Podcasts about Norman Whitfield

Songcraft: Spotlight on Songwriters

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2024

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…

love women new york money black world chicago soul fall british song girl pride detroit respect grammy blues female sea atlantic miracles heard mine vancouver tears cd succeed robinson released knight holland teenagers fury last dance norman peacock newman flame popcorn giving up mother in law temptations cry aretha franklin needle circuit motown hammond bmi stevenson marvin gaye bubba cupid lullabies tilt ray charles diana ross sweets my heart sam cooke brunswick brokenhearted supremes brahms smokey robinson grapevine viva las vegas wylie whitfield gladys knight somethin isley brothers joe jackson gordy ruffin pips spinners my girl dozier haystack make up your mind berry gordy scepter amateur hour contours shuman mohawks jackie wilson dells i heard my home best r buddah too young martha reeves vandellas hitchhike don davis lamont dozier david ruffin too proud atco seven sins brill building jerry butler veejay daydream believer gege funk brothers otis williams help myself barrett strong holland dozier holland bobby taylor nelson george to be loved answer me my sweet david ritz motown sound joe hunter how sweet it is norman whitfield jimmy ruffin van mccoy hitsville johnny otis kim weston doc pomus where did our love go don covay i heard it through isleys every beat melvin franklin my corner alright with me this old heart mickey stevenson tilt araiza

Ep. 230 - CAROLYN DAWN JOHNSON ("The Day I Die"

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2024 83:17

With an ACM Top New Female Vocalist win and nearly 20 Canadian Country Music Awards, the chart-topping Carolyn Dawn Johnson chats about everything from her songwriting successes to her artist career to her co-writing with Chris Stapleton.PART ONEPaul and Scott dive deep on their opinions about the recently-announced Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction class of 2024.PART TWOOur in-depth conversation with Carolyn Dawn Johnson.ABOUT CAROLYN DAWN JOHNSONCanadian-born singer, songwriter, producer, and musician Carolyn Dawn Johnson moved to Nashville in the mid-1990s and started getting her songs recorded by artists such as Patty Loveless, Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, and Jo Dee Messina. Her breakthrough came in 1999 with Chely Wright's recording of "Single White Female," which hit #1 on the country charts. Wright's follow-up recording of Johnson's "Downtime" also became a Top 5 hit. Carolyn was named Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year by Music Row magazine in 2000 and landed a record deal of her own with the Arista Nashville label. Her self-produced debut, Room with a View, hit the Top 10 in the US and earned Gold status in Canada. The singles "Complicated“ and "I Don't Want You to Go“ were both Top 10 hits in the US. She won the Academy of Country Music's Top New Female Vocalist award and swept the Canadian Country Music Awards. The follow-up album, Dress Rehearsal, also debuted in the Top 10. To date, Carolyn has earned nearly 20 Canadian Country Music Awards for songwriting, performing, and producing. As an artist she has toured with Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, and Merle Haggard. As a backup vocalist and musician she's toured with Ashley McBryde, Miranda Lambert, and Martina McBride. After a hiatus as an artist she has recently begun recording new music while continuing to enjoy success as a writer, including Chris Stapleton's "The Day I Die,“ a song Carolyn and Chris wrote together that appeared on his 2023 album Higher.

Episode 266: PBS #246 CLASS OF 2024 ROCK N' ROLL HALL OF FAME

PSYCHOTIC BUMP SCHOOL PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2024 89:37

MAY 6 2024: For this edition of PSYCHOTIC BUMP SCHOOL, DJ ROME and his guests pay very special honorary tributes to a new roster of musical icons entering into the ROCK N' ROLL HALL OF FAME.PART 1: A. SCOTT GALLOWAY, JANINE COVENEY, JULIANA JAI BOLDEN, & JOHN "THIRD SUN" MYERS kick off the tributes with both SCOTT & JOHN sharing their reflections of their days with new inductee, the late and legendary producer NORMAN WHITFIELD while the ladies chime in for heartfelt props for the reigning Queen of HipHop Soul MARY J. BLIGE also one of this year's inductees.PART 2: The tributes continue with respects paid to singer/songwriter/actress/activist & stylistic chameleon CHER as well as the highly innovative and landscape shifting guitar hero PETER FRAMPTONPART 3: The discussion concludes with legendary funk/soul/jazz/pop supergroup KOOL & THE GANG and genre-breaking lyrical and beat-making sensations A TRIBE CALLED QUEST.A great episodeSo press PLAY, SHARE, and ENJOY!

