, the music video was born the day that short film first aired, on June 28, 1965. But the song had been born in February of that year, 60 years ago this month, when Martha and the Vandellas leaned into their mikes and sang an anthem for a new era.<\/span><\/p>\n