Podcasts about Melvin Franklin

(S4 Ep14) The Temptations- With a Lot o' SoulReleased July 17, 1967, Recorded between 1966-1967  (Gordy)With a Lot o' Soul, The Temptations' fifth studio album for Motown, showcased the iconic lineup of David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Otis Williams. The album blends Motown's classic pop-soul with experimental arrangements, including lush strings, intricate horn sections, and emotional themes. The Temptations' trademark harmonies shine, with Ruffin dominating many tracks. At the same time, other members take lead on songs like Paul Williams on “No More Water in the Well” and Eddie Kendricks on “You're My Everything.” The album features four hit singles like “(I Know) I'm Losing You” and “All I Need” and solidified the group's place in soul music history. Produced by Norman Whitfield, the album marks the beginning of the Temptations' evolution toward psychedelic soul, setting the stage for future groundbreaking work. Signature Tracks: "I Know I'm Losing You," "All I Need,"  "You're My Everything" Full Album: YouTube, Spotify Playlist: YouTube , Spotify

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a two-episode look at the song “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”. This week we take a short look at the song’s writers, Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and the first released version by Gladys Knight and the Pips. In two weeks time we’ll take a longer look at the sixties career of the song’s most famous performer, Marvin Gaye. This episode is quite a light one. That one… won’t be. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on “Bend Me Shape Me” by Amen Corner. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources Mixcloud will be up with the next episode. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. Motown: The Golden Years is another Motown encyclopaedia. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 693 tracks released on Motown singles. For information on Marvin Gaye, and his relationship with Norman Whitfield, I relied on Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz. I’ve also used information on Whitfield in  Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, I’ve also referred to interviews with Whitfield and Strong archived at rocksbackpages.com , notably “The Norman Whitfield interview”, John Abbey, Blues & Soul, 1 February 1977 For information about Gladys Knight, I’ve used her autobiography. The best collection of Gladys Knight and the Pips’ music is this 3-CD set, but the best way to hear Motown hits is in the context of other Motown hits. This five-CD box set contains the first five in the Motown Chartbusters series of British compilations. The Pips’ version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” is on disc 2, while Marvin Gaye’s is on disc 3, which is famously generally considered one of the best single-disc various artists compilations ever. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a brief note — this episode contains some brief mentions of miscarriage and drug abuse. The history of modern music would be immeasurably different had it not been for one car breakdown. Norman Whitfield spent the first fifteen years of his life in New York, never leaving the city, until his grandmother died. She’d lived in LA, and that was where the funeral was held, and so the Whitfield family got into a car and drove right across the whole continent — two thousand five hundred miles — to attend the old lady’s funeral. And then after the funeral, they turned round and started to drive home again. But they only got as far as Detroit when the car, understandably, gave up the ghost.  Luckily, like many Black families, they had family in Detroit, and Norman’s aunt was not only willing to put the family up for a while, but her husband was able to give Norman’s father a job in his drug store while he saved up enough money to pay for the car to be fixed. But as it happened, the family liked Detroit, and they never did get around to driving back home to New York. Young Norman in particular took to the city’s nightlife, and soon as well as going to school he was working an evening job at a petrol station — but that was only to supplement the money he made as a pool hustler. Young Norman Whitfield was never going to be the kind of person who took a day job, and so along with his pool he started hanging out with musicians — in particular with Popcorn and the Mohawks, a band led by Popcorn Wylie. [Excerpt: Popcorn and the Mohawks, “Shimmy Gully”] Popcorn and the Mohawks were a band of serious jazz musicians, many of whom, including Wylie himself, went on to be members of the Funk Brothers, the team of session players that played on Motown’s hits — though Wylie would depart Motown fairly early after a falling out with Berry Gordy. They were some of the best musicians in Detroit at the time, and Whitfield would tag along with the group and play tambourine, and sometimes other hand percussion instruments. He wasn’t a serious musician at that point, just hanging out with a bunch of people who were, who were a year or two older than him. But he was learning — one thing that everyone says about Norman Whitfield in his youth is that he was someone who would stand on the periphery of every situation, not getting involved, but soaking in everything that the people around him were doing, and learning from them. And soon, he was playing percussion on sessions. At first, this wasn’t for Motown, but everything in the Detroit music scene connected back to the Gordy family in one way or another. In this case, the label was Thelma Records, which was formed by Berry Gordy’s ex-mother-in-law and named after Gordy’s first wife, who he had recently divorced. Of all the great Motown songwriters and producers, Whitfield’s life is the least-documented, to the extent that the chronology of his early career is very vague and contradictory, and Thelma was such a small label there even seems to be some dispute about when it existed — different sources give different dates, and while Whitfield always said he worked for Thelma records, he might have actually been employed by another label owned by the same people, Ge Ge, which might have operated earlier — but by most accounts Whitfield quickly progressed from session tambourine player to songwriter. According to an article on Whitfield from 1977, the first record of one of his songs was “Alone” by Tommy Storm on Thelma Records, but that record seems not to exist — however, some people on a soul message board, discussing this a few years ago, found an interview with a member of a group called The Fabulous Peps which also featured Storm, saying that their record on Ge Ge Records, “This Love I Have For You”, is a rewrite of that song by Don Davis, Thelma’s head of A&R, though the credit on the label for that is just to Davis and Ron Abner, another member of the group: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Peps, “This Love I Have For You”] So that might, or might not, be the first Norman Whitfield song ever to be released. The other song often credited as Whitfield’s first released song is “Answer Me” by Richard Street and the Distants — Street was another member of the Fabulous Peps, but we’ve encountered him and the Distants before when talking about the Temptations — the Distants were the group that Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant had been in before forming the Temptations — and indeed Street would much later rejoin his old bandmates in the Temptations, when Whitfield was producing for them. Unlike the Fabulous Peps track, this one was clearly credited to N. Whitfield, so whatever happened with the Storm track, this is almost certainly Whitfield’s first official credit as a songwriter: [Excerpt: Richard Street and the Distants, “Answer Me”] He was soon writing songs for a lot of small labels — most of which appear to have been recorded by the Thelma team and then licensed out — like “I’ve Gotten Over You” by the Sonnettes: [Excerpt: The Sonnettes, “I’ve Gotten Over You”] That was on KO Records, distributed by Scepter, and was a minor local hit — enough to finally bring Whitfield to the attention of Berry Gordy. According to many sources, Whitfield had been hanging around Hitsville for months trying to get a job with the label, but as he told the story in 1977 “Berry Gordy had sent Mickey Stevenson over to see me about signing with the company as an exclusive in-house writer and producer. The first act I was assigned to was Marvin Gaye and he had just started to become popular.” That’s not quite how the story went. According to everyone else, he was constantly hanging around Hitsville, getting himself into sessions and just watching them, and pestering people to let him get involved. Rather than being employed as a writer and producer, he was actually given a job in Motown’s quality control department for fifteen dollars a week, listening to potential records and seeing which ones he thought were hits, and rating them before they went to the regular department meetings for feedback from the truly important people. But he was also allowed to write songs. His first songwriting credit on a Motown record wasn’t Marvin Gaye, as Whitfield would later tell the story, but was in fact for the far less prestigious Mickey Woods — possibly the single least-known artist of Motown’s early years. Woods was a white teenager, the first white male solo artist signed to Motown, who released two novelty teen-pop singles. Whitfield’s first Motown song was the B-side to Woods’ second single, a knock-off of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” called “They Call Me Cupid”, co-written with Berry Gordy and Brian Holland: [Excerpt: Mickey Woods, “They Call Me Cupid”] Unsurprisingly that didn’t set the world on fire, and Whitfield didn’t get another Motown label credit for thirteen months (though some of his songs for Thelma may have come out in this period). When he did, it was as co-writer with Mickey Stevenson — and, for the first time, sole producer — of the first single for a new singer, Kim Weston: [Excerpt: Kim Weston, “It Should Have Been Me”] As it turned out, that wasn’t a hit, but the flip-side, “Love Me All The Way”, co-written by Stevenson (who was also Weston’s husband) and Barney Ales, did become a minor hit, making the R&B top thirty. After that, Whitfield was on his way. It was only a month later that he wrote his first song for the Temptations, a B-side, “The Further You Look, The Less You See”: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “The Further You Look, The Less You See”] That was co-written with Smokey Robinson, and as we heard in the episode on “My Girl”, both Robinson and Whitfield vied with each other for the job of Temptations writer and producer. As we also heard in that episode, Robinson got the majority of the group’s singles for the next couple of years, but Whitfield would eventually take over from him. Whitfield’s work with the Temptations is probably his most important work as a writer and producer, and the Temptations story is intertwined deeply with this one, but for the most part I’m going to save discussion of Whitfield’s work with the group until we get to 1972, so bear with me if I seem to skim over that — and if I repeat myself in a couple of years when we get there. Whitfield’s first major success, though, was also the first top ten hit for Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”] “Pride and Joy” had actually been written and recorded before the Kim Weston and Temptations tracks, and was intended as album filler — it was written during a session by Whitfield, Gaye, and Mickey Stevenson who was also the producer of the track, and recorded in the same session as it was written, with Martha and the Vandellas on backing vocals. The intended hit from the session, “Hitch-Hike”, we covered in the previous episode on Gaye, but that was successful enough that an album, That Stubborn Kinda Fellow, was released, with “Pride and Joy” on it. A few months later Gaye recut his lead vocal, over the same backing track, and the record was released as a single, reaching number ten on the pop charts and number two R&B: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”] Whitfield had other successes as well, often as B-sides. “The Girl’s Alright With Me”, the B-side to Smokey Robinson’s hit for the Temptations “I’ll Be In Trouble”, went to number forty on the R&B chart in its own right: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “The Girl’s Alright With Me”] That was co-written with Eddie Holland, and Holland and Whitfield had a minor songwriting partnership at this time, with Holland writing lyrics and Whitfield the music. Eddie Holland even released a Holland and Whitfield collaboration himself during his brief attempt at a singing career — “I Couldn’t Cry if I Wanted To” was a song they wrote for the Temptations, who recorded it but then left it on the shelf for four years, so Holland put out his own version, again as a B-side: [Excerpt: Eddie Holland, “I Couldn’t Cry if I Wanted To”] Whitfield was very much a B-side kind of songwriter and producer at this point — but this could be to his advantage. In January 1963, around the same time as all these other tracks, he cut a filler track with the “no-hit Supremes”, “He Means the World to Me”, which was left on the shelf until they needed a B-side eighteen months later and pulled it out and released it: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “He Means the World to Me”] But the track that that was a B-side to was “Where Did Our Love Go?”, and at the time you could make a lot of money from writing the B-side to a hit that big. Indeed, at first, Whitfield made more money from “Where Did Our Love Go?” than Holland, Dozier, or Holland, because he got a hundred percent of the songwriters’ share for his side of the record, while they had to split their share three ways. Slowly Whitfield moved from being a B-side writer to being an A-side writer. With Eddie Holland he was given a chance at a Temptations A-side for the first time, with “Girl, (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”] He also wrote for Jimmy Ruffin, but in 1964 it was with girl groups that Whitfield was doing his best work. With Mickey Stevenson he wrote “Needle in a Haystack” for the Velvettes: [Excerpt: The Velvettes, “Needle in a Haystack”] He wrote their classic followup “He Was Really Sayin' Somethin’” with Stevenson and Eddie Holland, and with Holland he also wrote “Too Many Fish in the Sea” for the Marvelettes: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Too Many Fish In The Sea”] By late 1964, Whitfield wasn’t quite in the first rank of Motown songwriter-producers with Holland-Dozier-Holland and Smokey Robinson, but he was in the upper part of the second tier with Mickey Stevenson and Clarence Paul. And by early 1966, as we saw in the episode on “My Girl”, he had achieved what he’d wanted for four years, and become the Temptations’ primary writer and producer. As I said, we’re going to look at Whitfield’s time working with the Temptations later, but in 1966 and 67 they were the act he was most associated with, and in particular, he collaborated with Eddie Holland on three top ten hits for the group in 1966. But as we discussed in the episode on “I Can’t Help Myself”, Holland’s collaborations with Whitfield eventually caused problems for Holland with his other collaborators, when he won the BMI award for writing the most hit songs, depriving his brother and Lamont Dozier of their share of the award because his outside collaborations put him ahead of them. While Whitfield *could* write songs by himself, and had in the past, he was at his best as a collaborator — as well as his writing partnership with Eddie Holland he’d written with Mickey Stevenson, Marvin Gaye, and Janie Bradford. And so when Holland told him he was no longer able to work together, Whitfield started looking for someone else who could write lyrics for him, and he soon found someone: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Money”] Barrett Strong had, of course, been the very first Motown act to have a major national hit, with “Money”, but as we discussed in the episode on that song he had been unable to have a follow-up hit, and had actually gone back to working on an assembly line for a while. But when you’ve had a hit as big as “Money”, working on an assembly line loses what little lustre it has, and Strong soon took himself off to New York and started hanging around the Brill Building, where he hooked up with Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, the writers of such hits as “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “Viva Las Vegas”, “Sweets for My Sweet”, and “A Teenager in Love”.  Pomus and Shuman, according to Strong, signed him to a management contract, and they got him signed to Atlantic’s subsidiary Atco, where he recorded one single, “Seven Sins”, written and produced by the team: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Seven Sins”] That was a flop, and Strong was dropped by the label. He bounced around a few cities before ending up in Chicago, where he signed to VeeJay Records and put out one more single as a performer, “Make Up Your Mind”, which also went nowhere: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Make Up Your Mind”] Strong had co-written that, and as his performing career was now definitively over, he decided to move into songwriting as his main job. He co-wrote “Stay in My Corner” for the Dells, which was a top thirty R&B hit for them on VeeJay in 1965 and in a remade version in 1968 became a number one R&B hit and top ten pop hit for them: [Excerpt: The Dells, “Stay in My Corner”] And on his own he wrote another top thirty R&B hit, “This Heart of Mine”, for the Artistics: [Excerpt: The Artistics, “This Heart of Mine”] He wrote several other songs that had some minor success in 1965 and 66, before moving back to Detroit and hooking up again with his old label, this time coming to them as a songwriter with a track record rather than a one-hit wonder singer. As Strong put it “They were doing my style of music then, they were doing something a little different when I left, but they were doing the more soulful, R&B-style stuff, so I thought I had a place there. So I had an idea I thought I could take back and see if they could do something with it.” That idea was the first song he wrote under his new contract, and it was co-written with Norman Whitfield. It’s difficult to know how Whitfield and Strong started writing together, or much about their writing partnership, even though it was one of the most successful songwriting teams of the era, because neither man was interviewed in any great depth, and there’s almost no long-form writing on either of them. What does seem to have been the case is that both men had been aware of each other in the late fifties, when Strong was a budding R&B star and Whitfield merely a teenager hanging round watching the cool kids. The two may even have written together before — in an example of how the chronology for both Whitfield and Strong seems to make no sense, Whitfield had cowritten a song with Marvin Gaye, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home”, in 1962 — when Strong was supposedly away from Motown — and it had been included as an album track on the That Stubborn Kinda Fellow album: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home”] The writing on that was originally credited just to Whitfield and Gaye on the labels, but it is now credited to Whitfield, Gaye, and Strong, including with BMI. Similarly Gaye’s 1965 album track “Me and My Lonely Room” — recorded in 1963 but held back – was initially credited to Whitfield alone but is now credited to Whitfield and Strong, in a strange inverse of the way “Money” initially had Strong’s credit but it was later removed. But whether this was an administrative decision made later, or whether Strong had been moonlighting for Motown uncredited in 1962 and collaborated with Whitfield, they hadn’t been a formal writing team in the way Whitfield and Holland had been, and both later seemed to date their collaboration proper as starting in 1966 when Strong returned to Motown — and understandably. The two songs they’d written earlier – if indeed they had – had been album filler, but between 1967 when the first of their new collaborations came out and 1972 when they split up, they wrote twenty-three top forty hits together. Theirs seems to have been a purely business relationship — in the few interviews with Strong he talks about Whitfield as someone he was friendly with, but Whitfield’s comments on Strong seem always to be the kind of very careful comments one would make about someone for whom one has a great deal of professional respect, a great deal of personal dislike, but absolutely no wish to air the dirty laundry behind that dislike, or to burn bridges that don’t need burning. Either way, Whitfield was in need of a songwriting partner when Barrett Strong walked into a Motown rehearsal room, and recognised that Strong’s talents were complementary to his. So he told Strong, straight out, “I’ve had quite a few hit records already. If you write with me, I can guarantee you you’ll make at least a hundred thousand dollars a year” — though he went on to emphasise that that wasn’t a guarantee-guarantee, and would depend on Strong putting the work in. Strong agreed, and the first idea he brought in for his new team earned both of them more than that hundred thousand dollars by itself. Strong had been struck by the common phrase “I heard it through the grapevine”, and started singing that line over some Ray Charles style gospel chords. Norman Whitfield knew a hook when he heard one, and quickly started to build a full song around Strong’s line. Initially, by at least some accounts, they wanted to place the song with the Isley Brothers, who had just signed to Motown and had a hit with the Holland-Dozier-Holland song “This Old Heart of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)”] For whatever reason, the Isley Brothers didn’t record the song, or if they did no copy of the recording has ever surfaced, though it does seem perfectly suited to their gospel-inflected style. The Isleys did, though, record another early Whitfield and Strong song, “That’s the Way Love Is”, which came out in 1967 as a flop single, but would later be covered more successfully by Marvin Gaye: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “That’s the Way Love Is”] Instead, the song was first recorded by the Miracles. And here the story becomes somewhat murky. We have a recording by the Miracles, released on an album two years later, but some have suggested that that version isn’t the same recording they made in 1966 when Whitfield and Strong wrote the song originally: [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] It certainly sounds to my ears like that is probably the version of the song the group recorded in 66 — it sounds, frankly, like a demo for the later, more famous version. All the main elements are there — notably the main Ray Charles style hook played simultaneously on Hammond organ and electric piano, and the almost skanking rhythm guitar stabs — but Smokey Robinson’s vocal isn’t *quite* passionate enough, the tempo is slightly off, and the drums don’t have the same cavernous rack tom sound that they have in the more famous version. If you weren’t familiar with the eventual hit, it would sound like a classic Motown track, but as it is it’s missing something… [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] According to at least some sources, that was presented to the quality control team — the team in which Whitfield had started his career, as a potential single, but they dismissed it. It wasn’t a hit, and Berry Gordy said it was one of the worst songs he’d ever heard. But Whitfield knew the song was a hit, and so he went back into the studio and cut a new backing track: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine (backing track only)”] (Incidentally, no official release of the instrumental backing track for “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” exists, and I had to put that one together myself by taking the isolated parts someone had uploaded to youtube and synching them back together in editing software, so if there are some microsecond-level discrepancies between the instruments there, that’s on me, not on the Funk Brothers.) That track was originally intended for the Temptations, with whom Whitfield was making a series of hits at the time, but they never recorded it at the time. Whitfield did produce a version for them as an album track a couple of years later though, so we have an idea how they might have taken the song vocally — though by then David Ruffin had been replaced in the group by Dennis Edwards: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] But instead of giving the song to the Temptations, Whitfield kept it back for Marvin Gaye, the singer with whom he’d had his first big breakthrough hit and for whom his two previous collaborations with Strong – if collaborations they were – had been written. Gaye and Whitfield didn’t get on very well — indeed, it seems that Whitfield didn’t get on very well with *anyone* — and Gaye would later complain about the occasions when Whitfield produced his records, saying “Norman and I came within a fraction of an inch of fighting. He thought I was a prick because I wasn't about to be intimidated by him. We clashed. He made me sing in keys much higher than I was used to. He had me reaching for notes that caused my throat veins to bulge.” But Gaye sang the song fantastically, and Whitfield was absolutely certain they had a sure-fire hit: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] But once again the quality control department refused to release the track. Indeed, it was Berry Gordy personally who decided, against the wishes of most of the department by all accounts, that instead of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” Gaye’s next single should be a Holland-Dozier-Holland track, “Your Unchanging Love”, a soundalike rewrite of their earlier hit for him, “How Sweet It Is”. “Your Unchanging Love” made the top thirty, but was hardly a massive success. Gordy has later claimed that he always liked “Grapevine” but just thought it was a bit too experimental for Gaye’s image at the time, but reports from others who were there say that what Gordy actually said was “it sucks”. So “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was left on the shelf, and the first fruit of the new Whitfield/Strong team to actually get released was “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got”, written for Jimmy Ruffin, the brother of Temptations lead singer David, who had had one big hit, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” and one medium one, “I’ve Passed This Way Before”, in 1966. Released in 1967, “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got” became Ruffin’s third and final hit, making number 29: [Excerpt: Jimmy Ruffin, “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got”] But Whitfield was still certain that “Grapevine” could be a hit. And then in 1967, a few months after he’d shelved Gaye’s version, came the record that changed everything in soul: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, “Respect”] Whitfield was astounded by that record, but also became determined he was going to “out-funk Aretha”, and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was going to be the way to do it. And he knew someone who thought she could do just that. Gladys Knight never got on well with Aretha Franklin. According to Knight’s autobiography this was one-sided on Franklin’s part, and Knight was always friendly to Franklin, but it’s also notable that she says the same about several other of the great sixties female soul singers (though not all of them by any means), and there seems to be a general pattern among those singers that they felt threatened by each other and that their own position in the industry was precarious, in a way the male singers usually didn’t. But Knight claimed she always *wished* she got on well with Franklin, because the two had such similar lives. They’d both started out singing gospel as child performers before moving on to the chitlin circuit at an early age, though Knight started her singing career even younger than Franklin did. Knight was only four when she started performing solos in church, and by the age of eight she had won the two thousand dollar top prize on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour by singing Brahms’ “Lullaby” and the Nat “King” Cole hit “Too Young”: [Excerpt: Nat “King” Cole, “Too Young”] That success inspired her, and she soon formed a vocal group with her brother Bubba, sister Brenda and their cousins William and Eleanor Guest. They named themselves the Pips in honour of a cousin whose nickname that was, and started performing at talent contests in Atlanta Chitlin’ Circuit venues. They soon got a regular gig at one of them, the Peacock, despite them all being pre-teens at the time. The Pips also started touring, and came to the attention of Maurice King, the musical director of the Flame nightclub in Detroit, who became a vocal coach for the group. King got the group signed to Brunswick records, where they released their first single, a song King had written called “Whistle My Love”: [Excerpt: The Pips, “Whistle My Love”] According to Knight that came out in 1955, when she was eleven, but most other sources have it coming out in 1958. The group’s first two singles flopped, and Brenda and Eleanor quit the group, being replaced by another cousin, Edward Patten, and an unrelated singer Langston George, leaving Knight as the only girl in the quintet. While the group weren’t successful on records, they were getting a reputation live and toured on package tours with Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and others. Knight also did some solo performances with a jazz band led by her music teacher, and started dating that band’s sax player, Jimmy Newman. The group’s next recording was much more successful. They went into a makeshift studio owned by a local club owner, Fats Hunter, and recorded what they thought was a demo, a version of the Johnny Otis song “Every Beat of My Heart”: [Excerpt: The Pips, “Every Beat of My Heart (HunTom version)”] The first they knew that Hunter had released that on his own small label was when they heard it on the radio. The record was picked up by VeeJay records, and it ended up going to number one on the R&B charts and number six on the pop charts, but they never saw any royalties from it. It brought them to the attention of another small label, Fury Records, which got them to rerecord the song, and that version *also* made the R&B top twenty and got as high as number forty-five on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Every Beat of My Heart (Fury version)”] However, just because they had a contract with Fury didn’t mean they actually got any more money, and Knight has talked about the label’s ownership being involved with gangsters. That was the first recording to be released as by “Gladys Knight and the Pips”, rather than just The Pips, and they would release a few more singles on Fury, including a second top twenty pop hit, the Don Covay song “Letter Full of Tears”: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Letter Full of Tears”] But Knight had got married to Newman, who was by now the group’s musical director, after she fell pregnant when she was sixteen and he was twenty. However, that first pregnancy tragically ended in miscarriage, and when she became pregnant again she decided to get off the road to reduce the risk. She spent a couple of years at home, having two children, while the other Pips – minus George who left soon after – continued without her to little success. But her marriage was starting to deteriorate under pressure of Newman’s drug use — they wouldn’t officially divorce until 1972, but they were already feeling the pressure, and would split up sooner rather than later — and Knight  returned to the stage, initially as a solo artist or duetting with Jerry Butler, but soon rejoining the Pips, who by this time were based in New York and working with the choreographer Cholly Atkins to improve their stagecraft. For the next few years the Pips drifted from label to label, scoring one more top forty hit in 1964 with Van McCoy’s “Giving Up”, but generally just getting by like so many other acts on the circuit. Eventually the group ended up moving to Detroit, and hooking up with Motown, where mentors like Cholly Atkins and Maurice King were already working. At first they thought they were taking a step up, but they soon found that they were a lower tier Motown act, considered on a par with the Spinners or the Contours rather than the big acts, and according to Knight they got pulled off an early Motown package tour because Diana Ross, with whom like Franklin Knight had something of a rivalry, thought they were too good on stage and were in danger of overshadowing her. Knight says in her autobiography that they “formed a little club of our own with some of the other malcontents” with Martha Reeves, Marvin Gaye, and someone she refers to as “Ivory Joe Hunter” but I presume she means Ivy Jo Hunter (one of the big problems when dealing with R&B musicians of this era is the number of people with similar names. Ivy Jo Hunter, Joe Hunter, and Ivory Joe Hunter were all R&B musicians for whom keyboard was their primary instrument, and both Ivy Jo and just plain Joe worked for Motown at different points, but Ivory Joe never did) Norman Whitfield was also part of that group of “malcontents”, and he was also the producer of the Pips’ first few singles for Motown, and so when he was looking for someone to outdo Aretha, someone with something to prove, he turned to them. He gave the group the demo tape, and they worked out a vocal arrangement for a radically different version of the song, one inspired by “Respect”: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] The third time was the charm, and quality control finally agreed to release “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” as a single. Gladys Knight always claimed it had no promotion, but Norman Whitfield’s persistence had paid off — the single went to number two on the pop charts (kept off the top by “Daydream Believer”), number one on the R&B charts, and became Motown’s biggest-selling single *ever* up until that point. It also got Knight a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female — though the Grammy committee, at least, didn’t think she’d out-Aretha’d Aretha, as “Respect” won the award. And that, sadly, sort of summed up Gladys Knight and the Pips at Motown — they remained not quite the winners in everything. There’s no shame in being at number two behind a classic single like “Daydream Believer”, and certainly no shame in losing the Grammy to Aretha Franklin at her best, but until they left Motown in 1972 and started their run of hits on Buddah records, Gladys Knight and the Pips would always be in other people’s shadow. That even extended to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” when, as we’ll hear in part two of this story, Norman Whitfield’s persistence paid off, Marvin Gaye’s version got released as a single, and *that* became the biggest-selling single on Motown ever, outselling the Pips version and making it forever his song, not theirs. And as a final coda to the story of Gladys Knight and the Pips at Motown, while they were touring off the back of “Grapevine’s” success, the Pips ran into someone they vaguely knew from his time as a musician in the fifties, who was promoting a group he was managing made up of his sons. Knight thought they had something, and got in touch with Motown several times trying to get them to sign the group, but she was ignored. After a few attempts, though, Bobby Taylor of another second-tier Motown group, the Vancouvers, also saw them and got in touch with Motown, and this time they got signed. But that story wasn’t good enough for Motown, and so neither Taylor nor Knight got the credit for discovering the group. Instead when Joe Jackson’s sons’ band made their first album, it was titled Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5. But that, of course, is a story for another time…

