'Motown: The Musical' opens at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis

It seems quaint now, but there was a time, say 50 years ago, when the idea that people of different races would listen and dance to the same music was cause for consternation, even rioting. America's segregation was enforced by violence, and attempts to bridge those divides provoked fatal reactions.

Motown, the record label founded by entrepreneur Berry Gordy, helped changed that.

Gordy cultivated and packaged elegant, well-choreographed stars such as the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Four Tops, whose chart-topping music "crossed over" and helped shatter the shibboleths of segregation.

"Motown: The Musical," which opens Tuesday at the Orpheum Theatre, celebrates the label and the role it played in American society. The production, which includes parts of more than 40 songs, orbits the life of Gordy and stars such as Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. It is the latest hit for mega-producer Kevin McCollum, who also backed "Rent," "Avenue Q" and "In the Heights."

"What ties all these shows together is that they're about something big and redemptive," said McCollum, who was president of St. Paul's Ordway Center from 1995 to 2002. "The stakes are really high, especially for 'Motown,' which really is about somebody who is funny and hard-driving in person but is epic and larger than life.

"Brian Epstein is considered a genius for finding and managing the Beatles," he continued. "What does that make Berry Gordy, who gave us Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and on and on?"

Motown provided a soulful, harmonic soundtrack to America's quest for fairness and redemption even as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights leaders led weary marchers for justice.

Gordy didn't set out to change the music business or the country or the world, for that matter.

"When I first met Berry Gordy, I asked him why he started the label, and he said he did it because he loved the girls," McCollum said.

A boxing champ in Detroit, Gordy was extremely competitive as a young man.

"He always wanted to be the best, but he knew he was not going to be Joe Louis," McCollum continued. "And we're lucky, because he created the most transformative music at a time of epochal change."

While McCollum grew up in Hawaii listening to Motown, not everyone has that background.

But Semmes never paid much attention to the music, and before she got cast in the Broadway show — she first played Supreme Florence Ballard — she had to study the era and the music.

"I immersed myself in YouTube University, watched 'The Wiz,' 'Mahogany,' 'Lady Sings the Blues,' everything I could get," she said.

Such attentive study brought her some surprises. For example, she always thought that the Supremes were singing, "Stop in the neighborhood" instead of, "Stop in the name of love."

"I was so young and naïve," she said with a laugh.

The relevance of "Motown" was evident when the tour visited St. Louis during the grand jury's decision not to charge a police officer in the death of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Mo.

The sense of healing also was one of the things that attracted director Randolph-Wright, who studied medicine at Duke University before falling into music and theater.

"I really want people to see this show, not because I did it and think it captures some essential things about our hopes and dreams," he said. "I want people to see it because it's about the power of art. People, using their creativity, can connect to teach each other in ways that are redemptive. And, of course, it's a whole lot of fun."

McCollum quipped that Motown should be a miniseries, "but we want people to get home at a decent hour."

"Obama wouldn't be president without Motown," McCollum said. "We wouldn't be who we are without the gifts that Berry Gordy gave us."