Bong-Man Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOTOWN | WITH VIDEO Bassist James Jamerson's influence still heard today FREE PRESS STAFF • January 12, 2009 He's been called Motown's secret weapon and one of the most influential bassists in the history of pop music. Get in the pocket with the greatness of James Jamerson. The Jamerson video debuts today at freep.com as part of the Free Press' ongoing celebration of Motown Records' 50th anniversary. (click on video at right) http://www.freep.com/article/20090112/ENT0...ill+heard+today Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bong-Man Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 http://www.freep.com/article/20090111/ENT0...110422/1035/ENT Europeans embrace Motown like no others BY BEN EDMONDS • FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER • January 11, 2009 Motown's conquest of Detroit and then the United States might have seemed improbable, but Berry Gordy Jr. was hardly finished. At a time when England was exporting even more improbable rock 'n' roll heroes, the little house on West Grand Boulevard was about to provide America's answer. The Beatles and the other English bands were instrumental in opening the international door for Gordy's forces, and that door has remained wide open to this day. Hard-core British fans often exhibit more reverence for the music of Detroit than people do stateside. That means collecting the records fanatically, attending dance parties and gobbling up tickets to Motown-related performances. "We wanted to listen to what the Beatles listened to," says British R&B fan Keith Hughes, who has turned his four-decades-plus obsession into a comprehensive Motown database. Two of Motown's earliest successes, Barrett Strong's "Money" and Marv Johnson's "Come to Me," were English hits, but American R&B was not widely heard or popular in the U.K. then. How did their bands discover this music? "It was said that American merchant ships sailing to England used quantities of old records as ballast," Hughes says. "They were unloaded and sold in Liverpool, which was then a huge port. It seems plausible." Motown's own fortunes were advanced when the Beatles invited Mary Wells to open their 1964 English tour. The Mod subculture responded immediately to the sharp suits and relentless beat, and when the all-powerful BBC radio was slow on the uptake, pirate stations -- broadcasting from international waters -- took up the Motown cause. The influence of this music went beyond style or commerce. According to Hughes, "the story goes that in the mid-'60s John Lennon marched into the office of Sir Joseph Lockwood, the head of EMI. He put on a Motown 45 and demanded to know why Beatle records didn't sound as good as that. ...Because of Motown records, he demanded more from his own, and got it." The 1965 "Tamla-Motown Show" that toured England has passed into legend. Starring the Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Stevie Wonder and Martha & the Vandellas, it also gave English audiences a rare opportunity to see the Funk Brothers -- billed as the Earl Van Dyke Six -- on stage. Despite the trek's near-mythical status, the shows outside London were poorly attended. Nonetheless, it was like lighting a fuse. Soon Motown mania was ablaze all over Britain, and spreading throughout Europe. "Once Motown was accepted, we adapted it in our own way," says David Nathan. He and Dave Godin (founder of the influential Tamla-Motown Appreciation Society) started Soul City Records, the first London shop devoted exclusively to R&B, and he now runs the soulmusic.com Web site. "The classic example is 'Tears of a Clown,' which was rescued from an album over here and went on to become the Miracles' biggest hit ever. ... We found our own Motown treasures that weren't necessarily the same things you went for there." British fans also revitalized the careers of veteran Motown artists, says Kev Roberts, a leading DJ on the scene. "The smartest guy of all was Edwin Starr," he says. "He was respectful of what Motown had done for him, but he didn't want to let the grass grow under his feet. So every time Edwin had a hole in his schedule, he'd book a tour here. Eventually he moved here permanently." "I can't tell you how good it felt," Starr said shortly before his death in 2003. "English people knew every record I'd made, who played on them, B-sides I'd forgotten all about. They knew more about me than I did. It was a level of appreciation all artists dream they might receive." And still do receive. Thursday marked the debut of "Memories of Motown" in Berlin, a musical featuring a mix of impersonators and real stars, and written by longtime Motown staffers Al Abrams and William (Mickey) Stevenson. "Motown is as popular in Europe today as it ever was. It has not lost its magic," says Abrams. "It is attracting a whole new generation of admirers." Free Press special writer BEN EDMONDS can be reached at bedmonds5131@comcast.net. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bong-Man Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 http://www.freep.com/article/20090111/ENT0...110364/1035/ENT At Motown vault, songs live forever BY BRIAN McCOLLUM • FREE PRESS POP MUSIC WRITER • January 11, 2009 NEW YORK -- It's a plain little room. The size of a small garage, maybe. For Detroit, this is a very important 150 square feet. Housed here, on the fifth floor of an office building 500 miles from West Grand Boulevard, are the most valuable raw materials in the city's cultural history. This is Universal Music's Motown vault, and these are Motown's original session tapes: the reels that rolled in the studio at West Grand, capturing what would become some of the most beloved sounds in popular music. These tapes are the sacred texts of Detroit music, and this is their sanctuary. The little room is concealed behind secured doors deep in Universal's glossy Broadway headquarters. It's not a romantic-looking nook. Fluorescent lights, white walls, metal shelving. But the contents are pure gold, and worth that much, too. Lining the shelves are hundreds of thin square boxes, many with crinkled, typewritten labels itemizing the songs inside. These reels have been on a lengthy journey -- from Detroit in the '60s to Los Angeles in the '70s to New Jersey in the '90s to Pennsylvania in the '00s to this little room in Manhattan today. This vault is a way station for the tapes as Universal staffers do their work, creating digital archives, performing restoration work and -- most importantly -- extracting songs for an ever-churning array of Motown projects. When the reels aren't here, they're in heavily guarded, climate-controlled facilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey with Motown's full archive of 30,000 reels. Half a century after Motown's inception, the music's staying power is unquestioned. Put it in perspective: Fifty years before 1959, America's leading popular music was ragtime. America wasn't still grooving to ragtime in 1959. But America and the world are still grooving to Motown. Songs by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops continue to rack up radio play that rivals today's young hit-makers. Founder Berry Gordy Jr. says Motown's 50th anniversary is "really about celebrating the unsung heroes as well as the ones everybody knows." Years ago, those unsung heroes were fearless salesmen, patient artist trainers and other offstage personnel. Today they're the core team of six people in this office, along with staffers across the country, doing the work that keeps Motown's music thriving. "Universal is the caretaker of the legacy, and we take that role very seriously," says Harry Weinger, vice president of Universal's catalog division. "Motown is still alive. It's not some creaky museum piece. It's real." Down the hall from Universal's New York vault is the mastering room, a mood-lit space with a pair of leather couches and a stately console at the center. Studio A, they call it, in a tribute to Hitsville back in Detroit. Two vintage tape machines, the size of card tables, sit against a wall. They're rare, expensive and meticulously maintained. The last thing anybody wants is to see a stream of Motown tape go twisting and shredding into a real piece of history. This is where staffers take the work of Motown's greats, transferring the old tapes into computer files for mixing and mastering. When you buy a Motown reissue, a boxed set, even a karaoke disc, this is where it came from. Scrutinizing the tape boxes brings little thrills. Each contains a track sheet from the original recording session, meticulously listing song titles, dates, personnel and the placement of instruments. Motown often cut several sessions on one reel. Pull a box off the shelf, and you might see "The Tears of a Clown" and "Standing in the Shadows of Love" side by side. Today we view Motown's songs as timeless, as larger than life. The old hand-typed sheets pull them down to Earth. It hits you that this was somebody's afternoon task some random weekday: Somebody pecked out the letters "M-y G-i-r-l" before they achieved immortal status. "We're following in someone's footsteps, and they've done beautiful work," says Weinger. "So sometimes you just want to touch the tape. You get the vibe of the session, the feel for it." Motown Records, sold by Gordy 20 years ago, remains an active label -- people elsewhere in this building work with contemporary acts such as Erykah Badu. But nostalgia has been big business for the company since the 1980s, when oldies radio took off and Hollywood began to tap the catalog. "I always knew it would become valuable," Gordy says. "We were locked into the baby boomers early, and they followed us right down to where we are now. And now their kids, their grandkids, are getting a taste of something they loved so much." In L.A.: The masters' touch In a Los Angeles coffee bar on a winter morning, a frisky beat kicks up on the overhead sound system, soon joined by a voice. "You just keep me hanging on..." It's not the Supremes. Hot English producer Mark Ronson, whose work helped turn Amy Winehouse into last year's Grammy champ, is a Motown fanatic. This recent cut, "Stop Me," is like much of Ronson's work, bowing affectionately to the Detroit sound. Motown's influence is still everywhere, including this homage to the Supremes classic "You Keep Me Hangin' On." It's a fitting prelude for a visit later that morning with the song's writers, Holland-Dozier-Holland. The famed production trio has agreed to assemble at an L.A. studio, coaxed into spending time with copies of their original multitracks, which have been transported from Universal in New York. They haven't sat together like this at a studio board, digging through their Hitsville creations, in more than 40 years. These three -- Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland -- cooked up many of Motown's biggest smashes, including hits for the Supremes, the Four Tops and the Temptations. Recently, for the first time since the '70s, they began writing together, composing songs for an upcoming Broadway production of "The First Wives Club." All are in their