Fresh from starring in Ain't Too Proud, Cameron Bernard Jones is soon to be playing Collins in the new UK revival of Rent for Landmark Theatres. Cameron is originally from New York and has performed internationally in Porgy & Bess, Hairspray and Showboat. In the West End, he has been in Motown The Musical and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical in which he covered Ike Turner. Cameron was in South Pacific at the Chichester Festival Theatre, Punchdrunk's acclaimed porudction of The Burnt City and received a Black British Theatre Award nomination for his performance as the title role in The Wiz at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester. Cameron starred as Melvin Franklin in the original West End cast of Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations at the Prince Edward Theatre. Cameron is also a podcaster; he hosts and produces Lick The Plate, a podcast about people and food. In this episode, Cameron discusses his original journey into theatre, reestablishing himself in the UK and the highs and lows of his first contract as a West End leading man. He also reflects on navigating a career in theatre as a bass baritone and lots more. Follow Cameron on Instagram: @cbjartsFollow and subscribe to Lick The Plate wherever you get your podcasts. You can see Cameron in Rent at the Peterborough New Theatre and Queen's Theatre Barnstaple in June and July. Hosted by Andrew Tomlins  @AndrewTomlins32  Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.  46s Film Making 46s: Filmmakers talk origins, challenges, budgets, and profits.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Johnny Cash was a prolific hitmaker in the mid 50's to early 60's.  In the late 60's  he released a couple of live albums which had crossover appeal:  "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison," and "Johnny Cash at San Quentin."  By 1969, Johnny Cash had become an international musical success, selling more records than the Beatles at the time.Cash had left his original label, Sun Records, back in 1958.  However, he had left an extensive catalogue of songs with Sam Phillips at Sun.  Given his success and the upcoming Johnny Cash TV show, Sun Records decided it would be a good time to release a compilation of his earlier hits from 1954 through 1958.  This compilation was released on two albums, "Original Golden Hits, Volume I" and "Original Golden Hits, Volume II," which reached numbers 4 and 3 on the US Country charts respectively.  Cash would go on to fame in TV and film in the 70's, and would continue recording up until his death in 2003.While not strictly rock music, the Man in Black was an icon of American music and an inspiration for many in country, rock, and pop genres.  It is also a special memory for Wayne, as he listened to this  8-track as he traveled with his father out of California to Alabama.Wayne takes us through this greatest hits album for today's podcast. Home of the BluesThe inspiration for this song was the "Home of the Blues" record shop on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.  The store which was open from the late 40's until the mid 70's was a place he used to hang out, buy records, and meet other musicians. Hey PorterThis is Cash's first recorded song.  The setting is just after World War II, and the song focuses on a man returning home from overseas who feels elated to be returning to his native South, the last leg of which is by train.  Note that there is no percussion in this song, but Cash played his guitar with dampened strings to acquire a percussive effect.I Walk the LineJohnny Cash's first number 1 hit on the Billboard country charts eventually crossed over to the US pop charts, reaching number 17 and selling over 2 million copies in the United States.  The lyrics reflect temptations and the need to be accountable for your actions.  The frequent key changes make this song distinctive.Get RhythmThis was the B-side to "I Walk the Line."  It was re-released in 1969 as an A-side, and went to number 60 on the Billboard pop chart.   ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Main theme from the television series “Fat Albert”The origin of Bill Cosby's animated series was an animated primetime television special that first aired on NBC on November 12, 1969.  STAFF PICKS:Birthday by Underground SunshineRob starts off the staff picks with a cover of the Beatles song by a group from Wisconsin.  The band had been around for a few years, but this cover helped them attain greater success.  Their cover made it to number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Down on the Corner by Credence Clearwater RevivalLynch's staff pick is one of the best known songs by CCR.  The song talks about a band called "Willy and the Poor Boys" playing in the street for spare change.  It went to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 by the end of 1969.  I Can't Get Next to You by The Temptations Bruce gets us all moving with the number 1 single from David Ruffin, Melvin Franklin, Otis Williams, Eddie Kendricks, and Paul Williams - better known as The Temptations.  This was the second of four number 1 hits from the group, and was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for the Motown label. I'm Tired by Savoy BrownWayne's staff pick charted at number 74 on the top 100, and has a very heavy electric blues feel.  Three members of this group out of London would go on to form Foghat.  The group's name came from American Blues label Savoy Records - a name that had an elegant sound.  "Brown" was added as an extremely plain word that contrasted nicely with the elegance of "Savoy." INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Treat by SantanaSantana would produce a number of excellent instrumental hits during his decades in the rock scene, and this one is from his debut album. Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

Welcome to Funky Pearls Radio, where we're diving into the extraordinary saga of The Temptations , a group that not only defined the sound of Motown but reshaped the landscape of soul music.  The Temptations' journey began in 1961 in Detroit, Michigan, with the merging of two R&B groups: The Primes and The Distants.  This union birthed a legendary ensemble featuring talents like Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin, Eldridge Bryant, and Otis Williams. Initially known as the Elgins, they soon became The Temptations at Berry Gordy's suggestion, signing with his Motown Records.  This marked the beginning of a musical revolution. Their early work with Smokey Robinson set the stage for a series of hits that would become the soundtrack of a generation.  The group's dynamics shifted with the arrival of David Ruffin in 1963. His raw vocal power, coupled with Kendricks' falsetto, created a musical synergy that propelled The Temptations to new heights.  Hits like 'My Girl' and 'It's Growing' showcased their unique blend of soulful harmonies and catchy rhythms. By the late '60s,  Norman Whitfield took over as their producer, ushering in a new era of psychedelic soul. This period saw the group tackle more socially conscious themes, reflecting the tumultuous times. Songs like 'Cloud Nine' and 'Ball Of Confusion' not only topped charts but also captured the essence of a nation in flux. However, this period was not without its challenges.  Internal conflicts led to Ruffin's departure in 1968, and Eddie Kendricks left in 1971 to pursue a solo career.  Despite these changes, The Temptations continued to evolve, with hits like 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' showcasing their adaptability and continued relevance.  Tragedy struck with the deaths of Paul Williams in 1973 and later Ruffin and Kendricks. Yet, The Temptations persevered, with Otis Williams remaining as the backbone of the group.  They continued to record and perform, embracing new sounds and trends while staying true to their soulful roots. The 1990s and 2000s saw The Temptations continue to release new music, including the Grammy-winning 'Phoenix Rising' and 'Ear-resistable'.  Their ability to adapt and evolve while maintaining their signature sound is a testament to their enduring legacy. As we celebrate The Temptations on Funky Pearls Radio, we honor not just their music but their journey.  From the streets of Detroit to the pinnacle of Motown fame, The Temptations' story is one of resilience, innovation, and the transformative power of music.  Their legacy continues to inspire and resonate, proving that true musical greatness stands the test of time.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Today on Funky Pearls Radio, we're delving into the life of David Ruffin, a towering figure in the soul and R&B world, whose voice came to define an era at Motown Records.  Born David Eli Ruffin on January 18, 1941, in Whynot, Mississippi, David's early years in the church choir laid the foundation for his future success. The younger brother of Jimmy Ruffin and cousin to Melvin Franklin of The Temptations, David was surrounded by musical talent from the start.  In his teens, David's foray into professional music began with the gospel group the Dixie Nightingales and continued with the doo-wop group the Voice Masters.  By 1960, he was in Detroit, signing with the Anna label as a solo artist, releasing singles that would mark the beginning of a remarkable journey. David's destiny with The Temptations began in 1964 when he replaced Eldridge Bryant. Initially a background vocalist, David soon emerged as a lead singer on hits like 'My Girl' and 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg', his voice becoming synonymous with the group's success.  However, his time with The Temptations was not without its challenges. By 1968, due to various issues, David was replaced in the group, leading him to embark on a solo career. His first solo hit, 'My Whole World Ended' in 1969, proved that his voice could captivate audiences just as powerfully on its own.  The 1970s saw David collaborate with his brother Jimmy and work with producers like Van McCoy. His album ‘Who I Am' in 1975, featuring the hit ‘Walk Away From Love', marked a high point, resonating with fans on both sides of the Atlantic. The late 1970s and early 1980s were a period of transition for David, with a brief imprisonment for tax evasion and a move to Warner Brothers Records.  His album 'Gentleman Ruffin' in 1980 and the subsequent reunion with Eddie Kendricks in 1982 rekindled memories of their Temptations days. David's collaboration with Kendricks culminated in the album 'Ruffin And Kendrick' in 1987, showcasing their enduring vocal magic.  This period also saw them perform with Hall And Oates at the Apollo and the Live Aid concert, celebrating their legacy in soul music. The early 1990s saw David recording with Ian Levine's Motor City label and touring with Eddie Kendricks and Dennis Edwards. However, this resurgence was cut short by his tragic death on June 1, 1991, in Philadelphia, following complications related to substance abuse.  David Ruffin's legacy in music is monumental. His voice not only defined the sound of The Temptations but also left a lasting impact on soul and R&B. His albums, from 'My Whole World Ended' to 'Ruffin And Kendrick', are testaments to his versatility and enduring appeal. As we reflect on David Ruffin's life and career on Funky Pearls Radio, we remember a man whose voice was as compelling as his life was complex.  His contributions to music continue to resonate, reminding us of the power of a soulful melody and a passionate voice. David Ruffin, a true legend of Motown, remains an unforgettable figure in the annals of soul music.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. Tune in on 88.7FM, listen online or subscribe to the podcast. Join the discussion at 888-486-9677, questions@townsquaretalk.org or @townsquaretalk. Dreams do come true. Harrell Holmes Jr., grew up wanting to be a Temptation, and today, he is making that a reality as he stars as Melvin Franklin in the national tour of the high energy musical Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, which tells the story of the music group's rise to fame. Holmes Jr. talks with us about how his love of The Temptations began, his career from being featured on Star Search and American Idol to performing on stage in Ain't Too Proud, as well as what audiences can expect from the show. Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations is playing at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in Houston until Sunday, August 13, 2023. For more information, click here. Then, we discuss the science of sleep with neurologist and sleep specialist Dr. Chris Winter. He explains the importance of bedtime rituals to remain consistent in the time you wake up and go to bed, the amount of sleep we need as adults, better habits for falling asleep for those who are having difficulties or experiencing insomnia, and more. Guests: Harrell Holmes Jr. Singer, Dancer, Actor Plays Melvin Franklin in Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations Dr. Chris Winter Neurologist & Sleep Specialist Author, The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder and How To Help and The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How To Fix It Host, Sleep Unplugged Podcast Town Square with Ernie Manouse is a gathering space for the community to come together and discuss the day's most important and pressing issues. We also offer a free podcast here, on iTunes, and other apps

Harrell Holmes Jr. plays Melvin Franklin in "Ain't Too Proud", now playing at The Altria Theatre, joins John Reid to talk about opening night last night. 

Actor Cameron Bernard Jones (Ain't Too Proud / The Wiz) joins West End Frame Editor, Andrew Tomlins, to round up his Top 5 Performances of 2022!Thank you for listening to The West End Frame Show in 2022 and for sharing your top performances of the year - we included as many as possible in this episode. We're back tomorrow to round up our top shows of the year.Cameron is a West End performer, voice actor, bass baritone, accent coach, podcast host and poet. He is originally from New York and has performed internationally in Porgy & Bess and Showboat. In the West End, he has been in Motown The Musical and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.Last year Cameron appeared in South Pacific at the Chichester Festival Theatre before taking on the title role in The Wiz at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester.He has hosted two podcasts, Two Scoops and Cancelled.Cameron is currently appearing in Punchdruk's production of The Burnt City. Next year he is set to become a West End leading man and star as Melvin Franklin in the West End premiere of Aint Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations at the Prince Edward Theatre.Follow Cameron in Instagram: @cbjartsHosted by Andrew Tomlins. @AndrewTomlins32  Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.  

Join True Crime New England on the tenth installment of their Case Profile miniseries, as both girls share stories from Massachusetts. First, Liz tells the devastating murder of loving father and talented musician, Melvin Franklin, who was shot outside his Dorchester home in 1996. Then, Katie discusses the mysterious disappearance of Jennifer Mbugua in Fall River in 2014. To this day, neither of these cases has been solved. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/truecrimene/support

In this absolute knockout, tour-de-force of an episode, Nancy and Jose are joined in studio by the legendary leader, visionary and man of impact, the one and only Michael Brunker. A live well lived took him from Detroit, Michigan to San Diego in 1980 and it's safe to say that San Diego is far better off for his presence. From his days of coaching for the Detroit Pistons and SDSU Basketball to his leadership at the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA and now his work with the Ken Blanchard Institute, the common denominator is his commitment to youth and providing them with foundational life skills. A mindset that "it's tough to be young today" inspires his work to help young adults sort through the myriad of choices and questions and provide them with "bonafide answers." His work with the Ken Blanchard Institute, brought on to reimagine their leadership training programs and deliver them to middle school and high school students is just one shining example of intentional and purposeful shaping of the world by Michael. Part and parcel of this is his discussion of what we can all do with our "head, heart, hands and habits" daily to make the world better. We also learn about impactful ideas such as "points of power" and the "four-way test" used by the San Diego Rotary in guiding their work. Michael also shares the impact of one book in particular, given to him by Melvin Franklin of The Temptations, that had a huge impact and informs his work to this day...."The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran. Quite the episode and here are some other amazing takeaways from the interview with Michael Brunker: - The two songs which he thinks still fit today's world for youth- His thoughts on leadership styles and his view of a gap minder (great!)- This man of Motown picked favorite band that threw Nancy and Jose for a loop! - The best spots in town for brussel sprouts! - The answers to the Rapid Fire questions! A truly uplifting, energizing and impactful interview from a phenomenal gap minder. Thank you, Michael Brunker, for your contributions to the world of social impact, making the world a better place, and for joining us on The Gap Minders.Enjoy this episode and be sure to subscribe to the show. If you have any questions or want to contact Nancy or Jose, please send an email to podcast@uwsd.org. Thank you for listening.To learn more about the two social impact organizations making The Gap Minders possible, please visit www.TheGapMinders.org.

#OTD We lost recording artist Melvin Franklin, bass singer for The Temptations, at the age of 52. Community leader Lloyd Hopkins narrates.