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Episode 266: PBS #246 CLASS OF 2024 ROCK N' ROLL HALL OF FAME

PSYCHOTIC BUMP SCHOOL PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2024 89:37

Justicia en el Salón de la Fama del Rock and Roll!

EN POCAS PALABRAS

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2024 4:52

En EEUU el Salón de la Fama del Rock and Roll se reivindica con algunas figuras que llevaban años esperando. En la categoría de intérpretes, entran los veteranos Mary J. Blige, Cher, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool and the Gang, Ozzy Osbourne y A Tribe Called Quest. Como Influencia Musical se admitió a Alexis Korner, John Mayall y Big Mama Thornton. En la Excelencia Musical ingresan Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick y Norman Whitfield. Deberán esperar unos años más Mariah Carey, Oasis, Lenny Kravitz, y Sinéad O’Connor.

1969 - October: Johnny Cash “Original Golden Hits, Volume I and II”

What the Riff?!?

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2024 27:26

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.

# Rose Royce wishing on a star

THE MISTERman's Take

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2024 2:50

# Rose Royce wishing on a star # one of the most important bands from back in the day# Great talent # producer the late great Norman Whitfield # appreciate and respect --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mr-maxxx/support

rose royce norman whitfield rose royce wishing

Groovy Soul - Andy Davies // 04-02-24

The Face Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2024 119:40

Bonjour from France once again as Andy digs in to his Groovy Soul - New York labels Wand, Musicor and Scepter get a good look in this week as they feature in the three northern soul stonkers along with tunes from Patti Jo and Freddie Hughes. Norman Whitfield and Curtis Mayfield pop up with two tracks plus there are new ones from Skeewiff and The Tibbs. Sit back and whatever you do - do it with confidence!This show was first broadcast on the 4th of February, 2024For more info and tracklisting, visit :https://thefaceradio.com/groovy-soulTune into new broadcasts of Groovy Soul, LIVE, Sunday 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.https://thefaceradio.com/archives/groovy-soulDig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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# the Temptations run away child running away

THE MISTERman's Take

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2023 2:50

# the Temptations run away child running a way# one of the greatest vocal groups ever # funky gritty social song # composed by Norman Whitfield and Barrett strong# producer Norman Whitfield # respect and appreciate --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mr-maxxx/support

child temptations running away norman whitfield

EP #245 THE BEAT OF HIS OWN DRUM - ALVIN TAYLOR

All THINGS HIP HOP EPISODE #1

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2023 91:26

ALVIN TAYLOR Legendary Drummer, Musical Director, Producer Alvin has been a lover of drums since the age of five, and his professional career began at the age of fourteen, when he was discovered by, and toured with Little Richard. His most amazing experience came when he was invited to London by George Harrison (of the Beatles) to both live in his castle and to record the “33 1/3” album … and that album went platinum. Further evidence of Alvin's unique talent is his on-going list of credits and tours with other legendary artists such as: Elton John, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Bob Welch, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Gil Scott Heron, Diana Ross, Barry White, Sly Stone, Leo Sayer, Bill Withers, Andre' Crouch, Ronnie Woods, who is the guitarist with the Rolling Stones, and so many others. While working with Little Richard, Alvin played on the hit album “King of Rock & Roll.” He was then asked to join a band called PG&E (Pacific, Gas & Electric) with lead singer Charlie Allen and guitarist Steve Beckmeier. They went on to record a hit song called “Are You Ready” and also did a remake of the hit song“Stagger-Lee.” Billy Preston, also known as, the 5th Beatle and a Beatles' favorite, was initially responsible for Alvin's introduction to studio dates. Alvin went on to tour and record with Billy Preston on many occasions. He also recorded “I'm Just a Sucker For Your Love” with Tina Marie and Rick James. Shortly after that, Alvin's demand as a studio musician by the best producers in the music industry such as Robert Margouleff, Richard Perry, George Martin, the legendary Motown producer Frank Wilson and Norman Whitfield was relentless, and his calendar was never short of dates. He was a constant guest on hit musical television shows such as the Midnight Special, In Concert, Solid Gold, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, The Real Don Steele and Soul Train. Alvin was then asked by Jerry Goldstein to play with the famous and long- standing group War. Goldstein produced, managed, and owned the group as well as the record label Avenue Records. Alvin turned down the offer, however, he then joined the Eric Burdon band. They recorded the albums, “Sun Secrets,” “Stop,” and a double album conceived for a movie sound track titled “Mirage.” He also did a world tour with the Eric Burdon Band. While Alvin was touring with Eric Burdon, an A&R man from Capitol Records named John Carter, one of Alvin's biggest fans, signed Bob Welch, the original guitarist with Fleetwood Mac, to a long-term contract with Capitol Records. He then asked Alvin to put a band together for Welch's album project. After Alvin listened to Welch's demos, he asked Carter, “Who are the musicians playing on the demo?” – Carter's response was “That is all Bob Welch, playing the bass, the keyboards and guitars.” Alvin then informed Carter that he had found a band that could do the recording for Bob Welch's solo album called “French Kiss.” That band consisted of Alvin Taylor and Bob Welch, featuring the hit single “Ebony Eyes,” and the album went gold and then platinum. This was the first tangible proof that Alvin has incredible musical direction and production skills in addition to his dynamic drumming talent. Today, he is still an active and passionate drummer, as well as a music director and producer. He continues to do miscellaneous dates and tours with various artists. He is currently working in pre-production as a musical director for a major television show. His life has been so enriched by his musical craft and astounding career as a successful artist, that he is now in the process of writing a book about his life story. He is always seeking to create and develop new artists, and he has a never-ending artistic mind and enduring love for music. MORE KELLY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER BROOKLYN CARDENAS

