Dancing in the Street

It's sung by a girl who is the record label's receptionist.

Talking about Dancing in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas here at the coveted number two.

Dancing in the Street was a summertime sensation when it came out in July of 64.

It became one of Motown's defining anthems for sure and one of the biggest songs ever.

Co-writer William Mickey Stevenson came up with the idea for the track while watching Detroit kids dance and cool off in the spray from an open fire hydrant or a lot of

The opening line, calling out around the world, that actually inspired the Rolling Stones' 1968 protest, Single Street Fighting Man.

And they changed the lyric to, summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street.

Now, while dancing in the street wasn't meant as a rallying cry per se, some activists interpreted that profound line calling out around the world in summers here in the time is right as encouragement to mobilize against segregation.

can be less fun there ain't a single thing we can overcome we're indestructible Deep inside of us Ain't no one that could ever delight us Cause we won't fall We'll sure fall Just what we're made of You and I We're in it together We stand strong through it all United forever Two hearts that can beat as one There ain't a We'll be right back.

1989 remembered on the best of the 80s with the four tops indestructible they recorded that for arista records but for many years they were one of the leading tamla motown acts and don't forget that tonight at nine it's john mann's motown treasure chest an hour of the very best tamla motown who recorded a song called Dancing in the Street, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas for Tamla Motown, and also in the 80s a different song by Matt Bianco.

MUSIC PLAYS Everybody's dancing in the street.

Yeah.

Why you got

Sounds right.

Everybody's dead.

You got me, got me dancing in the street.

Fans and later scholars were taken with the song cycle, and Garcia himself in one interview, praised Olsen's excellent ear, and said the performances were better than anything the band could flog out of themselves alone.

so which garcia do you believe the one who was pleased or the one who was mad and which record do you hear the strings or the band underneath them in london the music stands are folded away one at a time start high above a summer crowd in the year the band came back from their long break a wide bowl of people under an evening sky every one of them small from up here at the far end a stage washed in warm yellow light come down slowly over the heads toward the lights past the guitars past the piano back to where the drums are and to a single cymbal there opening and closing ticking out a steady even pulse that sounds like nothing this band has ever played before the song was not new it was one of the oldest things they knew Dancing in the Street was a Motown hit for Martha and the Vandellas, co-written by Marvin Gaye, and the Grateful Dead had been playing it since their earliest days, when they were a dance band with only a handful of songs of their own.

pigpen played the riff on the organ bob weir sang the early versions ran about six minutes quick and bright and heavy on the drums by the turn of the decade they had stretched it out into something dark and far away long jams that wandered off into space and came home again then they set it down it turned up once more on a new year's eve in a version one fan history calls a dud, though a dud with a hint of what was coming.

What was coming arrived when the band returned to the road after nearly a year and a half off.

They brought the old song back, completely rebuilt.

A new beat, steady and four-square, made for a dance floor.

Garcia ran his guitar through effects that made it sound almost electronic in places, and the harmonics in the jam gave it a jazzy glassy feel people called it disco and the name stuck they played it more that first year back than in any other year even though they only started in june some nights it ran twelve minutes or more one autumn night it opened up wandered through the drummers and two other songs entirely and then closed back around them like a pair of hands the band put this version on their next studio record and the record company released it as a single with a promotional pressing carrying the song in both mono and stereo the dead even spelled the title their own way dancing in the streets plural which one fan history decided was simply not worth arguing about Not everybody was charmed.

One Garcia biographer calls it a lamentable discoversion, though he grants that live it became a vehicle for some intense rhythmic jamming.

The audience recognizes it and cheers, and then somebody leans into the taper's microphone and announces, in a cheerful radio voice, that they're going to do a little turn on your love light for everybody out there in Radioland.

there was no radio it was one fan's tape recorder but for a moment in that crowded hall somebody decided the whole world was listening and introduced the song to it nobody agrees on this and nobody ever has where did the dead actually learn love light the obvious answer is bobby bland the man the song was written for the kind of record pigpen had grown up hearing but the dead's earliest versions came along in the same stretch of time that them's cover was out in the world a rougher garage band reading by a group of young white rockers much closer in spirit to what a bar band from palo alto might sound like the writer michael kaler tracing where the dead's version came from sets both records out side by side did pigpen bring it straight from the soul record the way he brought so much or did the band hear it second-hand through an Irish rock group, and only later trace it home, or did it simply arrive the way songs arrived in those years, from a jukebox, a friend, the radio, nobody quite sure which, come back up now, away from the man in the leather vest away from the drummers up past the amplifiers into the dark above the crowd the song is still going down there the groove holding steady on its two chords from up here it's only a warm faint thump and a field of people slowly turning to say hello listen to the room before anybody arrives a big upstairs hall in the Fillmore district of San Francisco wooden floor high ceiling the kind of place that was built for dances long before anybody called them concerts with nobody in it it ticks and settles a radiator knocks somewhere a door downstairs swings on its hinge and thuds shut the floorboards give a long low creak as the building cools and then go quiet again out on the street a bus sighs to a stop and pulls away later tonight this room will be full and loud but right now it's just a dance hall waiting for the dancing that's worth remembering about the early grateful dead they were a dance band they stretched every song out farther than anybody had asked them to and they would keep stretching for thirty years but at the root of it the job was to keep a room full of people moving so it makes a kind of sense that one of the songs they picked up early was a recent motown hit about exactly that people dancing in the street dancing in the street belonged to martha and the vandellas it came out of detroit and went high in the charts a bright urgent joyful record written by a team at motown that included a young marvin gay The dead started playing it in the year they were living in and around the hay.

One careful history of the song suggests they may have played it even earlier, back in the warlocks' days, though if they did, no tape survives to prove it.

What the dead did with it was what they did with everything.

Mickey Hart was back behind the second drum kit.

Keith Godshow was on piano.

donna was singing pigpen had been gone for years and among the songs they brought back was dancing in the street but it wasn't the old version the careful history of the song that deadheads still pass around says it came back in a completely new form not an evolution of what they used to play but a new structure altogether there was an extended introduction now there were little breaks the band stopping and starting together between the verses and before the jam and at the very end and under all of it disco drums steady and insistent the beat that was pouring out of the dance clubs that year People had a name for it, Disco Dead.

Usually they didn't mean it kindly.

Martha and the Vandellas there with the song Mobile Lil, the Dancing Witch, ripped from their third album called Dance Party.

What an album that is, with not only that song about a benevolent witch that just wants to make everybody dance, but it also has Dancing in the Street, Nowhere to Run, and Wild One.

all feature the Funk Brothers as the house band, which I'm sure you know has none other than Marvin Gaye on drums, James Jamerson on bass, and Earl Van Dyke on the keys.

Killer band, right? That album is on the Motown label, of course, and was pressed up back in 65.

Is there any songs that people request that you are secretly maybe a little tired of singing, or you'll never get? [laughs]

Dancing in the Street.

Real- [singing] Dancing in the street

[singing] Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that one.

Yeah, coming for you.

[laughs]

Okay, so and then he can sing to you, Dancing in the Street.

Um-

Dancing in the Street?

Dancing in the Street, mm, yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

Okay.

Four-part harmony, man.

And they was just singing it, and I'm going, "Oh, my God." And then they said, "Lunch break." And they said, "Let's all go to lunch." And we're, we're go- we're walking down Sunset Boulevard or wherever, Holly- Boulevard, and four girls are dancing to s- to, uh, um, you know, what was it? Uh, Dancing in the Street.

And then they're going, "Jamie Mack, Jamie Mack." And then you hear four-part-

Yeah