Episode 134 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “In the Midnight Hour", the links between Stax, Atlantic, and Detroit, and the career of Wilson Pickett. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Mercy Mercy" by Don Covay. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say “After Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records” – I meant to say “Dot Records” here, the label that Alexander moved to *before* Monument. I also misspeak at one point and say "keyboard player Chips Moman", when I mean to say "keyboard player Spooner Oldham". This is correct in the transcript/script, I just misread it. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Pickett. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Wilson Pickett was In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. The episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I reference are the ones on Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team. And information on the Falcons comes from Marv Goldberg. Pickett's complete Atlantic albums can be found in this excellent ten-CD set. For those who just want the hits, this single-CD compilation is significantly cheaper. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start, just to say that this episode contains some discussion of domestic abuse, drug use, and abuse of employees by their employer, and one mention of an eating disorder. Also, this episode is much longer than normal, because we've got a lot to fit in. Today we're going to move away from Motown, and have a look at a record recorded in the studios of their great rival Stax records, though not released on that label. But the record we're going to look at is from an artist who was a bridge between the Detroit soul of Motown and the southern soul of Stax, an artist who had a foot in both camps, and whose music helped to define soul while also being closer than that of any other soul man to the music made by the white rock musicians of the period. We're going to look at Stax, and Muscle Shoals, and Atlantic Records, and at Wilson Pickett and "In the Midnight Hour" [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett: "In the Midnight Hour"] Wilson Pickett never really had a chance. His father, Wilson senior, was known in Alabama for making moonshine whisky, and spent time in prison for doing just that -- and his young son was the only person he told the location of his still. Eventually, Wilson senior moved to Detroit to start earning more money, leaving his family at home at first. Wilson junior and his mother moved up to Detroit to be with his father, but they had to leave his older siblings in Alabama, and his mother would shuttle between Michigan and Alabama, trying vainly to look after all her children. Eventually, Wilson's mother got pregnant while she was down in Alabama, which broke up his parents' marriage, and Wilson moved back down to Alabama permanently, to live on a farm with his mother. But he never got on with his mother, who was physically abusive to him -- as he himself would later be to his children, and to his partners, and to his bandmates. The one thing that Wilson did enjoy about his life in Alabama was the gospel music, and he became particularly enamoured of two gospel singers, Archie Brownlee of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Blind Boys, "Will My Jesus Be Waiting?"] And Julius Cheeks of the Sensational Nightingales: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, "God's World Will Never Pass Away"] Wilson determined to become a gospel singer himself, but he couldn't stand living with his mother in rural Alabama, and decided to move up to be with his father and his father's new girlfriend in Detroit.  Once he moved to Detroit, he started attending Northwestern High School, which at the time was also being attended by Norman Whitfield, Florence Ballard, and Melvin Franklin. Pickett also became friendly with Aretha Franklin, though she didn't attend the same school -- she went to school at Northern, with Smokey Robinson -- and he started attending services at New Bethel Church, the church where her father preached. This was partly because Rev. Franklin was one of the most dynamic preachers around, but also because New Bethel Church would regularly feature performances by the most important gospel performers of the time -- Pickett saw the Soul Stirrers perform there, with Sam Cooke singing lead, and of course also saw Aretha singing there. He joined a few gospel groups, first joining one called the Sons of Zion, but he was soon poached by a more successful group, the Violinaires. It was with the Violinaires that he made what is almost certainly his first recording -- a track that was released as a promo single, but never got a wide release at the time: [Excerpt: The Violinaires, "Sign of the Judgement"] The Violinaires were only moderately successful on the gospel circuit, but Pickett was already sure he was destined for bigger things. He had a rivalry with David Ruffin, in particular, constantly mocking Ruffin and saying that he would never amount to anything, while Wilson Pickett was the greatest. But after a while, he realised that gospel wasn't where he was going to make his mark. Partly his change in direction was motivated by financial concern -- he'd physically attacked his father and been kicked out of his home, and he was also married while still a teenager, and had a kid who needed feeding. But also, he was aware of a certain level of hypocrisy among his more religious acquaintances. Aretha Franklin had two kids, aged only sixteen, and her father, the Reverend Franklin, had fathered a child with a twelve-year-old, was having an affair with the gospel singer Clara Ward, and was hanging around blues clubs all the time. Most importantly, he realised that the audiences he was singing to in church on Sunday morning were mostly still drunk from Saturday night. As he later put it "I might as well be singing rock 'n' roll as singing to a drunken audience. I might as well make me some money." And this is where the Falcons came in. The Falcons were a doo-wop group that had been formed by a Black singer, Eddie Floyd, and a white singer, Bob Manardo. They'd both recruited friends, including bass singer Willie Schofield, and after performing locally they'd decided to travel to Chicago to audition for Mercury Records. When they got there, they found that you couldn't audition for Mercury in Chicago, you had to go to New York, but they somehow persuaded the label to sign them anyway -- in part because an integrated group was an unusual thing. They recorded one single for Mercury, produced by Willie Dixon who was moonlighting from Chess: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Baby That's It"] But then Manardo was drafted, and the group's other white member, Tom Shetler, decided to join up along with him. The group went through some other lineup changes, and ended up as Eddie Floyd, Willie Schofield, Mack Rice, guitarist Lance Finnie, and lead singer Joe Stubbs, brother of Levi. The group released several singles on small labels owned by their manager, before having a big hit with "You're So Fine", the record we heard about them recording last episode: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] That made number two on the R&B charts and number seventeen on the pop charts. They recorded several follow-ups, including "Just For Your Love", which made number 26 on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Just For Your Love"] To give you some idea of just how interrelated all the different small R&B labels were at this point, that was originally recorded and released on Chess records. But as Roquel Davis was at that point working for Chess, he managed to get the rights to reissue it on Anna Records, the label he co-owned with the Gordy sisters -- and the re-released record was distributed by Gone Records, one of George Goldner's labels. The group also started to tour supporting Marv Johnson. But Willie Schofield was becoming dissatisfied. He'd written "You're So Fine", but he'd only made $500 from what he was told was a million-selling record. He realised that in the music business, the real money was on the business side, not the music side, so while staying in the Falcons he decided he was going to go into management too. He found the artist he was going to manage while he was walking to his car, and heard somebody in one of the buildings he passed singing Elmore James' then-current blues hit "The Sky is Crying": [Excerpt: Elmore James, "The Sky is Crying"] The person he heard singing that song, and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, was of course Wilson Pickett, and Schofield signed him up to a management contract -- and Pickett was eager to sign, knowing that Schofield was a successful performer himself. The intention was at first that Schofield would manage Pickett as a solo performer, but then Joe Stubbs got ideas above his station, and started insisting that the group be called "Joe Stubbs and the Falcons", which put the others' backs up, and soon Stubbs was out of the group. This experience may have been something that his brother later had in mind -- in the late sixties, when Motown started trying to promote groups as Lead Singer and The Group, Levi Stubbs always refused to allow his name to go in front of the Four Tops. So the Falcons were without a lead singer. They tried a few other singers in their circle, including Marvin Gaye, but were turned down. So in desperation, they turned to Pickett. This wasn't a great fit -- the group, other than Schofield, thought that Pickett was "too Black", both in that he had too much gospel in his voice, and literally in that he was darker-skinned than the rest of the group (something that Schofield, as someone who was darker than the rest of the group but less dark than Pickett, took offence at). Pickett, in turn, thought that the Falcons were too poppy, and not really the kind of thing he was at all interested in doing. But they were stuck with each other, and had to make the most of it, even though Pickett's early performances were by all accounts fairly dreadful. He apparently came in in the wrong key on at least one occasion, and another time froze up altogether and couldn't sing. Even when he did sing, and in tune, he had no stage presence, and he later said “I would trip up, fall on the stage and the group would rehearse me in the dressing room after every show. I would get mad, ‘cos I wanted to go out and look at the girls as well! They said, ‘No, you got to rehearse, Oscar.' They called me Oscar. I don't know why they called me Oscar, I didn't like that very much.” Soon, Joe Stubbs was back in the group, and there was talk of the group getting rid of Pickett altogether. But then they went into the studio to record a song that Sam Cooke had written for the group, "Pow! You're in Love". The song had been written for Stubbs to sing, but at the last minute they decided to give Pickett the lead instead: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Pow! You're in Love"] Pickett was now secure as the group's lead singer, but the group weren't having any success with records. They were, though, becoming a phenomenal live act -- so much so that on one tour, where James Brown was the headliner, Brown tried to have the group kicked off the bill, because he felt that Pickett was stealing his thunder. Eventually, the group's manager set up his own record label, Lu Pine Records, which would become best known as the label that released the first record by the Primettes, who later became the Supremes.  Lu Pine released the Falcons' single "I Found a Love",   after the group's management had first shopped it round to other labels to try to get them to put it out: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] That song, based on the old Pentecostal hymn "Yes Lord", was written by Pickett and Schofield, but the group's manager, Robert West, also managed to get his name on the credits. The backing group, the Ohio Untouchables, would later go on to become better known as The Ohio Players. One of the labels that had turned that record down was Atlantic Records, because Jerry Wexler hadn't heard any hit potential in the song. But then the record started to become successful locally, and Wexler realised his mistake. He got Lu Pine to do a distribution deal with Atlantic, giving Atlantic full rights to the record, and it became a top ten R&B hit. But by this point, Pickett was sick of working with the Falcons, and he'd decided to start trying for a solo career. His first solo single was on the small label Correc-Tone, and was co-produced by Robert Bateman, and featured the Funk Brothers as instrumental backing, and the Primettes on vocals. I've seen some claims that the Andantes are on there too, but I can't make them out -- but I can certainly make out the future Supremes: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Let Me Be Your Boy"] That didn't do anything, and Pickett kept recording with the Falcons for a while, as well as putting out his solo records. But then Willie Schofield got drafted, and the group split up. Their manager hired another group, The Fabulous Playboys, to be a new Falcons group, but in 1964 he got shot in a dispute over the management of Mary Wells, and had to give up working in the music industry. Pickett's next single, which he co-wrote with Robert Bateman and Sonny Schofield, was to be the record that changed his career forever. "If You Need Me" once again featured the Funk Brothers and the Andantes, and was recorded for Correc-Tone: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "If You Need Me"] Jerry Wexler was again given the opportunity to put the record out on Atlantic, and once again decided against it. Instead, he offered to buy the song's publishing, and he got Solomon Burke to record it, in a version produced by Bert Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] Burke wasn't fully aware, when he cut that version, that Wilson Pickett, who was his friend, had recorded his own version. He became aware, though, when Double-L Records, a label co-owned by Lloyd Price, bought the Correc-Tone master and released Pickett's version nationally, at the same time as Burke's version came out. The two men were annoyed that they'd been put into unwitting competition, and so started an unofficial nonaggression pact -- every time Burke was brought into a radio station to promote his record, he'd tell the listeners that he was there to promote Wilson Pickett's new single. Meanwhile, when Pickett went to radio stations, he'd take the opportunity to promote the new record he'd written for his good friend Solomon Burke, which the listeners should definitely check out. The result was that both records became hits -- Pickett's scraped the lower reaches of the R&B top thirty, while Burke, as he was the bigger star, made number two on the R&B chart and got into the pop top forty. Pickett followed it up with a soundalike, "It's Too Late", which managed to make the R&B top ten as there was no competition from Burke. At this point, Jerry Wexler realised that he'd twice had the opportunity to release a record with Wilson Pickett singing, twice he'd turned the chance down, and twice the record had become a hit. He realised that it was probably a good idea to sign Pickett directly to Atlantic and avoid missing out. He did check with Pickett if Pickett was annoyed about the Solomon Burke record -- Pickett's response was "I need the bread", and Wilson Pickett was now an Atlantic artist. This was at the point when Atlantic was in something of a commercial slump -- other than the records Bert Berns was producing for the Drifters and Solomon Burke, they were having no hits, and they were regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, rooted in a version of R&B that still showed its roots in jazz, rather than the new sounds that were taking over the industry in the early sixties. But they were still a bigger label than anything else Pickett had recorded for, and he seized the opportunity to move into the big time. To start with, Atlantic teamed Pickett up with someone who seemed like the perfect collaborator -- Don Covay, a soul singer and songwriter who had his roots in hard R&B and gospel music but had written hits for people like Chubby Checker.  The two got together and recorded a song they wrote together, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)"] That did nothing commercially -- and gallingly for Pickett, on the same day, Atlantic released a single Covay had written for himself, "Mercy Mercy", and that ended up going to number one on the R&B chart and making the pop top forty. As "I'm Gonna Cry" didn't work out, Atlantic decided to try to change tack, and paired Pickett with their established hitmaker Bert Berns, and a duet partner, Tami Lyn, for what Pickett would later describe as "one of the weirdest sessions on me I ever heard in my life", a duet on a Mann and Weil song, "Come Home Baby": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett and Tami Lyn, "Come Home Baby"] Pickett later said of that track, "it didn't sell two records", but while it wasn't a hit, it was very popular among musicians -- a few months later Mick Jagger would produce a cover version of it on Immediate Records, with Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, and the Georgie Fame brass section backing a couple of unknown singers: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, "Come Home Baby"] Sadly for Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, that didn't get past being issued as a promotional record, and never made it to the shops. Meanwhile, Pickett went out on tour again, substituting on a package tour for Clyde McPhatter, who had to drop out when his sister died. Also on the tour was Pickett's old bandmate from the Falcons, Mack Rice, now performing as Sir Mack Rice, who was promoting a single he'd just released on a small label, which had been produced by Andre Williams. The song had originally been called "Mustang Mama", but Aretha Franklin had suggested he call it "Mustang Sally" instead: [Excerpt: Sir Mack Rice, "Mustang Sally"] Pickett took note of the song, though he didn't record it just yet -- and in the meantime, the song was picked up by the white rock group The Young Rascals, who released their version as the B-side of their number one hit, "Good Lovin'": [Excerpt: The Young Rascals, "Mustang Sally"] Atlantic's problems with having hits weren't only problems with records they made themselves -- they were also having trouble getting any big hits with Stax records. As we discussed in the episode on "Green Onions", Stax were being distributed by Atlantic, and in 1963 they'd had a minor hit with "These Arms of Mine" by Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] But throughout 1964, while the label had some R&B success with its established stars, it had no real major breakout hits, and it seemed to be floundering a bit -- it wasn't doing as badly as Atlantic itself, but it wasn't doing wonderfully. It wasn't until the end of the year when the label hit on what would become its defining sound, when for the first time Redding collaborated with Stax studio guitarist and producer Steve Cropper on a song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] That record would point the way towards Redding's great artistic triumphs of the next couple of years, which we'll look at in a future episode. But it also pointed the way towards a possible future sound for Atlantic. Atlantic had signed a soul duo, Sam & Dave, who were wonderful live performers but who had so far not managed to translate those live performances to record. Jerry Wexler thought that perhaps Steve Cropper could help them do that, and made a suggestion to Jim Stewart at Stax -- Atlantic would loan out Sam & Dave to the label. They'd remain signed to Atlantic, but make their records at Stax studios, and they'd be released as Stax records. Their first single for Stax, "A Place Nobody Can Find", was produced by Cropper, and was written by Stax songwriter Dave Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "A Place Nobody Can Find"] That wasn't a hit, but soon Porter would start collaborating with another songwriter, Isaac Hayes, and would write a string of hits for the duo. But in order to formalise the loan-out of Sam and Dave, Atlantic also wanted to formalise their arrangement with Stax. Previously they'd operated on a handshake basis -- Wexler and Stewart had a mutual respect, and they simply agreed that Stax would give Atlantic the option to distribute their stuff. But now they entered into a formal, long-term contract, and for a nominal sum of one dollar, Jim Stewart gave Atlantic the distribution rights to all past Stax records and to all future records they released for the next few years. Or at least, Stewart *thought* that the agreement he was making was formalising the distribution agreement. What the contract actually said -- and Stewart never bothered to have this checked over by an entertainment lawyer, because he trusted Wexler -- was that Stax would, for the sum of one dollar, give Atlantic *permanent ownership* of all their records, in return. The precise wording was "You hereby sell, assign and transfer to us, our successors or assigns, absolutely and forever and without any limitations or restrictions whatever, not specifically set forth herein, the entire right, title and interest in and to each of such masters and to each of the performances embodied thereon." Jerry Wexler would later insist that he had no idea that particular clause was in the contract, and that it had been slipped in there by the lawyers. Jim Stewart still thought of himself as the owner of an independent record label, but without realising it he'd effectively become an employee of Atlantic. Atlantic started to take advantage of this new arrangement by sending other artists down to Memphis to record with the Stax musicians. Unlike Sam and Dave, these would still be released as Atlantic records rather than Stax ones, and Jerry Wexler and Atlantic's engineer Tom Dowd would be involved  in the production, but the records would be made by the Stax team. The first artist to benefit from this new arrangement was Wilson Pickett, who had been wanting to work at Stax for a while, being a big fan of Otis Redding in particular. Pickett was teamed up with Steve Cropper, and together they wrote the song that would define Pickett's career. The seeds of "In the Midnight Hour" come from two earlier recordings. One is a line from his record with the Falcons, "I Found a Love": [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] The other is a line from a record that Clyde McPhatter had made with Billy Ward and the Dominoes back in 1951: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Do Something For Me"] Those lines about a "midnight hour" and "love come tumbling down" were turned into the song that would make Pickett's name, but exactly who did what has been the cause of some disagreement. The official story is that Steve Cropper took those lines and worked with Pickett to write the song, as a straight collaboration. Most of the time, though, Pickett would claim that he'd written the song entirely by himself, and that Cropper had stolen the credit for that and their other credited collaborations. But other times he would admit "He worked with me quite a bit on that one". Floyd Newman, a regular horn player at Stax, would back up Pickett, saying "Every artist that came in here, they'd have their songs all together, but when they leave they had to give up a piece of it, to a certain person. But this person, you couldn't be mad at him, because he didn't own Stax, Jim Stewart owned Stax. And this guy was doing what Jim Stewart told him to do, so you can't be mad at him." But on the other hand, Willie Schofield, who collaborated with Pickett on "I Found a Love", said of writing that "Pickett didn't have any chord pattern. He had a couple of lyrics. I'm working with him, giving him the chord change, the feel of it. Then we're going in the studio and I've gotta show the band how to play it because we didn't have arrangers. That's part of the songwriting. But he didn't understand. He felt he wrote the lyrics so that's it." Given that Cropper didn't take the writing credit on several other records he participated in, that he did have a consistent pattern of making classic hit records, that "In the Midnight Hour" is stylistically utterly different from Pickett's earlier work but very similar to songs like "Mr. Pitiful" cowritten by Cropper, and Pickett's longstanding habit of being dismissive of anyone else's contributions to his success, I think the most likely version of events is that Cropper did have a lot to do with how the song came together, and probably deserves his credit, but we'll never know for sure exactly what went on in their collaboration. Whoever wrote it, "In the Midnight Hour" became one of the all-time classics of soul: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] But another factor in making the record a success -- and in helping reinvent the Stax sound -- was actually Jerry Wexler. Wexler had started attending sessions at the Stax studios, and was astonished by how different the recording process was in the South. And Wexler had his own input into the session that produced "In the Midnight Hour". His main suggestion was that rather than play the complicated part that Cropper had come up with, the guitarist should simplify, and just play chords along with Al Jackson's snare drum. Wexler was enthusing about a new dance craze called the Jerk, which had recently been the subject of a hit record by a group called the Larks: [Excerpt: The Larks, "The Jerk"] The Jerk, as Wexler demonstrated it to the bemused musicians, involved accenting the second and fourth beats of the bar, and delaying them very slightly. And this happened to fit very well with the Stax studio sound. The Stax studio was a large room, with quite a lot of reverb, and the musicians played together without using headphones, listening to the room sound. Because of this, to stay in time, Steve Cropper had started taking his cue not just from the sound, but from watching Al Jackson's left hand going to the snare drum. This had led to him playing when he saw Jackson's hand go down on the two and four, rather than when the sound of the snare drum reached his ears -- a tiny, fraction-of-a-second, anticipation of the beat, before everyone would get back in sync on the one of the next bar, as Jackson hit the kick drum. This had in turn evolved into the whole group playing the backbeat with a fractional delay, hitting it a tiny bit late -- as if you're listening to the echo of those beats rather than to the beat itself. If anyone other than utterly exceptional musicians had tried this, it would have ended up as a car crash, but Jackson was one of the best timekeepers in the business, and many musicians would say that at this point in time Steve Cropper was *the* best rhythm guitarist in the world, so instead it gave the performances just enough sense of looseness to make them exciting. This slight delayed backbeat was something the musicians had naturally fallen into doing, but it fit so well with Wexler's conception of the Jerk that they started deliberately exaggerating it -- still only delaying the backbeat minutely, but enough to give the record a very different sound from anything that was out there: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] That delayed backbeat sound would become the signature sound of Stax for the next several years, and you will hear it on the run of classic singles they would put out for the next few years by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the MGs, Eddie Floyd and others. The sound of that beat is given extra emphasis by the utter simplicity of Al Jackson's playing. Jackson had a minimalist drum kit, but played it even more minimally -- other than the occasional fill, he never hit his tom at all, just using the kick drum, snare, and hi-hat -- and the hi-hat was not even miced, with any hi-hat on the actual records just being the result of leakage from the other mics. But that simplicity gave the Stax records a power that almost no other records from the period had: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] "In the Midnight Hour" made number one on the R&B charts, and made number twenty-one on the pop charts, instantly turning Pickett from an also-ran into one of the major stars of soul music. The follow-up, a soundalike called "Don't Fight It", also made the top five on the R&B charts. At his next session, Pickett was reunited with his old bandmate Eddie Floyd. Floyd would soon go on to have his own hits at Stax, most notably with "Knock on Wood", but at this point he was working as a staff songwriter at Stax, coming up with songs like "Comfort Me" for Carla Thomas: [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "Comfort Me"] Floyd had teamed up with Steve Cropper, and they'd been... shall we say, "inspired"... by a hit for the Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789", written by Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy and Mickey Stevenson: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789"] Cropper and Floyd had come up with their own song, "634-5789", which Pickett recorded, and which became an even bigger hit than "In the Midnight Hour", making number thirteen on the pop charts as well as being Pickett's second R&B number one: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "634-5789"] At the same session, they cut another single. This one was inspired by an old gospel song, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do", recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe among others: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] The song was rewritten by Floyd, Cropper, and Pickett, and was also a moderate R&B hit, though nowhere as big as "634-5789": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] That would be the last single that Pickett recorded at Stax, though -- though the reasoning has never been quite clear. Pickett was, to put it as mildly as possible, a difficult man to work with, and he seems to have had some kind of falling out with Jim Stewart -- though Stewart always said that the problem was actually that Pickett didn't get on with the musicians. But the musicians disagree, saying they had a good working relationship -- Pickett was often an awful person, but only when drunk, and he was always sober in the studio. It seems likely, actually, that Pickett's move away from the Stax studios was more to do with someone else -- Pickett's friend Don Covay was another Atlantic artist recording at Stax, and Pickett had travelled down with him when Covay had recorded "See Saw" there: [Excerpt: Don Covay, "See Saw"] Everyone involved agreed that Covay was an eccentric personality, and that he rubbed Jim Stewart up the wrong way. There is also a feeling among some that Stewart started to resent the way Stax's sound was being used for Atlantic artists, like he was "giving away" hits, even though Stax's company got the publishing on the songs Cropper was co-writing, and he was being paid for the studio time. Either way, after that session, Atlantic didn't send any of its artists down to Stax, other than Sam & Dave, who Stax regarded as their own artists. Pickett would never again record at Stax, and possibly coincidentally once he stopped writing songs with Steve Cropper he would also never again have a major hit record with a self-penned song. But Jerry Wexler still wanted to keep working in Southern studios, and with Southern musicians, and so he took Pickett to FAME studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We looked, back in the episode on Arthur Alexander, at the start of FAME studios, but after Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records, Rick Hall had turned FAME into a home for R&B singers looking for crossover success. While Stax employed both Black and white musicians, FAME studios had an all-white rhythm section, with a background in country music, but that had turned out to be absolutely perfect for performers like the soul singer Joe Tex, who had himself started out in country before switching to soul, and who recorded classics like "Hold What You Got" at the studio: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "Hold What You Got"] That had been released on FAME's record label, and Jerry Wexler had been impressed and had told Rick Hall to call him the next time he thought he had a hit. When Hall did call Wexler, Wexler was annoyed -- Hall phoned him in the middle of a party. But Hall was insistent. "You said to call you next time I've got a hit, and this is a number one". Wexler relented and listened to the record down the phone. This is what he heard: [Excerpt: Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman"] Atlantic snapped up "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, and it went to number one on the pop charts -- the first record from any of the Southern soul studios to do so. In Wexler's eyes, FAME was now the new Stax. Wexler had a bit of culture shock when working at FAME, as it was totally unlike anything he'd experienced before. The records he'd been involved with in New York had been mostly recorded by slumming jazz musicians, very technical players who would read the music from charts, and Stax had had Steve Cropper as de facto musical director, leading the musicians and working out their parts with them. By contrast, the process used at FAME, and at most of the other studios in what Charles Hughes describes as the "country-soul triangle" of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Nashville, was the process that had been developed by Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team in Nashville (and for a fuller description of this, see the excellent episodes on Bradley and the A-Team in the great country music podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones). The musicians would hear a play through of the song by its writer, or a demo, would note down the chord sequences using the Nashville number system rather than a more detailed score, do a single run-through to get the balance right, and then record. Very few songs required a second take. For Pickett's first session at FAME, and most subsequent ones, the FAME rhythm section of keyboard player Spooner Oldham, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bass player Junior Lowe and drummer Roger Hawkins was augmented with a few other players -- Memphis guitarists Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill, and the horn section who'd played on Pickett's Stax records, moonlighting. And for the first track they recorded there, Wexler wanted them to do something that would become a signature trick for Pickett over the next couple of years -- record a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul record. Wexler's thinking was that the best way for Pickett to cross over to a white audience was to do songs that were familiar to them from white pop cover versions, but songs that had originated in Pickett's soul style. At the time, as well, the hard backbeat sound on Pickett's hits was one that was more associated with white rock music than with soul, as was the emphasis on rhythm guitar. To modern ears, Pickett's records are almost the definition of soul music, but at the time they were absolutely considered crossover records. And so in the coming months Pickett would record cover versions of Don Covay's "Mercy Mercy", Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", and Irma Thomas' "Time is on My Side", all of which had been previously covered by the Rolling Stones -- and two of which had their publishing owned by Atlantic's publishing subsidiary. For this single, though, he was recording a song which had started out as a gospel-inspired dance song by the R&B singer Chris Kenner: [Excerpt: Chris Kenner, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] That had been a minor hit towards the bottom end of the Hot One Hundred, but it had been taken up by a lot of other musicians, and become one of those songs everyone did as album filler -- Rufus Thomas had done a version at Stax, for example. But then a Chicano garage band called Cannibal and the Headhunters started performing it live, and their singer forgot the lyrics and just started singing "na na na na", giving the song a chorus it hadn't had in its original version. Their version, a fake-live studio recording, made the top thirty: [Excerpt: Cannibal and the Headhunters, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] Pickett's version was drastically rearranged, and included a guitar riff that Chips Moman had come up with, some new lyrics that Pickett introduced, and a bass intro that Jerry Wexler came up with, a run of semiquavers that Junior Lowe found very difficult to play. The musicians spent so long working on that intro that Pickett got annoyed and decided to take charge. He yelled "Come on! One-two-three!" and the horn players, with the kind of intuition that comes from working together for years, hit a chord in unison. He yelled "One-two-three!" again, and they hit another chord, and Lowe went into the bass part. They'd found their intro. They ran through that opening one more time, then recorded a take: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] At this time, FAME was still recording live onto a single-track tape, and so all the mistakes were caught on tape with no opportunity to fix anything, like when all but one of the horn players forget to come in on the first line of one verse: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] But that kind of mistake only added to the feel of the track, which became Pickett's biggest hit yet -- his third number one on the R&B chart, and his first pop top ten. As the formula of recording a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul song had clearly worked, the next single Pickett recorded was "Mustang Sally", which as we saw had originally been an R&B record by Pickett's friend Mack Rice, before being covered by the Young Rascals. Pickett's version, though, became the definitive version: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] But it very nearly wasn't. That was recorded in a single take, and the musicians went into the control room to listen to it -- and the metal capstan on the tape machine flew off while it was rewinding. The tape was cut into dozens of tiny fragments, which the machine threw all over the room in all directions. Everyone was horrified, and Pickett, who was already known for his horrific temper, looked as if he might actually kill someone. Tom Dowd, Atlantic's genius engineer who had been a physicist on the Manhattan Project while still a teenager, wasn't going to let something as minor as that stop him. He told everyone to take a break for half an hour, gathered up all the randomly-thrown bits of tape, and spliced them back together. The completed recording apparently has forty splices in it, which would mean an average of a splice every four seconds. Have a listen to this thirty-second segment and see if you can hear any at all: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] That segment has the one part where I *think* I can hear one splice in the whole track, a place where the rhythm hiccups very slightly -- and that might well just be the drummer trying a fill that didn't quite come off. "Mustang Sally" was another pop top thirty hit, and Wexler's crossover strategy seemed to have been proved right -- so much so that Pickett was now playing pretty much all-white bills. He played, for example, at Murray the K's last ever revue at the Brooklyn Paramount, where the other artists on the bill were Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Young Rascals, Al Kooper's Blues Project, Cream, and the Who. Pickett found the Who extremely unprofessional, with their use of smoke bombs and smashing their instruments, but they eventually became friendly. Pickett's next single was his version of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", the Solomon Burke song that the Rolling Stones had also covered, and that was a minor hit, but his next few records after that didn't do particularly well. He did though have a big hit with his cover version of a song by a group called Dyke and the Blazers. Pickett's version of "Funky Broadway" took him to the pop top ten: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Funky Broadway"] It did something else, as well. You may have noticed that two of the bands on that Paramount bill were groups that get called "blue-eyed soul". "Soul" had originally been a term used for music made by Black people, but increasingly the term was being used by white people for their music, just as rock and roll and rhythm and blues before it had been picked up on by white musicians. And so as in those cases, Black musicians were moving away from the term -- though it would never be abandoned completely -- and towards a new slang term, "funk". And Pickett was the first person to get a song with "funk" in the title onto the pop charts. But that would be the last recording Pickett would do at FAME for a couple of years. As with Stax, Pickett was moved away by Atlantic because of problems with another artist, this time to do with a session with Aretha Franklin that went horribly wrong, which we'll look at in a future episode. From this point on, Pickett would record at American Sound Studios in Memphis, a studio owned and run by Chips Moman, who had played on many of Pickett's records. Again, Pickett was playing with an all-white house band, but brought in a couple of Black musicians -- the saxophone player King Curtis, and Pickett's new touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who had had a rough few years, being largely ostracised from the music community because of his relationship with Sam Cooke's widow. Womack wrote what might be Pickett's finest song, a song called "I'm in Love" which is a masterpiece of metrical simplicity disguised as complexity -- you could write it all down as being in straight four-four, but the pulse shifts and implies alternating bars of five and three at points: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm In Love"] Womack's playing on those sessions had two effects, one on music history and one on Pickett. The effect on music history was that he developed a strong working relationship with Reggie Young, the guitarist in the American Sound studio band, and Young and Womack learned each other's styles. Young would later go on to be one of the top country session guitarists, playing on records by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings and more, and he was using Womack's style of playing -- he said later "I didn't change a thing. I was playing that Womack style on country records, instead of the hillbilly stuff—it changed the whole bed of country music." The other effect, though, was a much more damaging one. Womack introduced Pickett to cocaine, and Pickett -- who was already an aggressive, violent, abusive, man, became much more so. "I'm in Love" went to number four on the R&B charts, but didn't make the pop top forty. The follow-up, a remake of "Stagger Lee", did decently on the pop charts but less well on the R&B charts. Pickett's audiences were diverging, and he was finding it more difficult to make the two come together. But he would still manage it, sporadically, throughout the sixties. One time when he did was in 1968, when he returned to Muscle Shoals and to FAME studios. In a session there, the guitarist was very insistent that Pickett should cut a version of the Beatles' most recent hit. Now obviously, this is a record that's ahead in our timeline, and which will be covered in a future episode, but I imagine that most of you won't find it too much of a spoiler when I tell you that "Hey Jude" by the Beatles was quite a big hit: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] What that guitarist had realised was that the tag of the song gave the perfect opportunity for ad-libbing. You all know the tag: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] And so on. That would be perfect for a guitar solo, and for Pickett to do some good soul shouting over. Neither Pickett nor Rick Hall were at all keen -- the Beatles record had only just dropped off number one, and it seemed like a ridiculous idea to both of them. But the guitarist kept pressing to do it, and by the time the other musicians returned from their lunch break, he'd convinced Pickett and Hall. The record starts out fairly straightforward: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] But it's on the tag when it comes to life. Pickett later described recording that part -- “He stood right in front of me, as though he was playing every note I was singing. And he was watching me as I sang, and as I screamed, he was screaming with his guitar.”: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] That was not Pickett's biggest hit, but it was one of the most influential. It made the career of the guitarist, Duane Allman, who Jerry Wexler insisted on signing to his own contract after that, and as Jimmy Johnson, the rhythm guitarist on the session said, "We realised then that Duane had created southern rock, in that vamp." It was big enough that Wexler pushed Pickett to record a whole series of cover versions of rock songs -- he put out versions of "Hey Joe", "Born to be Wild" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" -- the latter going back to his old technique of covering a white cover version of a Black record, as his version copied the Vanilla Fudge's arrangement rather than the Supremes' original. But these only had very minor successes -- the most successful of them was his version of "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. As the sixties turned into the seventies, Pickett continued having some success, but it was more erratic and less consistent. The worlds of Black and white music were drifting apart, and Pickett, who more than most had straddled both worlds, now found himself having success in neither. It didn't help that his cocaine dependency had made him into an egomaniac. At one point in the early seventies, Pickett got a residency in Las Vegas, and was making what by most standards was a great income from it. But he would complain bitterly that he was only playing the small room, not the big one in the same hotel, and that the artist playing the big room was getting better billing than him on the posters. Of course, the artist playing the big room was Elvis Presley, but that didn't matter to Pickett -- he thought he deserved to be at least that big. He was also having regular fights with his record label. Ahmet Ertegun used to tell a story -- and I'm going to repeat it here with one expletive cut out in order to get past Apple's ratings system. In Ertegun's words “Jerry Wexler never liked Crosby, Stills & Nash because they wanted so much freaking artistic autonomy. While we were arguing about this, Wilson Pickett walks in the room and comes up to Jerry and says, ‘Jerry,' and he goes, ‘Wham!' And he puts a pistol on the table. He says, ‘If that [Expletive] Tom Dowd walks into where I'm recording, I'm going to shoot him. And if you walk in, I'm going to shoot you. ‘Oh,' Jerry said. ‘That's okay, Wilson.' Then he walked out. So I said, ‘You want to argue about artistic autonomy?' ” As you can imagine, Atlantic were quite glad to get rid of Pickett when he decided he wanted to move to RCA records, who were finally trying to break into the R&B market. Unfortunately for Pickett, the executive who'd made the decision to sign him soon left the company, and as so often happens when an executive leaves, his pet project becomes the one that everyone's desperate to get rid of.  RCA didn't know how to market records to Black audiences, and didn't really try, and Pickett's voice was becoming damaged from all the cocaine use. He spent the seventies, and eighties going from label to label, trying things like going disco, with no success. He also went from woman to woman, beating them up, and went through band members more and more quickly as he attacked them, too. The guitarist Marc Ribot was in Pickett's band for a short time and said, (and here again I'm cutting out an expletive) " You can write about all the extenuating circumstances, and maybe it needs to be put in historical context, but … You know why guys beat women? Because they can. And it's abuse. That's why employers beat employees, when they can. I've worked with black bandleaders and white bandleaders who are respectful, courteous and generous human beings—and then I've worked with Wilson Pickett." He was becoming more and more paranoid. He didn't turn up for his induction in the rock and roll hall of fame, where he was scheduled to perform -- instead he hid in his house, scared to leave. Pickett was repeatedly arrested throughout this time, and into the nineties, spending some time in prison, and then eventually going into rehab in 1997 after being arrested for beating up his latest partner. She dropped the charges, but the police found the cocaine in his possession and charged him with that. After getting out, he apparently mellowed out somewhat and became much easier to get along with -- still often unpleasant, especially after he'd had a drink, which he never gave up, but far less violent and more easy-going than he had been. He also had something of a comeback, sparked by an appearance in the flop film Blues Brothers 2000. He recorded a blues album, It's Harder Now, and also guested on Adlib, the comeback duets album by his old friend Don Covay, singing with him and cowriting on several songs, including "Nine Times a Man": [Excerpt: Don Covay and Wilson Pickett, "Nine Times a Man"] It's Harder Now was a solid blues-based album, in the vein of similar albums from around that time by people like Solomon Burke, and could have led to Pickett having the same kind of late-career resurgence as Johnny Cash. It was nominated for a Grammy, but lost in the category for which it was nominated to Barry White. Pickett was depressed by the loss and just decided to give up making new music, and just played the oldies circuit until 2004, at which point he became too ill to continue. The duet with Covay would be the last time he went into the studio. The story of Pickett's last year or so is a painful one, with squabbles between his partner and his children over his power of attorney while he spent long periods in hospital, suffering from kidney problems caused by his alcoholism, and also at this point from bulimia, diabetes, and more. He was ill enough that he tried to make amends with his children and his ex-wife, and succeeded as well as anyone can in that situation. On the eighteenth of January 2006, two months before his sixty-fifth birthday, his partner took him to get his hair cut and his moustache shaped, so he'd look the way he wanted to look, they ate together at his assisted living facility, and prayed together, and she left around eleven o'clock that night. Shortly thereafter, Pickett had a heart attack and died, alone, some time close to the midnight hour.