Ep 73: Duke Fakir (The Four Tops) on The Temptations | Accolades

Accolades

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 23, 2023 12:24

In episode 73 I talk to Duke Fakir from The Four Tops about The Temptations, an American vocal group from Detroit, Michigan, who released a series of successful singles and albums with Motown Records during the 1960s and 1970s. The group's work with producer Norman Whitfield, beginning with the Top 10 hit single "Cloud Nine" in October 1968, pioneered psychedelic soul, and was significant in the evolution of R&B and soul music. The band members are known for their choreography, distinct harmonies, and dress style. Having sold tens of millions of albums, the Temptations are among the most successful groups in popular music.

american michigan detroit temptations accolades four tops motown records cloud nine norman whitfield duke fakir

Me And Mrs. Jones by Billy Paul

Classic 45's Jukebox

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2022

Label: Phil. Int'l. 3521Year: 1972Condition: M-Last Price: $15.00. Not currently available for sale.Listening to this Philly Soul classic again today, I was thinking that the spark of genius at work here, in the collaboration among Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Bobby Martin, is precisely the same as that which gave life to the Motown genius of producer/writers like Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, with miracles of Soul music such as "Just My Imagination" by the Temptations. Anyway, what I mean is... I love it! Not on the Rolling Stone, Dave Marsh or Kev Roberts lists? I think I'm hearing something those guys don't, cause to me this is a 2-star recommendation (our highest)! Note: This beautiful copy comes in a vintage Philadelphia Int'l Records factory sleeve. It has gorgeous, pristine Mint audio.

Søndag 13. nov. 2022

Hotellet

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2022 117:00

Produceren og komponisten Norman Whitfield stod bag utallige grupper og hits. Hør musik med The Undisputed Truth, Rose Royce og Marvin Gaye. Vært: Jens Rasmussen.

marvin gaye rose royce undisputed truth norman whitfield jens rasmussen

I'm In Love With That Song: The Temptations – “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2022 21:42

Norman Whitfield turned The Temptations from a typical Motown vocal group into Psychedelic Soul pioneers. Their collaboration reached its zenith with “Papa Was A Rolling Stone“, a dark, atmospheric, orchestral showcase for both the Temptations and Whitfield's genius. This would be the last #1 hit for The Temptations, and they would stop working with Norman Whitfield soon after. But they left behind this monumental masterpiece.“Papa Was A Rolling Stone” (Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong) Copyright 1972 Stone Diamond Music Corp.If you enjoyed this episode, here's a previous episode that featured another classic Temptations song:lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-you/— This show is just one of many great music-themed podcasts on the Pantheon network. Do yourself a favor and check 'em out. And remember to follow this show, so you never miss an episode.

soul song rolling stones papa temptations motown r&b classic rock pantheon whitfield norman whitfield

The Temptations - "Papa Was A Rolling Stone"