late 60s, still radiating the sort of easy cool that comes from knowing you've been really, really good at something. The Hollands sport tinted glasses, Eddie with a trademark ponytail. Dozier is in all black, going at his chewing gum. They amble into the studio wisecracking and nudging elbows, and settle in for a round of listening. Watching them at the studio board dissecting the Four Tops' "Bernadette" is a music nut's fantasy. Glimmers of recognition sweep across the aged faces as the song unfolds. They still hear this stuff in a way nobody else ever will, the sonic elements processed in their brains the way a painter discerns his own strokes. Brian Holland's fingers begin to toy at the faders, old instincts kicking in. Midway through the song's second chorus, the instruments are muted, and all pause in awe as Levi Stubbs' vocal roars alone through the room, droplets of fire dripping from his voice. H-D-H created a lot of magic, but this force of nature isn't theirs. "Yeah." Brian Holland nods. "Mmm-hmm." Eddie Holland pipes up. He's the one who pushed Stubbs to sing so high. "See how he is? He's up at the peak. A lot of singers, when they hit their peak, they fade, they falter. He does not. He maintains, sustains, and the emotions just come pouring through. That's not just a good singer -- that's a great singer." Another song is up: the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On." The multitrack starts rolling, and the decades again vanish. A young girl -- Flo? Mary? -- clears her throat at the microphone. Brian Holland's count-in rings out: "One, two, one-two-three-FOUR!" As the Funk Brothers swing into the flashy groove, the Hollands and Dozier recap the standard H-D-H process: Lamont and Brian conceived the music at a piano, often with unorthodox chording that puzzled Motown's band (and still prompts strangers to pester the trio for answers). Eddie then crafted lyrics, seeking to capture "whatever that melody and track was saying." Lamont and Brian worked with Motown's band to flesh out arrangements, keying in on drummer Benny Benjamin and bassist James Jamerson and building from there. "Did we know exactly what we were doing? I can't say," says Eddie. "But we knew exactly what we wanted." "You Keep Me Hangin' On" was a relatively complex production. Diana Ross's vocals are double-tracked to create a crisp sizzle. A piano and organ are tucked subtly into the mix. The song's signature dee-dee-dee lick mimics a teletype machine. "We didn't have synthesizers then," says Dozier. "So we had to be really on our toes in coming up with innovative stuff. Fun stuff." The track finishes with an unfamiliar flourish: Ross croons a closing coda, and a strum of 12-string guitar brings it to a wrap. Brian Holland lights up in recognition at the original finale. "I kind of liked that better," he says. "But you had Berry going, 'Nah, you gotta fade the thing out.' " In New York: Music guardians At a music industry function a few years back, Brian Holland spotted Harry Weinger and approached the Universal exec. The Motown legend dropped to one knee. "I love what you're doing, man," Weinger recalls Holland saying. "I just want to thank you for keeping it alive." At the New York office, Weinger's colleagues are an upbeat bunch of Motown devotees, each with key specialties: song mixers, vintage-gear technicians, walking Supremes encyclopedias. Stylish old Motown posters, gold records and framed album covers lend the department a bright but classy vibe. "This is the single most important part of the organization," says Andy Skurow, Universal's Motown vault scholar. "These are the assets, the part that lasts forever." He's not just hyping. Amid all the Internet-age turmoil, back catalog has remained the record industry's steadiest seller, comprising an ever-bigger slice of the pie as overall album sales sag. Catalog sales represented 55.2% of total U.S. album sales in 2008, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Skurow describes his job as treasure hunting: As he sifts through the tape reels, he keeps an ear out for deeper material. Motown recorded day and night during its Detroit years. Motown's 30,000 reels feature about 500,000 tracks, says Skurow, half of them recorded in Detroit. That includes songs never released and alternates of familiar classics. There are still thousands to be explored. "The A-plus music is what got out there," says Weinger. "There's still a lot of A and A-minus waiting to be mined." Bit by bit it's finding the light of day, issued as bonus tracks on CD reissues or on deluxe sets. The material helps "keep Motown going," says Weinger, by offering "something different that helps tell the story, or brings out a different element." Longtime soul savant David Nathan runs SoulMusicStore.com, a leading outlet for vintage R&B. He applauds Universal's work, noting that the audio quality has vastly improved since the first Motown reissue CDs in the '80s. In 2008, Motown products were 54% of his store's total sales -- "and we had a really good year," he says. Among Motown's hard-core fans, the release of Supremes obscurities, in particular, can incite a virtual stampede. The diehards still hunger for more stuff deep from the vaults, and interest in Motown far exceeds that for R&B labels such as Stax and Philly International. "It ranks up there in the same way there are ardent followers for the Beatles and Elvis," says Nathan. "In its own way, Motown has that." Keeping the music alive feels like part duty, part blessing, says Weinger. "I feel good about what we're doing. When