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockThe Temptations 1971 “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” from the album "Sky's the Limit" released on Gordy. Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong and produced by Norman Whitfield.Personel:Dennis Edwards - vocals (tenor)Eddie Kendricks - vocals (tenor/falsetto)Paul Williams - vocals (tenor/baritone)Melvin Franklin - vocals (Bass)Otis Williams - vocals (tenor/baritone)The Funk Brothers - instrumentationCover:Performed by Josh Bond and Neal MarshIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:The Allman Brothers Band “Whipping Post”Pete YornJim James

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockThe Temptations 1971 “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” from the album "Sky's the Limit" released on Gordy. Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong and produced by Norman Whitfield.Personel:Dennis Edwards - vocals (tenor)Eddie Kendricks - vocals (tenor/falsetto)Paul Williams - vocals (tenor/baritone)Melvin Franklin - vocals (Bass)Otis Williams - vocals (tenor/baritone)The Funk Brothers - instrumentationCover:Performed by Josh Bond and Neal MarshIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:Chuck Berry Bridget Jones's DiaryThe  BeatlesAlfred HitchcockThe Temptations “Psychedelic Shack”The Temptations “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”Sly and the Family StoneEdwinn Starr “War”MozartClaude DeBussyDavid LynchEraserheadNathaniel RateliffeThe Rolling StonesRod StewartBabyfaceGwenyth PaltrowDuetsHuey LewisSmokey Robinson “Cruisin'”Pete YornBoys 2 MenDonell BirdMotownQueen w/ David Bowie “Under Pressure”The Beatles “Helter Skelter”The Four Tops “I'm In a Different World”Junior Walker “Shotgun”Sam and Dave “Soul Man”Sam and Dave “Hold On (I'm Coming)”The Four Tops “Same Old Song”The Chi-Lites “Oh, Girl”The Temptations “Losing You”The Temptations “Wish It Would Rain”The Temptations “My Girl”The Commodores “Nightshift”Leon