I'm In Love With That Song

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2022 21:42

Norman Whitfield turned The Temptations from a typical Motown vocal group into Psychedelic Soul pioneers. Their collaboration reached its zenith with "Papa Was A Rolling Stone", a dark, atmospheric, orchestral showcase for both the Temptations and Whitfield's genius. This would be the last #1 hit for The Temptations, and they would stop working with Norman Whitfield soon after. But they left behind this monumental masterpiece. "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" (Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong) Copyright 1972 Stone Diamond Music Corp.If you enjoyed this episode, here's a previous episode that featured another classic Temptations song:lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-you/— This show is just one of many great music-themed podcasts on the Pantheon network. Do yourself a favor and check 'em out. And remember to follow this show, so you never miss an episode.

soul rolling stones papa temptations motown r&b classic rock pantheon whitfield norman whitfield

The Temptations - "Papa Was A Rolling Stone"

I'm In Love With That Song

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2022 25:00

Norman Whitfield turned The Temptations from a typical Motown vocal group into Psychedelic Soul pioneers. Their collaboration reached its zenith with "Papa Was A Rolling Stone", a dark, atmospheric, orchestral showcase for both the Temptations and Whitfield's genius. This would be the last #1 hit for The Temptations, and they would stop working with Norman Whitfield soon after. But they left behind this monumental masterpiece. "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" (Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong) Copyright 1972 Stone Diamond Music Corp. If you enjoyed this episode, here's a previous episode that featured another classic Temptations song: lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-you/ — This show is just one of many great music-themed podcasts on the Pantheon network. Do yourself a favor and check 'em out. And remember to follow this show, so you never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

rolling stones papa temptations motown pantheon whitfield norman whitfield

Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story ranked

We Will Rank You

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2022 100:21

POD STEWART! What are your most favorite and least-loved songs on Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story? Since three of us hail from 1971, Dan chose this classic Roderic record that divided the hosts with its boozy, bluesy goodness and raspy crooning. We recently finally got into the 70s with Schoolhouse Rock but this is our most classic rock episode to date! A must-listen for fans of the phrase “a long time”. Hear it at WeWillRankYouPod.com, Apple, Spotify and your local donut shop. Follow us and weigh in with your favorites on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @wewillrankyoupod . FILE UNDER/SPOILERS: Every Picture Tells a Story, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Seems Like a Long Time, Theodore Anderson, That's All Right, Amazing Grace, Arthur Crudup, Tomorrow Is a Long Time, Bob Dylan, Henry, Martin Quittenton, Maggie May, Maggie Mae, Mandolin Wind, (I Know) I'm Losing You, Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland, Cornelius Grant, (Find a) Reason to Believe, Tim Hardin, donuts. US: http://www.WeWillRankYouPod.com wewillrankyoupod@gmail.com http://www.facebook.com/WeWillRankYouPod http://www.instagram.com/WeWillRankYouPod http://www.twitter.com/WeWillRankYouPo http://www.YourOlderBrother.com (Sam's music page) http://www.YerDoinGreat.com (Adam's music page) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4OFTIda46Di4HkS0CDvM7L (Dan's top 100 songs of 2020)

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Edwin Starr - War 8:2:22 1.32 PM

Sound Flave

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2022 1:50

Song: WarSong by: Edwin StarrSong written by: Norman Whitfield, Barrett StrongPhoto credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanfrancoishayeur/Usage: Public DomainFirst vocals by: Gail NoblesEdwin Starr vocals: samplefocus.comUsage: Royalty free (Motown)Today's topic: Edwin Starr - WarWhat is it good for? Absolutely Nothin'That's how Edwin would sing it y'all. Edwin was famous for his Norman Whitfield- produced Motown singles of the 1970s, most notably the number one hit, “War”. Whitfield first produced the song - an obvious anti–Vietnam War statement – with The Temptations as the original vocalists. After Motown began receiving repeated requests to release "War" as a single, Whitfield re-recorded the song with Edwin Starr as the vocalist, with the label deciding to withhold the Temptations' version from single release. Starr's version of "War" was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1970, and is not only the most successful and well-known record of his career, but it is also one of the most popular protest songs ever recorded.Edwin Starr despised war according to the lyrics. He said: Cause it means destruction of innocent lives. War means tears to thousands of mother's eyes. When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives. War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. You're listening to Sound Flave. Im you're host, Gail Nobles. Thank you for listening.

music soul war funk disco psychedelics vietnam war temptations motown r&b tributes billboard hot whitfield music history music news music commentary edwin starr norman whitfield edwin starr war

Episode 73: SCOTT KUCHLER - Ain't Too Proud Too Beg (TEMPTATIONS COVER: Live @ Bartini Bar/Babylon, NY - 8/1/22)