I hear Motown on the radio, I know that, hey, Smokey did it, the Tempts did it, Diana did it, Stevie did it," he says. "Of course, they did it. But to keep it rolling is a wonderful gift." Contact BRIAN McCOLLUM at 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bong-Man Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...D=2009901090392 Friday, January 9, 2009 Celebrating 50 years of Motown Berry Gordy and record label that put Detroit on musical map reach milestone Susan Whitall / The Detroit News Fifty years ago, Detroit was sharply divided by race. Newspapers still ran ads for "colored" apartments and Detroit police cars weren't integrated until late December of 1959. It wasn't until 1961 that a progressive new mayor, Jerry Cavanagh, promised to fight segregation in Detroit's neighborhoods and public institutions. Against this unforgiving backdrop, the prospects of one young black man, Berry Gordy Jr., were less than stellar. Gordy had given up boxing (too violent), quit his Ford factory job (too boring) and failed as a record store owner. He sold songs to singer Jackie Wilson, but didn't make any money at it. At the age of 31, the divorced father of three was broke and out of a job. Still, on Jan. 12, 1959, the Gordy family loaned Berry Jr. $800 from the family fund so that he could start a record company. Fifteen years later, Motown Records had become the largest African-American-owned business in the United States, turned Detroit into a music mecca and made stars of Detroit-born talent like Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson.On Monday, Gordy and Universal Motown Records will launch the 50th anniversary of the iconic Detroit label, which includes an event Monday at the Motown Historical Museum featuring Duke Fakir of the Four Tops, city and state dignitaries and others. Monday will also be declared "Motown Day" by city and state officials. Gordy sold Motown in 1988 for $61 million, but the energetic 79-year-old is still busy promoting and defending the company he founded. He's about to get busier. Along with launching Motown 50, he's overseeing a Broadway musical based on his life and a multi-part documentary film on what he did "and how I did it" at Motown, using extensive footage filmed during Motown's heyday. He's also emerging from retirement to manage a new singer, "one of the greatest I've ever met," whom he isn't ready to reveal just yet. Gordy exudes the same confidence he did when building his music empire. "I never had any big setbacks to knock my ego down, because I was confident almost to the point of being cocky," Gordy said, speaking by phone from his Los Angeles office. "People would say, 'what makes you so sure?' I'd say, 'I don't think it, I know it.' Back in 1959, Gordy was blissfully unaware of how difficult a task was before him, launching a record company in a city still recovering from the '58 recession. "I didn't know enough about economics to know," Gordy said. "I was involved in my stuff, and I took very little interest in anything other than my creative activities and the artists I worked with. I know the times were what they were, but I guess in those days I was more concerned about the whole social situation and the racial tensions. Now I'm a lot more aware of economics and how the whole thing works." Motown launched immortal artists like Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, but it was also a symbol of black achievement and a big part of Detroit's international image. "People identify Motown with the city of Detroit, and the city of Detroit with Motown," said former Detroit mayor Dennis Archer. They still do; the Motown Historical Museum is one of the region's most-visited tourist destinations, with visitors coming from as far away as the South Pacific. Such an institution was built not only by Motown's stars, but by many people behind the scenes. One of Gordy's goals for Motown 50 is to point out the hard work of the unsung heroes, the secretaries, accountants and others. "I had a philosophy and a work ethic that I had gotten from my father and my family," Gordy said. "But people like the Noveck brothers were also so important in my life." Harold and Sidney Noveck were Motown's tax attorney and CPA, respectively. "I want them to be remembered," Gordy said. "They made me put money aside. Everybody was buying great cars, and I said, 'When can I buy a nice car?" The Novecks said, 'When you can pay cash for it.' " Other people in the background, without whom there wouldn't be a Motown, were his very supportive four sisters, Gordy said. "They would tell people, 'My brother's a boxer, you have to see him.' Then when I was a songwriter, they said, 'My brother's a songwriter, you have to hear his stuff.' " Fighter for civil rights Gordy also praises the courage of his artists who traveled by bus through the South with the Motortown Revue in the middle of the volatile Civil Rights era. "They were shot at; they were the unsung heroes," Gordy said. "All I'm doing now is what I've done for the past 50 years, protect the legacy because people were trying to rewrite Motown history." Those "people" include the producers of "Dreamgirls," the 2006 film that fictionalized Motown's early days. "The truth can only win if you can afford to fight for it and are willing to fight for it, and I was," Gordy said.Gordy demanded -- and got -- an apology from "Dreamgirls" producers, who took out an ad that ran in the movie trades. What irritated him the most about the movie was the thuggish record company boss played by Jamie Foxx. "It's like, a black