Episode one hundred and thirty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "My Girl" by the Temptations, and is part three of a three-episode look at Motown in 1965. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Yeh Yeh" by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. This box set is the definitive collection of the Temptations' work, but is a bit pricey. For those on a budget, this two-CD set contains all the hits. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, and to Smokey Robinson's autobiography. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript For the last few weeks we've been looking at Motown in 1965, but now we're moving away from Holland, Dozier, and Holland, we're also going to move back in time a little, and look at a record that was released in December 1964. I normally try to keep this series in more or less chronological order, but to tell this story I had to first show the new status quo of the American music industry after the British Invasion, and some of what had to be covered there was covered in songs from early 1965. And the reason I wanted to show that status quo before doing this series of Motown records is that we're now entering into a new era of musical segregation, and really into the second phase of this story. In 1963, Billboard had actually stopped having an R&B chart -- Cashbox magazine still had one, but Billboard had got rid of theirs. The reasoning was simple -- by that point there was so much overlap between the R&B charts and the pop charts that it didn't seem necessary to have both. The stuff that was charting on the R&B charts was also charting pop -- people like Ray Charles or Chubby Checker or the Ronettes or Sam Cooke. The term "rock and roll" had originally been essentially a marketing campaign to get white people to listen to music made by Black people, and it had worked. There didn't seem to be a need for a separate category for music listened to by Black people, because that was now the music listened to by *everybody*. Or it had been, until the Beatles turned up. At that point, the American charts were flooded by groups with guitars, mostly British, mostly male, and mostly white. The story of rock and roll from 1954 through 1964 had been one of integration, of music made by Black people becoming the new mainstream of music in the USA. The story for the next decade or more would be one of segregation, of white people retaking the pop charts, and rebranding "rock and roll" so thoroughly that by the early 1970s nobody would think of the Supremes or the Shirelles or Sam Cooke as having been rock and roll performers at all. And so today we're going to look at the record that was number one the week that Billboard reinstated its R&B chart, and which remains one of the most beloved classics of the time period. We're going to look at the careers of two different groups at Motown, both of whom managed to continue having hits, and even become bigger, after the British Invasion, and at the songwriter and producer who was responsible for those hits -- and who was also an inspiration for the Beatles, who inadvertently caused that invasion. We're going to look at Smokey Robinson, and at "My Girl" by the Temptations: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] The story of the Temptations both starts and ends with Otis Williams. As I write this, Williams is the only living member of the classic Temptations lineup, and is the leader of the current group. And Williams also started the group that, after many lineup changes and mergers, became the Temptations, and was always the group's leader, even though he has never been its principal lead singer. The group that eventually became the Temptations started out when Williams formed a group with a friend, Al Bryant, in the late 1950s. They were inspired by a doo-wop group called the Turbans, who had had a hit in 1956 with a song called "When You Dance": [Excerpt: The Turbans, "When You Dance"] The Turbans, appropriately enough, used to wear turbans on their heads when they performed, and Williams and Bryant's new group wanted to use the same gimmick, so they decided to come up with a Middle-Eastern sounding group name that would justify them wearing Arabic style costumes. Unfortunately, they didn't have the greatest grasp of geography in the world, and so this turban-wearing group named themselves the Siberians. The Siberians recorded one single under that name -- a single that has been variously reported as being called "The Pecos Kid" and "Have Gun Will Travel", but which sold so poorly that now no copies are known to exist anywhere -- before being taken on by a manager called Milton Jenkins, who was as much a pimp as he was a manager, but who definitely had an eye for talent. Jenkins was the manager of two other groups -- the Primes, a trio from Alabama who he'd met in Cleveland when they'd travelled there to see if they could get discovered, and who had moved with him to Detroit, and a group he put together, called the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. The Primes consisted of three singers -- Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams (no relation to Otis, or to the soft-pop singer and actor of the same name), and Kell Osborne, who sang lead. The Primes became known around Detroit as some of the best performers in the city -- no mean feat considering that Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, the Miracles and the Four Tops, just for a start, were performing regularly on the same circuit. Jenkins had big plans for his groups, and he sent them all to dance school to learn to perform choreographed routines. But then Jenkins became ill and disappeared from the scene, and the Primes split up. Kendricks and Paul Williams went back to Alabama, while Osborne moved on to California, where he made several unsuccessful records, including "The Bells of St. Mary", produced by Lester Sill and Lee Hazelwood and arranged by Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Kell Osborne, "The Bells of St. Mary"] But while the Primes had split up, the Siberians hadn't. Instead, they decided to get new management, which came in the person of a woman named Johnnie Mae Matthews. Matthews was the lead singer of a group called the Five Dapps, who'd had a local hit with a track called "Do Whap A Do", one of the few Dapps songs she didn't sing lead on: [Excerpt: The Five Dapps, "Do Whap A Do"] After that had become successful, Matthews had started up her own label, Northern -- which was apparently named after a brand of toilet paper -- to put out records of her group, often backed by the same musicians who would later become the core of the Funk Brothers. Her group, renamed Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, put out two more singles on her label, with her singing lead: [Excerpt: Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, "Mr. Fine"] Matthews had become something of an entrepreneur, managing other local acts like Mary Wells and Popcorn Wylie, and she wanted to record the Siberians, but two of the group had dropped out after Jenkins had disappeared, and so they needed some new members. In particular they needed a bass singer -- and Otis Williams knew of a good one. Melvin Franklin had been singing with various groups around Detroit, but Williams was thinking in particular of Franklin's bass vocal on "Needed" by the Voice Masters. We've mentioned the Voice Masters before, but they were a group with a rotating membership that included David Ruffin and Lamont Dozier. Franklin hadn't been a member of the group, but he had been roped in to sing bass on "Needed", which was written and produced by Gwen Gordy and Roquel Davis, and was a clear attempt at sounding like Jackie Wilson: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, "Needed"] Williams asked Franklin to join the group, and Franklin agreed, but felt bad about leaving his current group. However, the Siberians also needed a new lead singer, and so Franklin brought in Richard Street from his group. Matthews renamed the group the Distants and took them into the studio. They actually got there early, and got to see another group, the Falcons, record what would become a million-selling hit: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] The Falcons, whose lead vocalist Joe Stubbs was Levi Stubbs' brother, were an important group in their own right, and we'll be picking up on them next week, when we look at a single by Joe Stubbs' replacement in the group. The Distants' single wouldn't be quite as successful as the Falcons', but it featured several people who would go on to become important in Motown. As well as several of the Funk Brothers in the backing band, the record also featured additional vocals by the Andantes, and on tambourine a local pool-hall hustler the group knew named Norman Whitfield. The song itself was written by Williams, and was essentially a rewrite of "Shout!" by the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Distants, "Come On"] The Distants recorded a second single for Northern, but then Williams made the mistake of asking Matthews if they might possibly receive any royalties for their records. Matthews said that the records had been made with her money, that she owned the Distants' name, and she was just going to get five new singers. Matthews did actually get several new singers to put out a single under the Distants name, with Richard Street still singing lead -- Street left the group when they split from Matthews, as did another member, leaving the group as a core of Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant. But before the split with Matthews, Berry Gordy had seen the group and suggested they come in to Motown for an audition. Otis, Melvin, and Al, now renamed the Elgins, wanted to do just that. But they needed a new lead singer. And happily, they had one. Eddie Kendricks phoned up Otis Williams and said that he and Paul Williams were back in town, and did Otis know of any gigs that were going? Otis did indeed know of such a gig, and Paul and Eddie joined the Elgins, Paul as lead singer and Eddie as falsetto singer. This new lineup of the group were auditioned by Mickey Stevenson, Motown's head of A&R, and he liked them enough that he signed them up. But he insisted that the name had to change -- there was another group already called the Elgins (though that group never had a hit, and Motown would soon sign up yet another group and change their name to the Elgins, leading to much confusion). The group decided on a new name -- The Temptations. Their first record was co-produced by Stevenson and Andre Williams. Williams, who was no relation to either Otis or Paul (and as a sidenote I do wish there weren't so many people with the surname Williams in this story, as it means I can't write it in my usual manner of referring to people by their surname) was a minor R&B star who co-wrote "Shake a Tail Feather", and who had had a solo hit with his record "Bacon Fat": [Excerpt: Andre Williams, "Bacon Fat"] Andre Williams, who at this point in time was signed to Motown though not having much success, was brought in because the perception at Motown was that the Temptations would be one of their harder-edged R&B groups, rather than going for the softer pop market, and he would be able to steer the recording in that direction. The song they chose to record was one that Otis Williams had written, though Mickey Stevenson gets a co-writing credit and may have helped polish it: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Oh Mother of Mine"] The new group lineup became very close, and started thinking of each other like family and giving each other nicknames -- though they also definitely split into two camps. Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin were always a pair, and Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams had come up together and thought of themselves as a team. Al Bryant, even though he had been with Otis from the beginning, was a bit of an outlier in this respect. He wasn't really part of either camp, and he was the only one who didn't get a nickname from the other band members. He was also the only one who kept his day job -- while the other four were all determined that they were going to make it as professional singers, he was hesitant and kept working at the dairy. As a result, whenever there were fights in the group -- and the fights would sometimes turn physical -- the fighting would tend to be between Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin. Otis was the undisputed leader, and nobody wanted to challenge him, but from the beginning Kendricks and Paul Williams thought of Otis as a bit too much of a company man. They also thought of Melvin as Otis' sidekick and rubber stamp, so rather than challenge Otis they'd have a go at Melvin. But, for the most part, they were extremely close at this point. The Temptations' first single didn't have any great success, but Berry Gordy had faith in the group, and produced their next single himself, a song that he cowrote with Otis, Melvin, and Al, and which Brian Holland also chipped in some ideas for. That was also unsuccessful, but the next single, written by Gordy alone, was slightly more successful. For "(You're My) Dream Come True", Gordy decided to give the lead to Kendricks, the falsetto singer, and the track also featured a prominent instrumental line by Gordy's wife Raynoma -- what sounds like strings on the record is actually a primitive synthesiser called an ondioline: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "(You're My) Dream Come True"] That made number twenty-two on the R&B chart, and was the first sign of any commercial potential for the group -- and so Motown went in a totally different direction and put out a cover version, of a record by a group called the Diablos, whose lead singer was Barrett Strong's cousin Nolan. The Temptations' version of "Mind Over Matter" wasn't released as by the Temptations, but as by the Pirates: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] That was a flop, and at the same time as they released it, they also released another Gordy song under their own name, a song called "Paradise" which seems to have been an attempt at making a Four Seasons soundalike, which made number 122 on the pop charts and didn't even do that well on the R&B charts. Annoyingly, the Temptations had missed out on a much bigger hit. Gordy had written "Do You Love Me?" for the group, but had been hit with a burst of inspiration and wanted to do the record *NOW*. He'd tried phoning the various group members, but got no answer -- they were all in the audience at a gospel music show at the time, and had no idea he was trying to get in touch with them. So he'd pulled in another group, The Contours, and their version of the song went to number three on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Contours, "Do You Love Me?"] According to the biography of the Temptations I'm using as a major source for this episode, that was even released on the same day as both "Paradise" and "Mind Over Matter", though  other sources I've consulted have it coming out a few months earlier. Despite "Paradise"'s lack of commercial success, though, it did introduce an element that would become crucial for the group's future -- the B-side was the first song for the group written by Smokey Robinson. We've mentioned Robinson briefly in previous episodes on Motown, but he's worth looking at in a lot more detail, because he is in some ways the most important figure in Motown's history, though also someone who has revealed much less of himself than many other Motown artists. Both of these facts stem from the same thing, which is that Robinson is the ultimate Motown company man. He was a vice president of the company, and he was Berry Gordy's best friend from before the company even started. While almost every other artist, writer, or producer signed to Motown has stories to tell of perceived injustices in the way that Motown treated them, Robinson has always positioned himself on the side of the company executives rather than as one of the other artists. He was the only person outside the Gordy family who had a place at the very centre of the organisation -- and he was also one of a very small number of people during Motown's golden age who would write, produce, *and* perform. Now, there were other people who worked both as artists and on the backroom side of things -- we've seen that Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder would sometimes write songs for other artists, and that Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier had started out as performers before moving into songwriting. But these were mostly little dalliances -- in general, in Motown in the sixties, you were either a performer or you were a writer-producer. But Smokey Robinson was both -- and he was *good* at both, someone who was responsible for creating many of the signature hits of Motown. At this point in his career, Robinson had, as we've heard previously, been responsible for Motown's second big hit, after "Money", when he'd written "Shop Around" for his own group The Miracles: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Shop Around"] The Miracles had continued to have hits, though none as big as "Shop Around", with records like "What's So Good About Goodbye?": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "What's So Good About Goodbye?"] But Robinson had also been writing regularly for other artists. He'd written some stuff that the Supremes had recorded, though like all the Supremes material at this point it had been unsuccessful, and he'd also started a collaboration with the label's biggest star at this point, Mary Wells, for whom he'd written top ten hits like "The One Who Really Loves You": [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "The One Who Really Loves You"] and "You Beat Me To The Punch", co-written with fellow Miracle Ronnie White, which as well as going top ten pop made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "You Beat Me to The Punch"] Between 1962 and 1964, Robinson would consistently write huge hits for Wells, as well as continuing to have hits with the Miracles, and his writing was growing in leaps and bounds. He was regarded by almost everyone at Motown as the best writer the company had, both for his unique melodic sensibility and for the literacy of his lyrics. When he'd first met Berry Gordy, he'd been a writer with a lot of potential, but he hadn't understood how to structure a lyric -- he'd thrown in a lot of unrelated ideas. Gordy had taken him under his wing and shown him how to create a song with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and Robinson had immediately understood what he needed to do. His lyrics, with their clever conceits and internal rhymes, became the ones that everyone else studied -- when Eddie Holland decided to become a songwriter rather than a singer, he'd spent months just studying Robinson's lyrics to see how they worked. Robinson was even admired by the Beatles, especially John Lennon -- one can hear his melismatic phrases all over Lennon's songwriting in this period, most notably in songs like "Ask Me Why", and the Beatles covered one of Robinson's songs on their second album, With the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You Really Got a Hold On Me"] After writing the B-side to "Paradise", Robinson was given control of the Temptations' next single. His "I Want a Love I Can See" didn't do any better than "Paradise", and is in some ways more interesting for the B-side, "The Further You Look, The Less You See": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Further You Look, The Less You See"] That track's interesting because it's a collaboration between Robinson and Norman Whitfield, that pool-hall hustler who'd played tambourine on the Distants' first single. Whitfield had produced the records by the later Distants, led by Richard Street, and had then gone to work for a small label owned by Berry Gordy's ex-mother-in-law. Gordy had bought out that label, and with it Whitfield's contract, and at this point Whitfield was very much an apprentice to Robinson. Both men were huge admirers of the Temptations, and for the next few years both would want to be the group's main producer and songwriter, competing for the right to record their next single -- though for a good chunk of time this would not really be a competition, as Whitfield was minor league compared to Robinson. "I Want a Love I Can See" was a flop, and the Temptations' next single was another Berry Gordy song. When that flopped too, Gordy seriously started considering dropping the group altogether. While this was happening, though, Robinson was busily writing more great songs for his own group and for Mary Wells, songs like "What Love Has Joined Together", co-written with his bandmate Bobby Rogers: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "What Love Has Joined Together"] And the Temptations were going through their own changes. Al was becoming more and more of an outsider in the group, while also thinking of himself as the real star. He thought this even though he was the weak link -- Paul and Eddie were the lead singers, Otis was the band's leader, Melvin had a hugely distinctive bass voice, and Al was... just "the other one". Things came to a head at a gig in October 1963, when a friend of the group showed up. David Ruffin was so friendly with Melvin Franklin that Franklin called him his cousin, and he was also a neighbour of Otis'. He had been a performer from an early age -- he'd been in a gospel group with his older brother Jimmy and their abusive father. Once he'd escaped his father, he'd gone on to perform in a duo with his brother, and then in a series of gospel groups, including stints in the Dixie Nightingales and the Soul Stirrers. Ruffin had been taken on by a manager called Eddie Bush, who adopted him -- whether legally or just in their minds is an open question -- and had released his first single as Little David Bush when he was seventeen, in 1958: [Excerpt: Little David Bush, "You and I"] Ruffin and Bush had eventually parted ways, and Ruffin had taken up with the Gordy family, helping Berry Gordy Sr out in his construction business -- he'd actually helped build the studio that Berry Jr owned and where most of the Motown hits were recorded -- and singing on records produced by Gwen Gordy. He'd been in the Voice Masters, who we heard earlier this episode, and had also recorded solo singles with the Voice Masters backing, like "I'm In Love": [Excerpt: David Ruffin, "I'm In Love"] When Gwen Gordy's labels had been absorbed into Motown, so had Ruffin, who had also got his brother Jimmy signed to the label. They'd planned to record as the Ruffin Brothers, but then Jimmy had been drafted, and Ruffin was at a loose end -- he technically had a Motown contract, but wasn't recording anything. But then in October 1963 he turned up to a Temptations gig. For the encore, the group always did the Isley Brothers song "Shout!", and Ruffin got up on stage with them and started joining in, dancing more frantically than the rest of the group. Al started trying to match him, feeling threatened by this interloper. They got wilder and wilder, and the audience loved it so much that the group were called back for another encore, and Ruffin joined them again. They did the same song again, and got an even better reaction. They came back for a third time, and did it again, and got an even better reaction. Ruffin then disappeared into the crowd. The group decided that enough was enough -- except for Al, who was convinced that they should do a fourth encore without Ruffin. The rest of the group were tired, and didn't want to do the same song for a fourth time, and thought they should leave the audience wanting more. Al, who had been drinking, got aggressive, and smashed a bottle in Paul Williams' face, hospitalising him. Indeed, it was only pure luck that kept Williams from losing his vision, and he was left with a scar but no worse damage. Otis, Eddie, and Melvin decided that they needed to sack Al, but Paul, who was the peacemaker in the group, insisted that they shouldn't, and also refused to press charges. Out of respect for Paul, the rest of the group agreed to give Al one more chance. But Otis in particular was getting sick of Al and thought that the group should just try to get David Ruffin in. Everyone agreed that if Al did anything to give Otis the slightest reason, he could be sacked. Two months later, he did just that. The group were on stage at the annual Motown Christmas show, which was viewed by all the acts as a competition, and Paul had worked out a particularly effective dance routine for the group, to try to get the crowd going. But while they were performing, Al came over to Otis and suggested that the two of them, as the "pretty boys" should let the other three do all the hard work while they just stood back and looked good for the women. Otis ignored him and carried on with the routine they'd rehearsed, and Al was out as soon as they came offstage. And David Ruffin was in. But for now, Ruffin was just the missing element in the harmony stack, not a lead vocalist in his own right. For the next single, both Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy came up with songs for the new lineup of the group, and they argued about which song should be the A-side -- one of the rare occasions where the two disagreed on anything. They took the two tracks to Motown's quality control meeting, and after a vote it was agreed that the single should be the song that Robinson had written for Eddie Kendricks to sing, "The Way You Do the Things You Do": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] At first, the group hadn't liked that song, and it wasn't until they rehearsed it a few times that they realised that Robinson was being cleverer than they'd credited him for with the lyrics. Otis Williams would later talk about how lines like "You've got a smile so bright, you know you could have been a candle" had seemed ridiculous to them at first, but then they'd realised that the lyric was parodying the kinds of things that men say when they don't know what to say to a woman, and that it's only towards the end of the song that the singer stops trying bad lines and just starts speaking honestly -- "you really swept me off my feet, you make my life complete, you make my life so bright, you make me feel all right": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] That track was also the first one that the group cut to a prerecorded backing track, Motown having upgraded to a four-track system. That allowed the group to be more subtle with their backing vocal arrangements, and "The Way You Do the Things You Do" is the point at which the Temptations become fully themselves. But the group didn't realise that at first. They spent the few weeks after the record's release away from Detroit, playing at the Michigan state fair, and weren't aware that it was starting to do things. It was only when Otis and David popped in to the Motown offices and people started talking to them about them having a hit that they realised the record had made the pop charts. Both men had been trying for years to get a big hit, with no success, and they started crying in each other's arms, Ruffin saying ‘Otis, this is the first time in my life I feel like I've been accepted, that I've done something.'” The record eventually made number eleven on the pop charts, and number one on the Cashbox R&B chart -- Billboard, as we discussed earlier, having discontinued theirs, but Otis Williams still thinks that given the amount of airplay that the record was getting it should have charted higher, and that something fishy was going on with the chart compilation at that point. Perhaps, but given that the record reached the peak of its chart success in April 1964, the high point of Beatlemania, when the Beatles had five records in the top ten, it's also just possible that it was a victim of bad timing. But either way, number eleven on the pop charts was a significant hit. Shortly after that, though, Smokey Robinson came up with an even bigger hit. "My Guy", written for Mary Wells, had actually only been intended as a bit of album filler. Motown were putting together a Mary Wells album, and as with most albums at the time it was just a collection of tracks that had already been released as singles and stuff that hadn't been considered good enough to release. But they were a track short, and Smokey was asked to knock together something quickly. He recorded a backing track at the end of a day cutting tracks for a *Temptations* album -- The Temptations Sing Smokey -- and everyone was tired by the time they got round to recording it, but you'd never guess that from the track itself, which is as lively as anything Motown put out. "My Guy" was a collaborative creation, with an arrangement that was worked on by the band -- it was apparently the Funk Brothers who came up with the intro, which was lifted from a 1956 record, "Canadian Sunset" by Hugo Winterhalter. Compare that: [Excerpt: Hugo Winterhalter, "Canadian Sunset"] to “My Guy”: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "My Guy"] The record became one of the biggest hits of the sixties -- Motown's third pop number one, and a million-seller. It made Mary Wells into a superstar, and the Beatles invited her to be their support act on their UK summer tour. So of course Wells immediately decided to get a better deal at another record label, and never had another hit again. Meanwhile, Smokey kept plugging away, both at his own records -- though the Miracles went through a bit of a dry patch at this point, as far as the charts go -- and at the Temptations. The group's follow-up, "I'll Be in Trouble", was very much a remake of "The Way You Do the Things You Do", and while it was good it didn't quite make the top thirty. This meant that Norman Whitfield got another go. He teamed up with Eddie Holland to write "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)", which did only slightly better than "I'll Be in Trouble": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)"] The competition between Robinson and Whitfield for who got to make the Temptations' records was heating up -- both men were capable of giving the group hits, but neither had given them the truly massive record that they were clearly capable of having. So Smokey did the obvious thing. He wrote a sequel to his biggest song ever, and he gave it to the new guy to sing. Up until this point, David Ruffin hadn't taken a lead vocal on a Temptations record -- Paul Williams was the group's official "lead singer", while all the hits had ended up having Eddie's falsetto as the most prominent vocal. But Smokey had seen David singing "Shout" with the group, and knew that he had lead singer potential. With his fellow Miracle Ronald White, Smokey crafted a song that was the perfect vehicle for Ruffin's vocal, an answer song to "My Guy", which replaced that song's bouncy exuberance with a laid-back carefree feeling: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] But it's not just Ruffin's record -- everyone talking about the track talks about Ruffin's vocal, or the steady pulse of James Jamerson's bass playing, and both those things are definitely worthy of praise, as of course are Robinson's production and Robinson and White's song, but this is a *Temptations* record, and the whole group are doing far more here than the casual listener might realise. It's only when you listen to the a capella version released on the group's Emperors of Soul box set that you notice all the subtleties of the backing vocal parts. On the first verse, the group don't come in until half way through the verse, with Melvin Franklin's great doo-wop bass introducing the backing vocalists, who sing just straight chords: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] It's not until the chorus that the other group members stretch out a little, taking solo lines and singing actual words rather than just oohs: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] They then drop back until the same point in the next verse, but this time rather than singing just the plain chords, they're embellishing a little, playing with the rhythm slightly, and Eddie Kendricks' falsetto is moving far more freely than at the same point in the first verse. [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The backing vocals slowly increase in complexity until you get the complex parts on the tag. Note that on the first chorus they sang the words "My Girl" absolutely straight with no stresses, but by the end of the song they're all emphasising every word. They've gone from Jordanaires style precise straight harmony to a strong Black gospel feel in their voices, and you've not even noticed the transition: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The track went to number one on the pop charts, knocking off "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, before itself being knocked off by "Eight Days a Week" by the Beatles. But it also went to number one on the newly reestablished R&B charts, and stayed there for six weeks: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] Smokey Robinson was now firmly established as the Temptations' producer, and David Ruffin as the group's lead singer. In 1965 Robinson and Pete Moore of the Miracles would write three more top-twenty pop hits for the group, all with Ruffin on lead -- and also manage to get a B-side sung by Paul Williams, "Don't Look Back", to the top twenty on the R&B chart. Not only that, but the Miracles were also on a roll, producing two of the biggest hits of their career. Pete Moore and Marv Tarplin had been messing around with a variant of the melody for "The Banana Boat Song", and came up with an intro for a song: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] Robinson took that as a jumping-off point and turned it into the song that would define their career: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] And later that year they came up with yet another million-seller for the Miracles with "Going to a Go-Go": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Going to a Go-Go"] Robinson and his collaborators were being rather overshadowed in the public perception at this point by the success of Holland-Dozier-Holland with the Supremes and the Four Tops, but by any standards the records the Temptations and the Miracles were putting out were massive successes, both commercially and artistically. But there were two things that were going to upset this balance. The first was David Ruffin. When he'd joined the group, he'd been the new boy and just eager to get any kind of success at all. Now he was the lead singer, and his ego was starting to get the better of him. The other thing that was going to change things was Norman Whitfield. Whitfield hadn't given up on the Temptations just because of Smokey's string of hits with them. Whitfield knew, of course, that Smokey was the group's producer while he was having hits with them, but he also knew that sooner or later everybody slips up. He kept saying, in every meeting, that he had the perfect next hit for the Temptations, and every time he was told "No, they're Smokey's group". He knew this would be the reaction, but he also knew that if he kept doing this he would make sure that he was the next in line -- that nobody else could jump the queue and get a shot at them if Smokey failed. He badgered Gordy, and wore him down, to the point that Gordy finally agreed that if Smokey's next single for the group didn't make the top twenty on the pop charts like his last four had, Whitfield would get his turn. The next single Smokey produced for the group had Eddie Kendricks on lead, and became the group's first R&B number one since "My Girl": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Get Ready"] But the R&B and pop charts were diverging, as we saw at the start. While that was their biggest R&B hit in a year, "Get Ready" was a comparative failure on the pop charts, only reaching number twenty-nine -- still a hit, but not the top twenty that Gordy had bet on. So Norman Whitfield got a chance. His record featured David Ruffin on lead, as all the group's previous run of hits from "My Girl" on had, and was co-written with Eddie Holland. Whitfield decided to play up the Temptations' R&B edge, rather than continue in the softer pop style that had brought them success with Robinson, and came up with something that owed as much to the music coming out of Stax and Atlantic at the time as it did to Motown's pop sensibilities: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"] Whitfield's instinct to lean harder into the R&B sound paid off. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" returned the group to the pop top twenty, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts. From this point on, the Temptations were no longer Smokey's group, they were Norman Whitfield's, and he would produce all their hits for the next eight years. And the group were also now definitively David Ruffin's group -- or so it seemed. When we pick up on the story of the Temptations, we'll discover how Ruffin's plans for solo stardom worked out, and what happened to the rest of the Temptations under Whitfield's guidance.

