Dancing in the street By Martha Reeves Hyperion.pp.$22.95https Source Washington Post
The story usually begins in the ghetto of some large, industrial metropolis (Detroit, in most cases) where the future soul queen is born into a large family (Martha Reeves, for example, is one of a dozen brothers and sisters) of meager circumstances, finds expression singing in church and school, is discovered almost by accident, becomes world-famous, falls prey to the vagaries of life on the road, bottoms out on drugs and bad men, finds salvation and through divine guidance wins back the hearts of those originally touched by the music.
Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva by Martha Reeves and Mark Bego unfortunately falls quickly from myth into cliche. There is no question that Martha Reeves, the voice behind such masterpieces as "Dancing in the Street," "Jimmy Mack" and "(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave," is one of the great soul singers of our time. Beverly Sills so admired her vocal artistry that she invited Reeves on her NBC special to sing a duet. It remains puzzling why Motown owner Berry Gordy Jr. allowed Martha and her group, the Vandellas, to languish after their initial string of million-sellers.
The book, however, may provide the clues for why this happened. Reeves, probably unintentionally, paints a largely unflattering, occasionally disgusting, portrait of herself. For example, she was repeatedly attracted to smooth-talking, abusive men who took every kind of advantage of her. She flatly admits conceiving a child in the hope of entrapping a boyfriend into marriage. Shortly after giving birth to a son, she inexplicably gave her mother legal guardianship of the baby. At times the narrative gets downright weird, as when she suggests that she was drugged in the course of a Motown plot.
When Reeves describes the excitement of the early Motown years, Dancing in the Street shines, but in the end the book comes across as all-too-typical of its genre and its narrator as too guileless and flaky to be admired without reservation.