guy -- a kid -- in Detroit could not start a Motown unless he was a Mafia person," Gordy said, indignant. "It's like, a black man could not lead this country because he wasn't smart enough, but ... now one is." "The Chairman," as Gordy is affectionately known by his artists, will be in Washington, D.C., next week for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration -- with bells on. It was Motown Records that released Dr. Martin Luther King's key Civil Rights speeches on records. It was Motown groups like the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas and the Temptations who insisted that the rope dividing their Southern audiences into black and white be taken down. And it was Motown that provided a romantic soundtrack and black musical idols for white teenagers around the world, many of whom went on to vote for a black president in 2008. Jerry Herron, dean of Wayne State's honors college, sees a direct link between what Gordy did in launching Motown and Obama being elected president. "It's like Martin Luther King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, saying, 'I am claiming this space, I can be here, too.' " Herron grew up in segregated Abilene, Texas, in the '60s, and his "Rosebud" memory from his youth is directly linked to Detroit and Motown. "In 1966, at the high school dance, my girlfriend cooed into my ear as we were dancing, 'Baby love, my baby love ...' Something fundamental happened, if two white kids at an all-white dance in Abilene are dancing to Berry Gordy's music out of Detroit. It wasn't just my experience too, it was all the kids I knew. Gordy moved a kind of music around the world that we had not heard." Musical legacy Gordy believes that "there could never be another Motown." "To have another Motown you'd need another perfect storm," he said. "You don't have the '60s, the Civil Rights movement, Woodstock, a lot of things. It was a creative period in our history, that's why there will be other companies, other things, but another Motown? How are you going to duplicate a Marvin Gaye, a Levi Stubbs, a Smokey Robinson, a Gladys Knight and the Pips, a Rick James?" There may not be another Motown, but Berry Gordy isn't done yet. "One thing that shocks me a bit, is when I come to the Motown museum and see, 'This is where Berry Gordy lived,' and stuff like that. I want to say, 'Wait a minute, that's not me. I'm still a kid!' Because I'm still feeling really great, the life I live, with the inspirations I have, the Broadway show, a new artist I'm handling ... " The music he's already produced isn't a museum piece either. "It really is a rich record of what it felt like at that moment when things were beginning to change in the '60s," said Wayne State's Herron. "It's a part of 'I have a dream,' the marches, the boycotts. It's an anthem about us rising to the highest levels. Motown music has so much exuberance, people feel it in their bodies, they need to move around. I play Motown for my classes sometimes, and these kids in their teens don't have any geezer memories of it. Yet they still have to move when they hear it." Berry Gordy on ... Motown's legendary studio band, the Funk Brothers: "I fought with them all the time trying to keep them from playing all the jazz things they wanted to do. They looked down on what they were doing at first, as did the great players from the Detroit Symphony ... until they really got it. But they were great; (drummer) Benny Benjamin and (bassist) James Jamerson, all the Funk Brothers were great." When he first realized how great bassist James Jamerson was: "When I knew I couldn't fire him. James would always defy me. I would say, 'James, this is not a jazz session, this is R&B, soul music, whatever it is.' He'd say 'OK, OK' because he really wanted the gig, we were the only game in town. So he would play it straight for a long time. Then he would throw in three or four jazz beats... but even though he defied me, I could never have gotten rid of Jamerson. He and I had this great relationship where he tricked me and defied me whenever he knew he could get away with it, because if it was something good, he knew I would leave it in. And I did." The uniqueness of each Motown act: "All of them were talented, all of them were magical, because they were doing their own thing. Although we were using the same band, Marvin sounded nothing like Smokey, Smokey sounded nothing like Stevie, Martha sounded nothing like Diana. It came from the philosophy of being yourself, you are you. The first song I ever wrote was "You are You." They believed in that and they lived that and they're still living it today, still paying their taxes." You can reach Susan Whitall at (313) 222-2156 or swhitall@detnews.com. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