Just like [re]born Broadway, I'm young, scrappy and hungry... Broadway News: Playbill, in partnership with The Broadway League and the Times Square Alliance have announced Curtain Up!, a three day outdoor festival taking place in the heart of Times Square. Curtain Up! will takeover Broadway stretching between 45th and 48th Streets. 22 unique events will take place on stages in Duffy Square and between 45th & 46th Streets. BPN will kick off the festival everyday that weekend with Wake Up, Broadway!. What's Up Broadway? host Ayanna Prescod and co-host Christian Lewis will be setting the tone before introducing your favorite theater talents to the stage. Here is our schedule: Friday, September 17, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. join the Be More Chill celebration of Joe Iconis' birthday, with the master creator himself and the fans who made the show what it is today. Hosted by How to Be More Chill's Ilana Levine and Sam Maher with special guest appearances and answers to fan submitted questions.  Saturday, September 18, 11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m., Freestyle Love Supreme cast members: Kaila Mullady, Anthony Veneziale, Tarik Davis, and James Monroe Iglehart join Jan Friedlander Svendsen, Chief Creative Officer of the Charity Network and host of Broadway Gives Back to discuss the hit Broadway show returning to the Booth Theater in October. Sunday, September 19, 9 a.m. - 10 a.m., Off Book: The Black Theatre Podcast!, a safe haven for Black theatre artists to talk about the real tea, will welcome esteemed guests from the Broadway community for a live podcast recording with hosts Drew Shade, Kim Exum and Ngozi Anyanwu. Every weekend this month a new movie musical will be released. September 3rd Cinderella on Amazon September 10 Come From Away on Apple TV+ September 17 Everybody's Talking About Jamie on Amazon September 24 Dear Evan Hansen will release in theaters. And as a bonus on October 1st, Netflix will release Diana: The Musical. Casting: MJ: The Musical is going on a nationwide search for their young Michael Jackson. Whomever is cast as Young Michael will also be featured on iHeartRadio Broadway. Myles Frost will make his Broadway debut as adult Michael Jackson when the show begins previews on December 2nd. Ain't Too Proud announced their casting. Leading the cast as The Temptations will be Nik Walker as Otis Williams, James Harkness as Paul Williams, Jawan M. Jackson as Melvin Franklin, Matt Manuel as David Ruffin, and Jelani Remy as Eddie Kendricks. All five were starring in the production prior to the COVID-19 shutdown. Jane Krakowski also joined the cast of NBC's Annie Live. Sasson Gabay and Janet Dacal will lead The Band's Visit's North American Tour to round out the cast of Joe Joseph as Haled, Clay Singer as Itzik, Yoni Avi Battat as Camal, and Coby Getzug as Papi. Tootsie national tour will be headed by Drew Becker as Michael Dorsey, Ashley Alexandra as Julie Nichols, Payton Reilly as Sandy Lester, Lukas James Miller as Max Von Horn, Jared David Michael Grant as Jeff Slater, and Kathy Halenda as Rita Marshall. Be sure to download the BPN iOS app via bpn.fm/app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todos os louvores ao Pai DEUS YAHWEH e ao Filho nosso Salvador JESUS. Bem, eu prometi a todos em minha amada Fortaleza e em todo o Brasil,'Esportes em Profundidade Se Transformando em,Música Em Profundidade.Com não Doc Stanley, mas(''Stan The Man The Music Man''0 Stan o Homem,o homem da musica, o Doutor da Música. Então, volte a ouvir a maravilhosa bela e ótima música e canções da  Musica Negra e artistas lendários. Em uma edição prometida e especial de "Música Em Profundidade", trazida a vocês por'Sports In Depth'. DEUS Abençoe e aproveite Estão todos aqui, famosos e amados cantores americanos amados pelo Brasil.Billy Paul,Brasil,Valentine Day ballander. A primeira e mais importante dama de Disco e é uma e única Rainha, Gloria Gaynor.Oh sim, o visitante Stevie Wonder está aqui também.Com a lendária primeira dama de alma Aretha Franklin e o Padrinho da alma,James Brown.Miles Davis,Abby Lincoln e Billy Holiday lendas do jazz também estão aqui com Kirk whelam e Leila Hathaway.E onde há fogo soul music há também, Smokey Robinson. E onde você encontra Smokey você encontra, Motown.Supremes,Diana Ross,Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard. Temptations,David Ruffin,Paul Williams,Eddie Kendricks,Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin.E a Maravilha de Stevie(Wonder) e a Gayness trazida pela música de Marvin Gaye.Rainhas estão aqui também como Latifah e grandes grupos de soul e musica'Kool, o 'Kool and The Gang' e 'Earth WInd And Fire'.Agradeca a DEUS Primeiro,depois relaxe e ouca. *Confiança Em DEUS*  

Dylan and Connor are joined by Jawan Jackson (Ain’t Too Proud, Motown the Musical). Listen in as the guys talk about Jawan’s life story, working at Disney World, befriending Whoopi Goldberg, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, nailing Sergio Trujillo’s Tony winning choreography, favorite Whitney Houston songs, bonding with his fellow Temps, and getting to tell Melvin Franklin’s story in Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations on Broadway.Follow Jawan on Twitter & InstagramFollow DRAMA. on Twitter & InstagramFollow Connor MacDowell on Twitter & InstagramFollow Dylan MacDowell on Twitter & InstagramEdited by Maggie Montalto | Twitter & InstagramHERE is where you find official DRAMA. merch!Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, rate us 5 stars, and leave a review!

Episode one hundred and sixteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Where Did Our Love Go?" by the Supremes, and how the "no-hit Supremes" became the biggest girl group in history. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "She's Not There" by the Zombies. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more----   Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.  For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown.  To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Girl Groups by John Clemente contains potted biographies of many groups of the era. The Supremes biography I mention in the podcast is The Supremes by Mark Ribowsky, which seems factually accurate but questionable in its judgments of people. I also used this omnibus edition of Mary Wilson's two volumes of autobiography. This box set contains everything you could want by the Supremes, but is extraordinarily expensive in physical form at the moment, though cheap as MP3s. This is a good budget substitute, though oddly doesn't contain "Stop in the Name of Love". Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode contains a brief mention of rape, and the trauma of a victim, and a glancing mention of an eating disorder. The discussion is not particularly explicit, but if you think you might find it upsetting, you might be advised to check the transcript before listening, which as always can be found on the site website, or to skip this episode. Today, we're going to look at the first big hit from the group who would become the most successful female vocal group of the sixties, the group who would become the most important act to come out of Motown, and who would be more successful in chart terms than anyone in the sixties except the Beatles and Elvis.  We're going to look at the record that made Holland, Dozier, and Holland the most important team in Motown, and that made a group that had been regarded as a joke into superstars. We're going to look at "Where Did Our Love Go?" by the group that up until this record was known in Motown as "the no-hit Supremes": [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Where Did Our Love Go?"] The story of the Supremes starts, like almost every Motown act, in Detroit. Specifically, it starts with a group called the Primes, a trio who had grown up in Birmingham, Alabama, and then had moved to Cleveland, before moving in turn to Detroit. The Primes consisted of Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, and Kell Osborne, and were gaining popularity around the city. But their act was lacking something, and their manager, Milton Jenkins, was inspired by Ray Charles' backing vocalists, the Raelettes. What if, he thought, his male vocal group had a group of female backing singers, the Primettes? Stories vary about exactly how Jenkins pulled the group members together, including the idea that he literally stopped girls on the streets of the housing projects where the eventual members all lived. But what everyone seems to agree on is that Betty McGlown was dating Paul Williams, so she was an obvious choice. Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard knew each other and were good singers, especially Ballard, and they joined together, with Ballard becoming the new group's leader. And nobody seems to be clear who asked Diana Ross to join, but she was invited in. Ross says she was already singing with the other three around the neighbourhood. Wilson insisted that they didn't know her, and that she was brought in by Jenkins. While Ballard and Wilson were friendly enough, and all of them were from the same small area and so knew each other by sight, this wasn't a group that came together as friends, but people who were put together by a third party. This would make a big difference to them over the years. Ross was probably introduced to the group because she already had a reputation among the people who were playing Detroit's talent shows. For example there's Melvin Franklin, who in the late fifties was singing with The Distants: [Excerpt: The Distants, "Come On"] Franklin was an old friend of Ross' from school, and he would rave about Ross to his friends, so much so that Otis Williams, another member of the Distants (which would soon merge with the Primes to become the Temptations) knew Ross' name long before he ever met her, and later remembered thinking "Jesus, this girl must be something special." So Jenkins would have known about Ross through these connections. Incidentally, before we go any further, I should mention the issue of Diana Ross' name. At this point, she was mostly known by the name on her birth certificate, Diane, and that's how many people who knew her in this period still refer to her when talking about the late fifties and early sixties. However, she says herself that her parents always intended to name her Diana and the person filling in the birth certificate misspelled it, and she's used Diana for many decades now. As a general rule on this podcast I always refer to someone by the name they choose for themselves unless there's a very good reason not to, and so I'm going to be referring to her as Diana throughout -- and later when we talk about the Byrds, I will always refer to Roger McGuinn, and so on. It's difficult to talk about Diana Ross in any sensible way, because she is not a person who has inspired the greatest affection among her colleagues, or among people writing about her. But almost all the negative things said about her have a deep undercurrent of misogyny. One of the biographies I used for researching this episode, for example, in the space of four consecutive sentences in the introduction, compares her face to that of ET, says she looked "emaciated and vacant" (and this is a woman who suffered from anorexia), talks about how inviting her mouth is and her "bedroom eyes", and then talks about how she used her sexuality to get ahead. You will be shocked, I am sure, to hear that this book was written by a male biographer. Oddly, the books I'm using for the upcoming episodes on Manfred Mann and the Beach Boys don't talk of their lead singers in this way... In particular, there is a recurring theme in almost everything written about Ross, which criticises her for having affairs with prominent people at Motown, most notably Berry Gordy, and accuses her of doing this in order to further her own ambitions. That sort of criticism is rooted in misogyny. This is not a podcast that will ever deal in shaming women for their sexuality, and what consenting adults do with each other is their business alone. I would also point out that Ross' affair with Gordy is always portrayed as ethical misconduct on Ross' part, but *if* there was anything unethical about their relationship, the fault in a relationship between a rich, powerful, married man in his thirties and his much younger employee is unlikely to have been due to the latter. That's not to say that Ross is flawless -- far from it, as the narrative will make clear -- but to say that it's very difficult, when relying on reportage either from people with personal grudges against her or from writers who take attitudes like that, to separate the real flaws in the real woman from the monster of the popular imagination. But that's all for later in the story. At this point, Ross was merely one of four girls brought together by Jenkins to form the Primettes - but Jenkins soon realised that this group could be better used as a group in their own right, rather than merely as backing vocalists for the Primes.  At this point, early on, there was no question but that Florence Ballard was the leader of the group. She had the most outspoken personality, and also had the best voice. When Jenkins had asked to hear the girls sing together, all the others had just looked at each other, while she had burst out into Ray Charles' "Night Time is the Right Time": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Night Time is the Right Time"] That would become a staple of the girls' early act, along with "The Twist" and "There Goes My Baby". All of the girls would take lead vocals on stage, but Florence was the first among equals. At that time, indeed, Ballard thought that Ross should not be a lead singer at all, but Ross got very angry at this, and kept working at her vocals, trying to get them more commercial and make better use of her more limited voice. Ballard was a natural singer, who sang passionately in a way that apparently blew audiences away with relatively little effort, because she was singing from the heart. Ross, on the other hand, was a calculated performer who was deliberately trying to gain the audience's popularity, and was improving with every show as she learned what worked. The combination worked, at least for a time, though the two never got on even from the start. Of the other members, Mary Wilson was always the peacemaker, someone who was so conflict-averse she would find a way to get Florence and Diana to stop fighting, no matter what. Meanwhile, Betty was the least interested in being in a group -- she was just doing it as a favour for her boyfriend. And finally, there was a fifth member, Marvin Tarplin, who didn't sing but who played guitar, which made them one of the few vocal groups in the city who had their own accompaniment. Fairly quickly, Franklin dropped out of management -- he spent some time in hospital, and after getting out he just never got back in touch with the girls -- and the Primettes took over looking after themselves. There are various stories about them being approached by different people within Motown at different points, but everyone agrees that their first real contact with Motown came through Ross. Ross had, a year or so before the group formed, been friendly with Smokey Robinson, on whom she had a bit of an adolescent crush. Knowing that Robinson was now recording for Motown, she got in touch with him, and he made a suggestion -- her group should audition for him, and if he thought they were good enough, he'd get them an appointment with Berry Gordy. The group sang for Robinson, who wasn't hugely impressed, except with their guitarist. So Robinson made a deal with them -- he'd get the girls an audition for Motown, if he could borrow their guitarist for a tour the Miracles were about to do. They agreed, and Robinson's temporary borrowing of Tarplin lasted fifty years, as Tarplin continued working with Robinson, both in the Miracles and on Robinson's solo records, until 2008, and co-wrote many of Robinson's biggest hits. But Robinson kept his word, and the girls did indeed audition for Berry Gordy, who was encouraging but told them to come back after they had finished school.  But two other producers at Motown, Richard Morris and Robert Bateman, decided they weren't going to wait around. If Berry Gordy didn't want to sign them yet, they'd get the Primettes work with other labels. Morris became their manager, and they started getting session work on early recordings by future soul legends like Wilson Pickett: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Let Me Be Your Boy"] And Eddie Floyd: [Excerpt: Eddie Floyd, "I am Her Yo-Yo Man"] The group also eventually got to put out their own single. The A-side featured Ross on lead: [Excerpt: The Primettes, "Tears of Sorrow"] While the B-side had Wilson singing lead, but also featured a prominent high part from Ballard: [Excerpt: The Primettes, "Pretty Baby"] Shortly after this, several things happened that would change the group forever. One was that Betty decided to leave the group to get married. She had never been as committed to the group as the other three, and she was quickly replaced with a new singer, Barbara Martin. The other, far more devastating, thing was that Florence Ballard was raped by an acquaintance. This traumatised Ballard deeply, and from this point on she became unable to trust anyone, even her friends. She would suffer for the rest of her life from what would now be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, and while it's likely that the later problems between her and Ross would have occurred in some form, the way they occurred was undoubtedly affected by the fact of Ballard's untreated mental illness as a result of this trauma. After refusing to speak to anyone at all for a couple of weeks, Ballard managed to get herself well enough to start singing again, and then only a few days later Richard Morris was arrested for a parole violation and found himself in prison.  With all these devastating changes, many groups would have given up. But  the Primettes were ambitious, and they decided that they were going to force their way into Motown, whether Berry Gordy wanted them or not. They took to hanging around Hitsville, acting like they belonged there, and they soon found themselves doing minor bits of work on sessions -- handclaps and backing vocals and so on, as almost everyone who hung around the studio long enough would. Eventually they got lucky. Freddie Gorman, who was the girls' postman in his day job and had not yet written "Please Mr. Postman", had been working on a song with Brian Holland, and the girls happened to be around.  Gorman suggested they try the song out, to see what it sounded like with harmonies, and the result was good enough that Holland and Gorman called in Gordy, who tinkered with the song to get his name on the credits, and then helped produce the session: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "I Want a Guy"] That came out under the name The Supremes, with a Berry Gordy song on the B-side, a knock-off of "Maybe" by the Chantels called "Never Again". How the group got their new name has also been a subject of some dispute, in part because of legal issues later on, as Florence Ballard tried to claim some intellectual property rights in the group name as the one who had chosen it. Everyone involved has a different story about how the name was chosen, but it seems to be the consensus that Ballard did pick the name from a shortlist, with the dispute being over whether that shortlist was of names that the group members had come up with between them, or whether it was created by Janie Bradford, and whether Ballard made a conscious choice of the name or just picked it out of a hat. Whatever the case, the Primettes had now become the Supremes. The problem was that Berry Gordy wasn't really interested in them as a group. Right from the start, he was only interested in Diana Ross as an individual, though at least at first all the members would get to take lead vocals on album tracks -- though the singles would be saved for Diana. With one exception -- after the group's first single flopped, they decided to go in a very different direction for the second single.  For that, Gordy wrote a knock-off of a knock-off. In 1959 the Olympics had had a very minor hit with "Hully Gully": [Excerpt: The Olympics, "Hully Gully"] Which had been remade a few months later by the Marathons as "Peanut Butter": [Excerpt: The Marathons, "Peanut Butter"] Gordy chose to rework this song as "Buttered Popcorn", a song that's just an excuse for extremely weak double entendres, and Florence got to sing lead: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Buttered Popcorn"] That was no more successful than "I Want a Guy", and that would be the last time Florence Ballard ever got to sing lead on a Supremes single. It would also be the last single the Supremes released as a four-piece. While Barbara Martin had recorded some material with the group that would be released later, she became pregnant and decided to leave the group. Having decided that they clearly couldn't keep a fourth singer around, the other three decided to continue on as a trio. By this time, Motown had signed the Marvelettes, and they'd leapfrogged over the Supremes to become major stars. The Supremes, meanwhile had had two flops in a row, and their third did little better, though "Your Heart Belongs to Me",  written and produced for them by Smokey Robinson, did make number ninety-five in the charts. That was followed by a string of flops that often did, just, make the Hot One Hundred but didn't qualify as hits by any measure -- and many of them were truly terrible. The group got the nickname "the no-hit Supremes" and tended to get the songs that wouldn't pass muster for other groups. Their nadir was probably the B-side "The Man with the Rock & Roll Banjo Band", a song that seems to have been based around Duane Eddy's "Dance With the Guitar Man": [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Dance With the Guitar Man"] But instead of the electric guitar, the Supremes' song was about the banjo, an instrument which has many virtues, but which does not really fit into the Motown sound: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Man with the Rock and Roll Banjo Band"] This sort of thing continued for two years, with the Supremes now being passed in chart success not only by the Marvelettes but also by the Vandellas, who also signed to Motown after them and had hits before. The "no-hit Supremes" at their best only just scraped the bottom of the Hot One Hundred, no matter who produced them -- Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, Clarence Paul, Berry Gordy, and Smokey Robinson all had multiple attempts at recording with the group, because of Gordy's belief in Ross' star potential, but nothing happened until they were paired with Holland, Dozier, and Holland, fresh off their success with the Vandellas. The musical side of the Holland/Dozier/Holland team had already worked with the group, but with little success. But once Holland/Dozier/Holland became a bona fide hit-making team, they started giving the Supremes additional backing vocal parts. They're in the vocal stack, for example, on Marvin Gaye's extraordinary "Can I Get a Witness": [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Can I Get a Witness"] The first song that Holland, Dozier, and Holland wrote as a team for the Supremes is very different from the heavy, soulful, records they'd specialised in up until that point. Lamont Dozier has said that when he came up with the idea for "When the Lovelight Starts Shining in His Eyes" he was thinking of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, although it's unlikely he was actually thinking of Wilson, who at this point in 1963 was still making rather garagey surf-rock records rather than the symphonic pop he would start to specialise in the next year. Which is not to say that Holland, Dozier, and Holland weren't paying attention to Wilson -- after all, they wrote "Surfer Boy" for the Supremes in 1965 -- but Dozier is probably misremembering here. It's entirely plausible, though, that he was thinking of Spector, and the song definitely has a wall of sound feel, albeit filtered through Motown's distinctly funkier, non-Wrecking-Crew, sound, and with more than a little Bo Diddley influence: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes"] That also featured additional backing vocals from the Four Tops, another group with whom Holland, Dozier, and Holland were working, and who we'll be hearing more of in future episodes. "When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" went to number twenty-three, the first bona fide hit the Supremes had ever had. So they were set. They even had a surefire smash follow-up. With Holland, Dozier, and Holland they'd recorded *another* Phil Spector knock-off, *before* "Lovelight", a record modelled on "Da Doo Ron Ron", titled "Run Run Run", but they'd held it back so they could release it next -- they decided to release a record that sounded like a medium-sized hit first, to get some momentum and name recognition, so they could then release the big smash hit. But "Run Run Run" only went to number ninety-four. The group were at a low point, and as far as they could tell they were only going to get lower. They'd had their hit and it looked like a fluke. The big one they'd had hopes for had gone nowhere. The story of their next single has been told many ways by many different people. This is a version of the story as best I can put it together, but everything that follows might be false, because as with so much of Motown, everyone has their own agenda. As best I can make out, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were working on tracks for a proposed Marvelettes album and came up with a simple, stomping, song based on a repetitive eight-bar verse, with no bridge, chorus, or middle eight. The Holland brothers disagree about what happened next, and it sounds odd, but Lamont Dozier, Mary Wilson, and Katherine Anderson of the Marvelettes all say the same thing -- while normally Motown artists had no say in what songs they recorded, this time the Marvelettes were played a couple of backing tracks which had been proposed as their next recording, and they chose to dump the eight-bar one, and go instead with "Too Many Fish in the Sea": [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Too Many Fish in the Sea"] The way Dozier tells the story, that presented Holland, Dozier, and Holland with a problem. They'd recorded the backing track, and one of the many ways that Motown caused problems for its creative workers was that they would be charged against royalties for studio time. If the track didn't get released, they'd lost all the money. So they turned to the Supremes, and Dozier tried to persuade Mary Wilson that he'd written this great new song, just for them, they'd love it, but by this point they'd already talked to the Marvelettes and been told about this dreadful song they'd managed to get out of doing, and advised to avoid it if they could. But while the Marvelettes were a big, successful group, the Supremes weren't yet, and didn't have any choice. They were going to record the song whether they liked it or not. They didn't like it. Having already been poisoned against the song by the Marvelettes, there were further problems in the studio because one of the production team had originally told Mary Wilson she could sing lead on the song. Everyone seems agreed that Brian Holland insisted on Diana Ross singing it instead, but Eddie Holland remembers that he thought that Wilson should sing and it was Brian and Dozier who insisted on Ross, while Dozier remembers that *he* thought that Wilson should sing, and it was the Holland brothers who insisted on Ross. Somehow, if all these memories are to be believed, Brian Holland outvoted his partners one to two, possibly because Berry Gordy had declared that Ross should be the lead singer on all Supremes singles. Mary was devastated, while Ross was annoyed that she was having to sing what she thought was a terrible song, in a key that was much lower than she was used to. She got more annoyed when Eddie Holland kept coaching her on how he wanted the song sung -- she was playing with the phrasing and Holland insisted she sing it straight. Eventually she started threatening to get Gordy to come down, at which point Eddie told her that she could do that, but then Gordy could just produce the session and they needn't bother hoping for any more Holland/Dozier/Holland songs.  She sang through her lead putting as little emotion as she could into her voice, while glaring daggers at the producers, before storming off as soon as she'd completed the take they wanted, complaining about being given everyone else's leftovers: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Where Did Our Love Go?”] Holland, Dozier, and Holland then got on with trying to get the other two Supremes to do the backing vocal parts. But the parts Lamont Dozier had come up with were difficult, nobody was in a good mood, and Mary Wilson was still upset that she wasn't going to be singing lead. They couldn't get the vocals down, and eventually, frustrated, Dozier told them to just sing "baby baby" when he pointed, and they went with that. Towards the end of the session, Ross came back in, with Berry Gordy, who she had clearly been complaining to about the song. He asked to hear it, and they played back this recording that nobody was happy with. Gordy, much to Ross' shock, was convinced it was a hit, and said to them "Cheer up, everybody! From now on, you're the big-hit Supremes!": [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Where Did Our Love Go?"] Motown was in a bit of a slump at that point -- several of the label's big stars had had disappointing follow-ups to their hits, and they'd just lost Mary Wells, one of their biggest stars, to another label. Gordy decided that they were going to give "Where Did Our Love Go?" a huge push, and persuaded Dick Clark to put the Supremes on his Caravan of Stars tour. When the record came out in June, they were at the bottom of the bill, opening the show on a bill with more than a dozen other acts, from the Zombies to the Shirelles to Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon above them. By the end of the tour, their record was at number one in the charts and they had already recorded a follow-up. As "Where Did Our Love Go?" had included the word "baby" sixty-eight times, the production team had decided not to mess with a winning formula: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Baby Love"] That went to number one by the end of October 1964, making the Supremes the first Motown act to have two number ones. There would be a lot more where that came from. But there was already trouble brewing in the group. Even on the Dick Clark tourbus, there were rumours that Diana Ross wanted a solo career, and there was talk of her forcing Florence Ballard out of the group. We'll look at that, and what happened with the Supremes in the latter part of the sixties in a few months' time.  But I can't end this time without acknowledging the sad death, a month ago today, of Mary Wilson, the only member of the Supremes who stayed with the group from the beginning right through to their split in 1977. For a member of a group who were second only to the Beatles for commercial success in the sixties, she was underrewarded in life, and her death went underreported. She'll be missed.