punksandwich Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 The Beatles and the other English bands were instrumental in opening the international door for Gordy's forces, and that door has remained wide open to this day. Hard-core British fans often exhibit more reverence for the music of Detroit than people do stateside. That means collecting the records fanatically, attending dance parties and gobbling up tickets to Motown-related performances. "We wanted to listen to what the Beatles listened to," says British R&B fan Keith Hughes, who has turned his four-decades-plus obsession into a comprehensive Motown database. The influence of this music went beyond style or commerce. According to Hughes, "the story goes that in the mid-'60s John Lennon marched into the office of Sir Joseph Lockwood, the head of EMI. He put on a Motown 45 and demanded to know why Beatle records didn't sound as good as that. ...Because of Motown records, he demanded more from his own, and got it." No one can escape the Beatle's influence, or Motown's either, especially in the UK. Thanks for the headsup and read "BongMan" !! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickZepp Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Motown is amazing. Tempts are one of my favorite acts of all time. That style had a big influence with some of Zeppelin's music also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bong-Man Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2009/motown_rock/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Pagemeister Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Motown at 50 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PennyLane Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 (edited) Happy 50th Anniversary! To hear the Best 5 Motown Songs, here's the link: http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2009/motown_rock/ #5: Stop in the Name of Love - Supremes #4 - Please Mr. Postman - Marvelettes #3 - Just my Imagination - Temptations #2 - I'll be There - 4 Tops #1 - What's Going on - Marvin Gaye Edited January 12, 2009 by PennyLane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles_Obscure Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 ^ ^ Where's Temptations' Ball of Confusion or Edwin Starr - War Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PennyLane Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 (edited) Not listed as best 5 Motown's songs. Edited January 12, 2009 by PennyLane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melanie_72 Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Happy 50th Motown!! I cannot imagine my life without Motown music, I have been listening to it my whole life!! Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Rick James, The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Marvelettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Jackson 5......I could go on and on. Wow, what wonderful music Motown has brought us! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ninelives Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 I have the boxed set Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection which is fantastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JethroTull Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Happy 50th Motown!! I cannot imagine my life without Motown music, I have been listening to it my whole life!! Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Rick James, The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Marvelettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Jackson 5......I could go on and on. Wow, what wonderful music Motown has brought us! Same here....I loved watching all those bands on the variety shows of the 60's. Rick James??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beatbo Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Same here....I loved watching all those bands on the variety shows of the 60's. Rick James??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melanie_72 Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Same here....I loved watching all those bands on the variety shows of the 60's. Rick James??? You never heard of him? He was funky!! Aside from "Superfreak", he had some other great tunes: "Bustin Out", "You and I", "Dance Wit Me", "Give it to me Baby" , etc. He also recorded a few tunes with Teena Marie (Lovergirl, Square Biz) produced the Mary Jane Girls (All Night Long, In My House) and also produced Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time". He passed away in 2004, R.I.P. Rick. Check his music out on YouTube, I think you will like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JethroTull Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 You never heard of him? He was funky!! Aside from "Superfreak", he had some other great tunes: "Bustin Out", "You and I", "Dance Wit Me", "Give it to me Baby" , etc. He also recorded a few tunes with Teena Marie (Lovergirl, Square Biz) produced the Mary Jane Girls (All Night Long, In My House) and also produced Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time". He passed away in 2004, R.I.P. Rick. Check his music out on YouTube, I think you will like it. Yes, I know of him. Didn't realize he was Motown, albeit the 80's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melanie_72 Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Yes, I know of him. Didn't realize he was Motown, albeit the 80's. Oh, ok. Yep he was part of the Motown family. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles_Obscure Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 (edited) Rick James was first signed on Motown with a band called The Mynah Byrdsm back in 1965. A member of that band was a soon-to-be famous Folk and Rock Hero. Who? THE ANSWER, HERE... Edited January 14, 2009 by Charles_Obscure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melanie_72 Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Rick James was first signed on Motown with a band called The Mynah Byrdsm back in 1965. A member of that band was a soon-to-be famous Folk and Rock Hero. Who? THE ANSWER, HERE... Neil Young!! Cool sig too! I remembered hearing about this when I saw Rick James' Behind the Music a few years back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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