Episode one hundred and sixteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Where Did Our Love Go?” by the Supremes, and how the “no-hit Supremes” became the biggest girl group in history. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “She’s Not There” by the Zombies. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—-   Resources As usual, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.  For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I’ve used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown.  To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy’s own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown’s thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier’s autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers’. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Girl Groups by John Clemente contains potted biographies of many groups of the era. The Supremes biography I mention in the podcast is The Supremes by Mark Ribowsky, which seems factually accurate but questionable in its judgments of people. I also used this omnibus edition of Mary Wilson’s two volumes of autobiography. This box set contains everything you could want by the Supremes, but is extraordinarily expensive in physical form at the moment, though cheap as MP3s. This is a good budget substitute, though oddly doesn’t contain “Stop in the Name of Love”. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode contains a brief mention of rape, and the trauma of a victim, and a glancing mention of an eating disorder. The discussion is not particularly explicit, but if you think you might find it upsetting, you might be advised to check the transcript before listening, which as always can be found on the site website, or to skip this episode. Today, we’re going to look at the first big hit from the group who would become the most successful female vocal group of the sixties, the group who would become the most important act to come out of Motown, and who would be more successful in chart terms than anyone in the sixties except the Beatles and Elvis.  We’re going to look at the record that made Holland, Dozier, and Holland the most important team in Motown, and that made a group that had been regarded as a joke into superstars. We’re going to look at “Where Did Our Love Go?” by the group that up until this record was known in Motown as “the no-hit Supremes”: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Where Did Our Love Go?”] The story of the Supremes starts, like almost every Motown act, in Detroit. Specifically, it starts with a group called the Primes, a trio who had grown up in Birmingham, Alabama, and then had moved to Cleveland, before moving in turn to Detroit. The Primes consisted of Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, and Kell Osborne, and were gaining popularity around the city. But their act was lacking something, and their manager, Milton Jenkins, was inspired by Ray Charles’ backing vocalists, the Raelettes. What if, he thought, his male vocal group had a group of female backing singers, the Primettes? Stories vary about exactly how Jenkins pulled the group members together, including the idea that he literally stopped girls on the streets of the housing projects where the eventual members all lived. But what everyone seems to agree on is that Betty McGlown was dating Paul Williams, so she was an obvious choice. Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard knew each other and were good singers, especially Ballard, and they joined together, with Ballard becoming the new group’s leader. And nobody seems to be clear who asked Diana Ross to join, but she was invited in. Ross says she was already singing with the other three around the neighbourhood. Wilson insisted that they didn’t know her, and that she was brought in by Jenkins. While Ballard and Wilson were friendly enough, and all of them were from the same small area and so knew each other by sight, this wasn’t a group that came together as friends, but people who were put together by a third party. This would make a big difference to them over the years. Ross was probably introduced to the group because she already had a reputation among the people who were playing Detroit’s talent shows. For example there’s Melvin Franklin, who in the late fifties was singing with The Distants: [Excerpt: The Distants, “Come On”] Franklin was an old friend of Ross’ from school, and he would rave about Ross to his friends, so much so that Otis Williams, another member of the Distants (which would soon merge with the Primes to become the Temptations) knew Ross’ name long before he ever met her, and later remembered thinking “Jesus, this girl must be something special.” So Jenkins would have known about Ross through these connections. Incidentally, before we go any further, I should mention the issue of Diana Ross’ name. At this point, she was mostly known by the name on her birth certificate, Diane, and that’s how many people who knew her in this period still refer to her when talking about the late fifties and early sixties. However, she says herself that her parents always intended to name her Diana and the person filling in the birth certificate misspelled it, and she’s used Diana for many decades now. As a general rule on this podcast I always refer to someone by the name they choose for themselves unless there’s a very good reason not to, and so I’m going to be referring to her as Diana throughout — and later when we talk about the Byrds, I will always refer to Roger McGuinn, and so on. It’s difficult to talk about Diana Ross in any sensible way, because she is not a person who has inspired the greatest affection among her colleagues, or among people writing about her. But almost all the negative things said about her have a deep undercurrent of misogyny. One of the biographies I used for researching this episode, for example, in the space of four consecutive sentences in the introduction, compares her face to that of ET, says she looked “emaciated and vacant” (and this is a woman who suffered from anorexia), talks about how inviting her mouth is and her “bedroom eyes”, and then talks about how she used her sexuality to get ahead. You will be shocked, I am sure, to hear that this book was written by a male biographer. Oddly, the books I’m using for the upcoming episodes on Manfred Mann and the Beach Boys don’t talk of their lead singers in this way… In particular, there is a recurring theme in almost everything written about Ross, which criticises her for having affairs with prominent people at Motown, most notably Berry Gordy, and accuses her of doing this in order to further her own ambitions. That sort of criticism is rooted in misogyny. This is not a podcast that will ever deal in shaming women for their sexuality, and what consenting adults do with each other is their business alone. I would also point out that Ross’ affair with Gordy is always portrayed as ethical misconduct on Ross’ part, but *if* there was anything unethical about their relationship, the fault in a relationship between a rich, powerful, married man in his thirties and his much younger employee is unlikely to have been due to the latter. That’s not to say that Ross is flawless — far from it, as the narrative will make clear — but to say that it’s very difficult, when relying on reportage either from people with personal grudges against her or from writers who take attitudes like that, to separate the real flaws in the real woman from the monster of the popular imagination. But that’s all for later in the story. At this point, Ross was merely one of four girls brought together by Jenkins to form the Primettes – but Jenkins soon realised that this group could be better used as a group in their own right, rather than merely as backing vocalists for the Primes.  At this point, early on, there was no question but that Florence Ballard was the leader of the group. She had the most outspoken personality, and also had the best voice. When Jenkins had asked to hear the girls sing together, all the others had just looked at each other, while she had burst out into Ray Charles’ “Night Time is the Right Time”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Night Time is the Right Time”] That would become a staple of the girls’ early act, along with “The Twist” and “There Goes My Baby”. All of the girls would take lead vocals on stage, but Florence was the first among equals. At that time, indeed, Ballard thought that Ross should not be a lead singer at all, but Ross got very angry at this, and kept working at her vocals, trying to get them more commercial and make better use of her more limited voice. Ballard was a natural singer, who sang passionately in a way that apparently blew audiences away with relatively little effort, because she was singing from the heart. Ross, on the other hand, was a calculated performer who was deliberately trying to gain the audience’s popularity, and was improving with every show as she learned what worked. The combination worked, at least for a time, though the two never got on even from the start. Of the other members, Mary Wilson was always the peacemaker, someone who was so conflict-averse she would find a way to get Florence and Diana to stop fighting, no matter what. Meanwhile, Betty was the least interested in being in a group — she was just doing it as a favour for her boyfriend. And finally, there was a fifth member, Marvin Tarplin, who didn’t sing but who played guitar, which made them one of the few vocal groups in the city who had their own accompaniment. Fairly quickly, Franklin dropped out of management — he spent some time in hospital, and after getting out he just never got back in touch with the girls — and the Primettes took over looking after themselves. There are various stories about them being approached by different people within Motown at different points, but everyone agrees that their first real contact with Motown came through Ross. Ross had, a year or so before the group formed, been friendly with Smokey Robinson, on whom she had a bit of an adolescent crush. Knowing that Robinson was now recording for Motown, she got in touch with him, and he made a suggestion — her group should audition for him, and if he thought they were good enough, he’d get them an appointment with Berry Gordy. The group sang for Robinson, who wasn’t hugely impressed, except with their guitarist. So Robinson made a deal with them — he’d get the girls an audition for Motown, if he could borrow their guitarist for a tour the Miracles were about to do. They agreed, and Robinson’s temporary borrowing of Tarplin lasted fifty years, as Tarplin continued working with Robinson, both in the Miracles and on Robinson’s solo records, until 2008, and co-wrote many of Robinson’s biggest hits. But Robinson kept his word, and the girls did indeed audition for Berry Gordy, who was encouraging but told them to come back after they had finished school.  But two other producers at Motown, Richard Morris and Robert Bateman, decided they weren’t going to wait around. If Berry Gordy didn’t want to sign them yet, they’d get the Primettes work with other labels. Morris became their manager, and they started getting session work on early recordings by future soul legends like Wilson Pickett: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, “Let Me Be Your Boy”] And Eddie Floyd: [Excerpt: Eddie Floyd, “I am Her Yo-Yo Man”] The group also eventually got to put out their own single. The A-side featured Ross on lead: [Excerpt: The Primettes, “Tears of Sorrow”] While the B-side had Wilson singing lead, but also featured a prominent high part from Ballard: [Excerpt: The Primettes, “Pretty Baby”] Shortly after this, several things happened that would change the group forever. One was that Betty decided to leave the group to get married. She had never been as committed to the group as the other three, and she was quickly replaced with a new singer, Barbara Martin. The other, far more devastating, thing was that Florence Ballard was raped by an acquaintance. This traumatised Ballard deeply, and from this point on she became unable to trust anyone, even her friends. She would suffer for the rest of her life from what would now be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, and while it’s likely that the later problems between her and Ross would have occurred in some form, the way they occurred was undoubtedly affected by the fact of Ballard’s untreated mental illness as a result of this trauma. After refusing to speak to anyone at all for a couple of weeks, Ballard managed to get herself well enough to start singing again, and then only a few days later Richard Morris was arrested for a parole violation and found himself in prison.  With all these devastating changes, many groups would have given up. But  the Primettes were ambitious, and they decided that they were going to force their way into Motown, whether Berry Gordy wanted them or not. They took to hanging around Hitsville, acting like they belonged there, and they soon found themselves doing minor bits of work on sessions — handclaps and backing vocals and so on, as almost everyone who hung around the studio long enough would. Eventually they got lucky. Freddie Gorman, who was the girls’ postman in his day job and had not yet written “Please Mr. Postman”, had been working on a song with Brian Holland, and the girls happened to be around.  Gorman suggested they try the song out, to see what it sounded like with harmonies, and the result was good enough that Holland and Gorman called in Gordy, who tinkered with the song to get his name on the credits, and then helped produce the session: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “I Want a Guy”] That came out under the name The Supremes, with a Berry Gordy song on the B-side, a knock-off of “Maybe” by the Chantels called “Never Again”. How the group got their new name has also been a subject of some dispute, in part because of legal issues later on, as Florence Ballard tried to claim some intellectual property rights in the group name as the one who had chosen it. Everyone involved has a different story about how the name was chosen, but it seems to be the consensus that Ballard did pick the name from a shortlist, with the dispute being over whether that shortlist was of names that the group members had come up with between them, or whether it was created by Janie Bradford, and whether Ballard made a conscious choice of the name or just picked it out of a hat. Whatever the case, the Primettes had now become the Supremes. The problem was that Berry Gordy wasn’t really interested in them as a group. Right from the start, he was only interested in Diana Ross as an individual, though at least at first all the members would get to take lead vocals on album tracks — though the singles would be saved for Diana. With one exception — after the group’s first single flopped, they decided to go in a very different direction for the second single.  For that, Gordy wrote a knock-off of a knock-off. In 1959 the Olympics had had a very minor hit with “Hully Gully”: [Excerpt: The Olympics, “Hully Gully”] Which had been remade a few months later by the Marathons as “Peanut Butter”: [Excerpt: The Marathons, “Peanut Butter”] Gordy chose to rework this song as “Buttered Popcorn”, a song that’s just an excuse for extremely weak double entendres, and Florence got to sing lead: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Buttered Popcorn”] That was no more successful than “I Want a Guy”, and that would be the last time Florence Ballard ever got to sing lead on a Supremes single. It would also be the last single the Supremes released as a four-piece. While Barbara Martin had recorded some material with the group that would be released later, she became pregnant and decided to leave the group. Having decided that they clearly couldn’t keep a fourth singer around, the other three decided to continue on as a trio. By this time, Motown had signed the Marvelettes, and they’d leapfrogged over the Supremes to become major stars. The Supremes, meanwhile had had two flops in a row, and their third did little better, though “Your Heart Belongs to Me”,  written and produced for them by Smokey Robinson, did make number ninety-five in the charts. That was followed by a string of flops that often did, just, make the Hot One Hundred but didn’t qualify as hits by any measure — and many of them were truly terrible. The group got the nickname “the no-hit Supremes” and tended to get the songs that wouldn’t pass muster for other groups. Their nadir was probably the B-side “The Man with the Rock & Roll Banjo Band”, a song that seems to have been based around Duane Eddy’s “Dance With the Guitar Man”: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, “Dance With the Guitar Man”] But instead of the electric guitar, the Supremes’ song was about the banjo, an instrument which has many virtues, but which does not really fit into the Motown sound: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “The Man with the Rock and Roll Banjo Band”] This sort of thing continued for two years, with the Supremes now being passed in chart success not only by the Marvelettes but also by the Vandellas, who also signed to Motown after them and had hits before. The “no-hit Supremes” at their best only just scraped the bottom of the Hot One Hundred, no matter who produced them — Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, Clarence Paul, Berry Gordy, and Smokey Robinson all had multiple attempts at recording with the group, because of Gordy’s belief in Ross’ star potential, but nothing happened until they were paired with Holland, Dozier, and Holland, fresh off their success with the Vandellas. The musical side of the Holland/Dozier/Holland team had already worked with the group, but with little success. But once Holland/Dozier/Holland became a bona fide hit-making team, they started giving the Supremes additional backing vocal parts. They’re in the vocal stack, for example, on Marvin Gaye’s extraordinary “Can I Get a Witness”: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Can I Get a Witness”] The first song that Holland, Dozier, and Holland wrote as a team for the Supremes is very different from the heavy, soulful, records they’d specialised in up until that point. Lamont Dozier has said that when he came up with the idea for “When the Lovelight Starts Shining in His Eyes” he was thinking of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson, although it’s unlikely he was actually thinking of Wilson, who at this point in 1963 was still making rather garagey surf-rock records rather than the symphonic pop he would start to specialise in the next year. Which is not to say that Holland, Dozier, and Holland weren’t paying attention to Wilson — after all, they wrote “Surfer Boy” for the Supremes in 1965 — but Dozier is probably misremembering here. It’s entirely plausible, though, that he was thinking of Spector, and the song definitely has a wall of sound feel, albeit filtered through Motown’s distinctly funkier, non-Wrecking-Crew, sound, and with more than a little Bo Diddley influence: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes”] That also featured additional backing vocals from the Four Tops, another group with whom Holland, Dozier, and Holland were working, and who we’ll be hearing more of in future episodes. “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” went to number twenty-three, the first bona fide hit the Supremes had ever had. So they were set. They even had a surefire smash follow-up. With Holland, Dozier, and Holland they’d recorded *another* Phil Spector knock-off, *before* “Lovelight”, a record modelled on “Da Doo Ron Ron”, titled “Run Run Run”, but they’d held it back so they could release it next — they decided to release a record that sounded like a medium-sized hit first, to get some momentum and name recognition, so they could then release the big smash hit. But “Run Run Run” only went to number ninety-four. The group were at a low point, and as far as they could tell they were only going to get lower. They’d had their hit and it looked like a fluke. The big one they’d had hopes for had gone nowhere. The story of their next single has been told many ways by many different people. This is a version of the story as best I can put it together, but everything that follows might be false, because as with so much of Motown, everyone has their own agenda. As best I can make out, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were working on tracks for a proposed Marvelettes album and came up with a simple, stomping, song based on a repetitive eight-bar verse, with no bridge, chorus, or middle eight. The Holland brothers disagree about what happened next, and it sounds odd, but Lamont Dozier, Mary Wilson, and Katherine Anderson of the Marvelettes all say the same thing — while normally Motown artists had no say in what songs they recorded, this time the Marvelettes were played a couple of backing tracks which had been proposed as their next recording, and they chose to dump the eight-bar one, and go instead with “Too Many Fish in the Sea”: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Too Many Fish in the Sea”] The way Dozier tells the story, that presented Holland, Dozier, and Holland with a problem. They’d recorded the backing track, and one of the many ways that Motown caused problems for its creative workers was that they would be charged against royalties for studio time. If the track didn’t get released, they’d lost all the money. So they turned to the Supremes, and Dozier tried to persuade Mary Wilson that he’d written this great new song, just for them, they’d love it, but by this point they’d already talked to the Marvelettes and been told about this dreadful song they’d managed to get out of doing, and advised to avoid it if they could. But while the Marvelettes were a big, successful group, the Supremes weren’t yet, and didn’t have any choice. They were going to record the song whether they liked it or not. They didn’t like it. Having already been poisoned against the song by the Marvelettes, there were further problems in the studio because one of the production team had originally told Mary Wilson she could sing lead on the song. Everyone seems agreed that Brian Holland insisted on Diana Ross singing it instead, but Eddie Holland remembers that he thought that Wilson should sing and it was Brian and Dozier who insisted on Ross, while Dozier remembers that *he* thought that Wilson should sing, and it was the Holland brothers who insisted on Ross. Somehow, if all these memories are to be believed, Brian Holland outvoted his partners one to two, possibly because Berry Gordy had declared that Ross should be the lead singer on all Supremes singles. Mary was devastated, while Ross was annoyed that she was having to sing what she thought was a terrible song, in a key that was much lower than she was used to. She got more annoyed when Eddie Holland kept coaching her on how he wanted the song sung — she was playing with the phrasing and Holland insisted she sing it straight. Eventually she started threatening to get Gordy to come down, at which point Eddie told her that she could do that, but then Gordy could just produce the session and they needn’t bother hoping for any more Holland/Dozier/Holland songs.  She sang through her lead putting as little emotion as she could into her voice, while glaring daggers at the producers, before storming off as soon as she’d completed the take they wanted, complaining about being given everyone else’s leftovers: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Where Did Our Love Go?”] Holland, Dozier, and Holland then got on with trying to get the other two Supremes to do the backing vocal parts. But the parts Lamont Dozier had come up with were difficult, nobody was in a good mood, and Mary Wilson was still upset that she wasn’t going to be singing lead. They couldn’t get the vocals down, and eventually, frustrated, Dozier told them to just sing “baby baby” when he pointed, and they went with that. Towards the end of the session, Ross came back in, with Berry Gordy, who she had clearly been complaining to about the song. He asked to hear it, and they played back this recording that nobody was happy with. Gordy, much to Ross’ shock, was convinced it was a hit, and said to them “Cheer up, everybody! From now on, you’re the big-hit Supremes!”: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Where Did Our Love Go?”] Motown was in a bit of a slump at that point — several of the label’s big stars had had disappointing follow-ups to their hits, and they’d just lost Mary Wells, one of their biggest stars, to another label. Gordy decided that they were going to give “Where Did Our Love Go?” a huge push, and persuaded Dick Clark to put the Supremes on his Caravan of Stars tour. When the record came out in June, they were at the bottom of the bill, opening the show on a bill with more than a dozen other acts, from the Zombies to the Shirelles to Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon above them. By the end of the tour, their record was at number one in the charts and they had already recorded a follow-up. As “Where Did Our Love Go?” had included the word “baby” sixty-eight times, the production team had decided not to mess with a winning formula: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Baby Love”] That went to number one by the end of October 1964, making the Supremes the first Motown act to have two number ones. There would be a lot more where that came from. But there was already trouble brewing in the group. Even on the Dick Clark tourbus, there were rumours that Diana Ross wanted a solo career, and there was talk of her forcing Florence Ballard out of the group. We’ll look at that, and what happened with the Supremes in the latter part of the sixties in a few months’ time.  But I can’t end this time without acknowledging the sad death, a month ago today, of Mary Wilson, the only member of the Supremes who stayed with the group from the beginning right through to their split in 1977. For a member of a group who were second only to the Beatles for commercial success in the sixties, she was underrewarded in life, and her death went underreported. She’ll be missed.

All February long, Donna and Orlando are taking the time to honor Black History with Detroit roots. They welcomed Allen Rawls, Trustee Board Member of the Motown Museum and Jawan M. Jackson, Tony & Grammy Award nominee and star of the Broadway smash "Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations" to talk all things Motown.

Emmy Nominated Actor Jawan Jackson talks about embodying the legendary Melvin Franklin in two Broadway shows! The Motown and Ain't Too Proud star shares his story on how he's worked his way up in the industry and appeared in the Get Down on Netflix. Now working at the top level in his career, Jawan gives back to the arts community by working closely with the non-profit Rosie's Theatre For Kids, and created a program for students in his hometown of Detroit to receive great education in the arts at a young age. @jawanjackson, @tokash_eli, and @takeabowpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We take a listening-walk through Motown and listen to the Temptations' sweetest classic from 1965 - My Girl

Jawan M. Jackson is currently on Broadway playing Melvin Franklin, one of the original and longest lasting members of the Temptations. From the group’s founding in the early 1960s to Melvin’s death in 1995, he never left the group — and his impact has never left the world of music. As one of the most recognizable voices in the Motown family — or truly in any music of the time — Melvin had a voice so deep it made the walls vibrate. Finding a voice that could recreate this legend for the stage was no easy feat. But that voice was found — attached to a brilliant actor, a handsome face, and a budding dancer who proved easy to teach those signature Temptations moves. This is the second Broadway show in which Jawan M. Jackson has played this same man — the first being a two and a half year run in Motown: the Musical, where the Temps were just one of a whole slew of featured groups. This time, we get to experience their deep back story, and through Jawan’s smooth and captivating performance, we watch Melvin grow from a timid teenager to a persistent veteran who insists on remaining with the Temptations despite the debilitating pain that came with age. There’s a lot of focus put on Jawan M. Jackson’s voice, because it’s so low and so unique and dare I say so sexy. But there is so much more to this this performer, this man, this human being. Yes, we get the history of “that voice” — but we also get (forgive me) “DEEPER” into how he got to Broadway without having an agent; the despondence that can follow having all of one’s dreams come true — and how Jawan pushed past that to create and pursue new dreams; what inspires him to get up in the morning; and how helping others pursue their own dreams has become a critical part of this man’s purpose. Laura Heywood Interviews is proud to welcome Jawan M. Jackson!

This Detroit native had no idea that one day he would get to play one of the most influential people of his lifetime not once, but twice! Currently starring as Melvin Franklin, one of the original Temptations, his incredibly sexy and powerful bass voice tingles everyone's eardrums 8 times a week in Broadway's Ain't Too Proud. Originally thinking he would be a dolphin trainer, he quickly changed his mind after being given the chance to swim with sharks in open water. His professional career began as a tenacious radio personality on Detroit's HOT 107.5, before following a friend's advice, taking his first headshot as a selfie in front of his bathtub's curtain, and then landing his Broadway debut in Motown the Musical. Interview content begins at 2:42. Closing standards begin at 1:03:00. Connect with Jawan online:Twitter: jawanjackson4IG: jawanjacksonConnect with The Theatre Podcast:Support us on Patreon: Patreon.com/TheTheatrePodcastTwitter & Instagram: @theatre_podcastFacebook.com/OfficialTheatrePodcastTheTheatrePodcast.comAlan's personal Instagram: @alansealesJillian's personal Instagram: @jillianhochmanEmail us at feedback@thetheatrepodcast.com. We want to know what you think.Thank you to our friends Jukebox The Ghost for our intro and outro music. You can find them on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @jukeboxtheghost or via the web via jukeboxtheghost.com. A very special thanks to our patrons who help make this podcast possible! Paul Seales, David Seales If you would like to see your name in this show notes or get a shout out on the pod itself, visit ttp.fm/patreon to become a member and show your support!

Listen in as Selene chats w/ the talented Broadway Actor, Jawan M. Jackson. Jawan talks about how he almost didn't get the role of The Temptations singer Melvin Franklin,  life on Broadway, and his experience working with the late-great Whitney Houston.

We catch up with Detroit's own Jawan Jackson, who stars as Melvin Franklin on Broadway in “Aint Too Proud: The Life & Times of the Temptations”​ - which was just nominated for 12 Tony Awards!  He dishes on how he got the role, what that first rehearsal was like, what HE thinks is the greatest Motown song of all time and more!

The Temptations es una banda estadounidense formada en Detroit, Estados Unidos. Este grupo vocal estadounidense está considerado uno de los más exitosos en la historia de la música.1​2​ Ha vendido decenas de millones de álbumes3​ y es famoso por ser una de las formaciones más relevantes de Motown Records. Su repertorio incluye una gran variedad de géneros: R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, y música adulto contemporáneo. En un principio se llamaban The Elgins, y siempre sus integrantes han sido, al menos, cinco vocalistas/bailarines masculinos. El grupo original contenía componentes de dos bandas locales de Detroit: The Distants (Otis Williams, Elbridge "Al" Bryant y Melvin Franklin) y The Primes (Eddie Kendricks y Paul Williams). Entre los más destacados Temptations futuros estaban David Ruffin, Dennis Edwards, Richard Street, Damon Harris, Ron Tyson, Ali-Ollie Woodson, Theo Peoples y G. C. Cameron. La formación cambió frecuentemente, particularmente en las últimas décadas.

The Temptations es una banda estadounidense formada en Detroit, Estados Unidos. Este grupo vocal estadounidense está considerado uno de los más exitosos en la historia de la música.1​2​ Ha vendido decenas de millones de álbumes3​ y es famoso por ser una de las formaciones más relevantes de Motown Records. Su repertorio incluye una gran variedad de géneros: R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, y música adulto contemporáneo. En un principio se llamaban The Elgins, y siempre sus integrantes han sido, al menos, cinco vocalistas/bailarines masculinos. El grupo original contenía componentes de dos bandas locales de Detroit: The Distants (Otis Williams, Elbridge "Al" Bryant y Melvin Franklin) y The Primes (Eddie Kendricks y Paul Williams). Entre los más destacados Temptations futuros estaban David Ruffin, Dennis Edwards, Richard Street, Damon Harris, Ron Tyson, Ali-Ollie Woodson, Theo Peoples y G. C. Cameron. La formación cambió frecuentemente, particularmente en las últimas décadas.

The Temptations es una banda estadounidense formada en Detroit, Estados Unidos. Este grupo vocal estadounidense está considerado uno de los más exitosos en la historia de la música.1​2​ Ha vendido decenas de millones de álbumes3​ y es famoso por ser una de las formaciones más relevantes de Motown Records. Su repertorio incluye una gran variedad de géneros: R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, y música adulto contemporáneo. En un principio se llamaban The Elgins, y siempre sus integrantes han sido, al menos, cinco vocalistas/bailarines masculinos. El grupo original contenía componentes de dos bandas locales de Detroit: The Distants (Otis Williams, Elbridge "Al" Bryant y Melvin Franklin) y The Primes (Eddie Kendricks y Paul Williams). Entre los más destacados Temptations futuros estaban David Ruffin, Dennis Edwards, Richard Street, Damon Harris, Ron Tyson, Ali-Ollie Woodson, Theo Peoples y G. C. Cameron. La formación cambió frecuentemente, particularmente en las últimas décadas.

The Temptations es una banda estadounidense formada en Detroit, Estados Unidos. Este grupo vocal estadounidense está considerado uno de los más exitosos en la historia de la música.1?2? Ha vendido decenas de millones de álbumes? y es famoso por ser una de las formaciones más relevantes de Motown Records. Su repertorio incluye una gran variedad de géneros: R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, The Temptations fue el Primer grupo de Motown que ganó un Grammy. Seis Temptations: Dennis Edwards, Melvin Franklin, Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin, Otis Williams y Paul Williams entraron en el prestigioso Rock and Roll Hall of Fame en 1989. Algunos de sus clásicos son: “My Girl", "War", "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" o “The Way You Do the Things You Do"

Jawan M. Jackson is currently playing Melvin Franklin in AIN’T TOO PROUD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS on Broadway. He has previously been on Broadway in Motwon the Musical. Before landing AINT TOO PROUD, Jawan was a member of the Broadway.com family working at Broadway Across America! Follow him on Instagram @jawanjackson4.Hosted by Paul Wontorek, Beth Stevens and Caitlin Moynihan

Topics: Muhammad Ali, Rick James, Max Robinson (TV). (Bonus Artist: hidingtobefound)   1978   1.    Snap Shots   2.    General News   3.    Jimmy Carter is President   4.    February   5.    The first computer bulletin board system (CBBS) is created in Chicago.  Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social networks, and other aspects of the Internet.   6.    Serial killer Ted Bundy is captured in Florida and The Hillside Strangler of Los Angeles, (serial killing cousins) claims a 10th and final victim.   7.    April   8.    Women's Army Corps (WAC) abolished (1943-1978); women integrated into regular Army.   9.    September   10.    The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin . The Accords led directly to the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty a year later. Due to the agreement, Sadat and Begin received the shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. In turn, these events led to Sadat's assassination by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981.   11.    November   12.    Mass murder/suicide of 909 Americans in Jonestown, Guyana under the direction of Jim Jones.   13.    December   14.    Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who is subsequently convicted of the murder of 33 young men, is arrested.   15.    Open Comments:   16.    Economic Snapshots   17.    Min. wage = $2.65hr (+.35) / $106wk / $5,512 yrly) - 2018 = $21,228yrly   18.    Avg. Income per year - $16,975   19.    Avg. Cost of new house - 54,749   20.    Avg. Rent - $260   21.    Avg. Cost new car - $5,405   22.    Postage Stop - $0.15   23.    Unemployment 6.4% vs Black unemployment 14.5%   24.    Open Comments:   25.    Black Snapshots   26.    February   27.    Harriet Tubman is the first African American Woman to be honored on a U.S. postage stamp.   28.    Muhammad Ali loses title to Leon Spinks    29.    May   30.    Ain't Misbehavin' (musical) hits Broadway. Won 1978 Tony Award for Best Musical: Breakout Stars was Nell Carter (sitcom Gimme a Break!) and Irene Cara (Flash Dance: What a Feeling) and Charlayne Woodard (Janice on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air)   31.    June   32.    The SCOTUS bars quota systems in college admissions but affirms the constitutionality of programs which give advantages to minorities.   33.    July   34.    ABC World News Tonight, employing a unique three-anchor setup:  Frank Reynolds serving as lead anchor from Washington, Peter Jennings with international news from London, and Max Robinson presenting national news from Chicago. Robinson is noted as the first African-American broadcast network news anchor in the United States   35.    September   36.    Ali defeats Spinks and regained the WBA heavyweight title, becoming the first man to win the World Heavyweight Championship three times.   37.    Misc.:   38.    Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collections: Cotton Candy and Woman   39.    Open Comments:   40.    Music Snapshots   41.    Record of the Year: Billy Joel for "Just the Way You Are"   42.    Album of the Year: Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, Various Artist   43.    Song of the Year: Billy Joel for "Just the Way You Are"   44.    Best New Artist: A Taste of Honey   45.    Top Billboard Singles   1.    Shadow Dancing", Andy Gibb 2.    "Night Fever", Bee Gees 3.    "You Light Up My Life", Debby Boone   46.    Open Comments:   47.    Movie Snapshots: Highest-grossing films   1.    Grease 2.    Superman 3.    National Lampoon's Animal House   48.    Open Comments:   49.    TV Snapshots   1.    Laverne & Shirley 2.    Three's Company 3.    Mork & Mindy   50.    Debuts   51.    September - WKRP in Cincinnati (Featuring Tim Reid as Venus Flytrap): BEST THEME SONG EVER!!!   52.    November - Diff'rent Strokes: The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, two Black boys from Harlem who are taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman and widower named Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain) and his daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato), for whom their deceased mother previously worked.   53.    Open Comments:   54.    Social Scene: Ali's Last Dance (Muhammad Ali vs. Leon Spinks I and II)   55.    First Fight (February): THE ONLY TIME ALI LOST HIS TITLE IN THE RING   56.    Tom Gray (Ringtv.com) - "At 36 years of age, the great Muhammad Ali was on the physical descent. The warning signs were clearly visible in prior defenses of his heavyweight championship. Jimmy Young and Ken Norton could easily have been given decisions against Ali in 1976. A European-level fighter like Alfredo Evangelista could last the distance in May 1977. And power-puncher Earnie Shavers, despite falling short on points, had inflicted 10 fights worth of damage on “The Greatest” over 15 brain-shuddering rounds that September. Ali, who should have been enjoying retirement, needed a very easy fight – enter Leon Spinks. The St. Louis product was a decorated amateur star. He had captured bronze at the World Championships in 1974, silver at the Pan-Am Games in 1975 and gold, as a light heavyweight, at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Great stats, but, alarmingly, the challenger was bringing a (6-0-1, 5 knockouts) professional record into a heavyweight championship fight. The 24-year-old Spinks would be the most inexperienced professional to vie for the title (in 21yrs, since "1957").   57.    Spinks won a split decision   58.    The matchup would win Fight of the Year, Round of the Year (for rnd 15), and Upset of the Year awards.   59.    Aftermath: Spinks signed for a rematch with Ali at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans and was stripped of his title for refusing to fight no. 1 contender Ken Norton instead.   60.    The Rematch   61.    70,000 people attended the bout and paid a total of $6 million admission, making it the largest live gate in boxing history at that time.   62.    Ali beat Spinks in a unanimous decision.   63.    When Ali reclaimed the title, he made history by becoming the first man to win the heavyweight championship three times.   64.    After the fight, Ali retired from boxing in 1979 - for the first time.   65.    Subsequently, Ali tried 2 more comebacks: In 1980, against former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes and in 1981 against Trevor Berbick    66.    Both were loses, 1978 rematch the last win of his boxing career.   67.    Legacy   68.    Pro Record: 61 fights / 56 wins / 5 losses [By the end of his career Ali had absorbed ~200,000 hits]   69.    Time magazine named Ali one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century / Sportsman of the Century by Sports Illustrated / Named Sports Personality of the Century in a BBC poll / The Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton / The Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush / Sports Illustrated renamed its Sportsman Legacy Award to the Sports Illustrated's Muhammad Ali Legacy Award.  (honors former "sports figures who embody the ideals of sportsmanship, leadership and philanthropy as vehicles for changing the world.") / Ring Magazine, named him number 1 greatest heavyweights from all eras / The Associated Press, No. 1 heavyweight of the 20th century / ESPN, the second greatest pound for pound fighter in boxing history (#1 Sugar Ray Robinson) and the second greatest heavyweights of all time, behind Joe Louis    70.    Personally: Ali and James Brown are the only two men I think my father ever admired.   71.    Open Comments:   72.    Music Scene   73.    Billboard Year-End Top 40 Black singles of 1978   74.    #9 - "Boogie Oogie Oogie", A Taste of Honey   75.    #10 - "Three Times a Lady", Commodores   76.    #20 - "Dance, Dance, Dance", Chic   77.    #31 - "Jack And Jill", Raydio   78.    #34 - "Last Dance", Donna Summer   79.    #38 - "The Closer I Get to You", Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway   80.    Number-One R&B singles of 1978   81.    Jan - "Ffun", Con Funk Shun   82.    Jan - "Our Love", Natalie Cole   83.    Feb - "Theme Song from 'Which Way Is Up'", Stargard   84.    Feb - "Too Hot ta Trot", The Commodores   85.    Feb - "It's You That I Need", Enchantment   86.    Mar - "Flash Light”, Parliament   87.    Mar - "Bootzilla", Bootsy's Rubber Band   88.    Apr - "The Closer I Get to You", Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway   89.    Apr - "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late", Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams   90.    May - Take Me to the Next Phase (Part 1)", The Isley Brothers   91.    May - "Use ta Be My Girl", The O'Jays   92.    Jul - "Stuff Like That", Quincy Jones   93.    Jul - "Close the Door", Teddy Pendergrass   94.    Jul - "You and I", Rick James   95.    Aug - "Boogie Oogie Oogie", A Taste Of Honey   96.    Aug - "Three Times a Lady", The Commodores   97.    Aug - "Get Off", Foxy   98.    Sep - "Holding On (When Love Is Gone)", L.T.D.   99.    Sep - "Got to Get You into My Life", Earth, Wind & Fire   100.    Sep - "One Nation Under a Groove (Part 1)", Funkadelic   101.    Nov - "I'm Every Woman", Chaka Khan   102.    Dec - "Le Freak", Chic   103.    Vote:   104.    Jan - All 'N All, Earth, Wind and Fire   105.    Feb - Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, Bee Gees   106.    Mar - Bootsy? Player of the Year, Bootsy's Rubber Band   107.    Apr - Street Player, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan   108.    Apr - Weekend in L.A., George Benson   109.    May - Showdown, The Isley Brothers   110.    Jun - So Full Of Love, The O'Jays   111.    Jun - Natural High, The Commodores   112.    Aug - Life Is a Song Worth Singing, Teddy Pendergrass   113.    Sep - Blam!, The Brothers Johnson   114.    Oct - Is It Still Good to Ya, Ashford & Simpson   115.    Oct - One Nation Under a Groove, Funkadelic   116.    Nov - The Man, Barry White   117.    Dec - C'est Chic, Chic   118.    Vote:   119.    Key Artist   120.    Who: James Ambrose Johnson Jr., a.k.a. Rick James The Superfreak (@ 30 yrs old): singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, hitmaker, performer, producer, impresario, and pioneer in the fusion of funk groove and rock.  A flamboyant, provocative, charismatic, brilliant, volatile, and outrageous bona fide superstar.    121.    Why is he being featured: Debut solo album, Come Get It!, with hit singles "You and I" & "Mary Jane"   122.    Short Story:  Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, he was one of eight children. His father was abusive and abandoned the family when James was eight. His mother was a former dancer who worked as a housekeeper, but also was a numbers runner. Went to Catholic school and was an altar boy, he also committed petty theft crimes, and spent some time in juvenile detention centers. He also began doing drugs. While James was always musically inclined, it was not until he performed in a talent show in high school that he seriously considered a career in music. He formed a group called the Duprees. At the same time, he joined the Naval Reserve to avoid the draft. As he and his group gained popularity he began to skip out on his naval duties. James was soon drafted, but he fled to Canada.  His uncle was Melvin Franklin of the Temptations. Franklin helped his nephew get a recording contract with Motown Records. This led to James striking a deal with the government and serving some time in prison for draft evasion. After his release, he began to record his first album, which included the hits "You & I," and his ode to marijuana, "Mary Jane." The album sold two million copies.   123.    James's second album, Bustin' Out of L Seven(1979), followed the previous album's success, eventually selling a million copies.   124.    His third album, Fire It Up (1979) and the supporting tour led to James developing a bitter rivalry with one of his opening acts, Prince. Rick accused Prince of ripping off his act.   125.    His fifth album, Street Songs (1981), also proved to be a crossover success. With the Temptations on background vocals, James released "Super Freak."    126.    With the success of "Super Freak," James began to produce for other artists. He formed an all-girl band named the Mary Jane Girls. He also performed duets with R&B singer Teena Marie and Smokey Robinson. He also produced comedian Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time," which was a hit in the mid-1980s.   127.    James' on-stage persona was one of wild debauchery. Dressed in sequins, tight leather, high-heeled boots, and cornrows or a jheri curl, James oozed sex on stage. Offstage, he smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine. According to the Washington Post, he told the Detroit News in 2004, "The biggest mistake I made is that I tried to become my alter ego. I wanted to be Rick James, wild man, party machine, lady slayer, and the cocaine told me I could. I forgot that I was James Johnson, a nerdy kid who grew up reading Dante's Inferno on Saturday nights."   128.    James' spiral out of control came to a head when he was charged with assault in 1991. He was convicted in 1993 and served three years. He vowed to get clean and live a more sedate life. Upon his release, he married and began having serious health problems.  James was found dead on August 6, 2004; he was 56.  His death was ruled accidental, but nine drugs were found in his system. However, the official cause of death was a heart attack.   129.    Open Comments:   130.    Movie Scene   131.    The Wiz: A musical adventure fantasy film based upon characters from “The Wizard of OZ” featuring an all-black cast, the film was loosely adapted from the 1974 Broadway musical of the same name. It follows the adventures of Dorothy, a shy, twenty-four-year-old Harlem schoolteacher who finds herself magically transported to the urban fantasy Land of Oz, which resembles a dream version of New York City. Befriended by a Scarecrow, a Tin Man and a Cowardly Lion, she travels through the city to seek an audience with the mysterious Wiz, who they say is the only one powerful enough to send her home.   132.    Various reviews: "...Diana Ross, too old to play Dorothy." and ...portrayal of Dorothy was "cold, neurotic and oddly unattractive" / "...cockamamy screenplay" / “the picture finished off Diana Ross's screen career" / "The Wiz was too scary for children, and too silly for adults." / Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz film, did not think highly of The Wiz, stating "The Wiz is overblown and will never have the universal appeal that the classic MGM musical has obtained."   133.    Sean Munger - seanmunger.com "...But, despite the fact that it was a bad movie–and it clearly is–there’s a lot of very interesting stuff about The Wiz lurking under the surface. You can make an argument that its failure ended not one but two eras in cinema: the era of the glitzy big-budget musical, and that of what is known, not entirely politically correctly (these days), as the “Blacksploitation” boom. The Wiz also began a professional association between two of its participants that had an effect on popular culture of almost inestimable magnitude: the musical pairing of Michael Jackson and songwriter/producer Quincy Jones."   134.    Open Comments:   135.    TV Scene   136.    Maxie Cleveland "Max" Robinson, Jr. (@39yrs old): American broadcast journalist and founder of the National Association of Black Journalists   137.    Robinson’s first journalism job began and ended in 1959, when he was hired to read news at a Portsmouth, Va., television station. Although the station selected him over an otherwise all-white group of applicants, it still enforced a color barrier by projecting an image of the station’s logo to conceal Robinson as he read the news. He was fired the day after he presented the news without the logo obscuring his face. In 1965 he joined WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C., as a correspondent and camera operator, but he moved quickly to nearby WRC-TV, where he won awards for coverage of race riots and a documentary on life in poor urban neighborhoods. He was hired back by WTOP as its first African American news anchor in 1969 and stayed there until 1978. Robinson moved to Chicago when ABC News chose him as one of three co-anchors for ABC’s World News Tonight. The anchor arrangement ended with the death of co-anchor Frank Reynolds in 1983. Robinson left ABC News shortly thereafter and joined Chicago’s WMAQ-TV as a news anchor (1984–87).   138.    Clarence Page offered a final tribute to his friend Max Robinson in Chicago: "Some journalists are remembered for the stories they covered. Robinson will be remembered for being the story. Like Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color bar in 1947, Max Robinson won't be applauded for his home runs, but for the fact that he ran the bases."   139.    Open Comments:   140.    Final Question: Biggest legacy from 1978?

Planet Patrol is an American electro group originating in the 1980s. The members were Arthur Baker, John Robie, and a quintet of vocalists led by Herbert J. Jackson: lead singer Joseph Lites, Rodney Butler, Michael Anthony Jones, and Melvin B. Franklin (not to be confused with Melvin Franklin of The Temptations). The group only produced a single album, the self-titled Planet Patrol in 1983, which peaked at #64 on the Billboard R&B Albums chart. The group's most popular song, "Play at Your Own Risk", was created from tracks that did not make the final version of Afrika Bambaataa's seminal "Planet Rock".    

Planet Patrol - Play At Your Own Risk Edit By Petko Turner Planet Patrol is an American electro group originating in the 1980s. The members were Arthur Baker, John Robie, and a quintet of vocalists led by Herbert J. Jackson: lead singer Joseph Lites, Rodney Butler, Michael Anthony Jones, and the late Melvin Franklin. The group only produced a single album, the self-titled Planet Patrol in 1983, which peaked at #64 on the Billboard R&B Albums chart. The group's most popular song, "Play at Your Own Risk", was created from tracks that did not make the final version of Afrika Bambaataa's seminal "Planet Rock". Download for free on The Artist Union

Quiztory host Atllas celebrates Temptations bassist Melvin Franklin

Quiztory host Atllas celebrates Temptations bassist Melvin Franklin

Atllas, the voice of the Quiztory app, shares some history on bass singer Melvin Franklin of The Temptations

Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin and fellow Temps discuss their beginnings and illustrious musical career in a rare archival interview from the 1980s.