The 51s

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2022 3:00

Words & music by Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland, Jr. Scott Kuchler - vocals, guitar

babylon proud temptations norman whitfield kuchler bartini

Episode 66: (I CAN"T BELIEVE IT'S NOT) MONKEY GRIP - Ain't Too Proud To Beg (TEMPTATIONS COVER: Live @ Bartini Bar/Babylon, NY - 7/15/22)

The 51s

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2022 3:14

Words & music by Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland, Jr. Scott Kuchler - lead vocals, rhythm guitar; Joe Shep - lead guitar; Brian Barkan - backing vocals, bass guitar; Rick McCord - drums

monkeys babylon proud grip temptations norman whitfield bartini

"All I Need" The Temptations

Radio Funk | Le Podcast de Funky Pearls Radio

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2022 2:45

All I Need est un single à succès de 1967 enregistré par The Temptations pour le label de Berry Gordy (Motown). C'est le premier single du groupe à être produit par le protégé de Norman Whitfield, Frank Wilson. Edward Holland Jr. et R. Dean Taylor ont écrit le single, qui a culminé au numéro 8 du Billboard Hot 100. David Ruffin, le chanteur principal des , est le narrateur de la chanson. Dans cette chanson, il supplie son amant de lui pardonner son infidélité et ses mauvais traitements, lui disant à quel point il se sent coupable et qu'il se rattrapera. Le rythme de l'enregistrement est très similaire aux chansons écrites et produites par Holland-Dozier, la principale équipe de compositeurs de Motown (dont Holland faisait partie). Le single est le premier à ne pas être produit par le producteur principal du groupe Norman Whitfield depuis " Get Ready ", et Whitfield a produit toutes les sorties de single qui ont suivi. Whitfield a maintenu une emprise de fer sur son contrôle créatif sur le matériel publié par The Temptations, et ce serait également le dernier single du groupe non produit par Whitfield jusqu'à leurs duos avec Diana Ross et les Supremes en 1968. Soutenu par la production d'Ivy Jo Hunter "Sorry is a Sorry Word" (écrit par Holland et Hunter), le single était le deuxième de The Temptations de leur album de 1967 The Temptations with a Lot o 'Soul. Les Temptations ont interprété la chanson en direct dans l'émission de variétés CBS "The Ed Sullivan Show" en 1957 dans le cadre d'un documentaire. Cash Box a qualifié le single de "pulsant, entraînant, battant, mélodique" et l'a félicité pour être un "élément sûr de plaire". Le groupe Fellow Motown, Bobby Taylor; The Vancouvers, a enregistré la chanson en 1968, mais elle est restée inédite jusqu'à la sortie de l'album Motown Anthology de Bobby Taylor en 2006. The Supremes a enregistré une version plus décontractée de la chanson (en 1971) avec Jean Terrell au chant.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Yet MORE First Recordings of Famous Songs.

D-Sides, Orphans, and Oddities

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2022 120:05

The Blue Cats - Nowhere Man (196?) I'm gonna guess 1966 since this band released three albums of covers of their time plus some instrumental originals. Probably German studio guys bringing the Western hits of the day to their homeland. Diane and Annita - Groovey Kind of Love (1965) Fans (?) of this release propose that this might not even be the titular singers (who sound nothing like the voices on this recording) but actually the writers, Carol Bayer-Sager and Toni Wine. Annita Ray also recorded a one-off novelty single with Eden Ahbez, the writer of "Nature Boy," in 1956. It was titled "Frankie's Song" b/w "Elvis Presley Blues." Wikipedia: The melody is from the Rondo from Muzio Clementi's Sonatina, Opus 36, No. 5. Even though Wine and Sager claim full songwriting credits, they mainly wrote the lyrics and just slightly modified Clementi's music. Bayer Sager originally pitched the song to pop star Lesley Gore in early 1965, but Gore's producer at the time, Shelby Singleton, rejected it, as he found the word "groovy" too slangy. Gene Cotton - Let Your Love Flow (1975) The Undisputed Truth - Papa Was A Rollin' Stone (1972) This version actually preceded the Grammy-winning version by The Temptations, and the two are pretty similar. The Undisputed Truth had their biggest hit with a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong as well, "Smiling Faces Sometimes", which was originally recorded by The Temptations! This is another trivia question you can ask your friend. Beau Williams - C'est La Vie (1984) Black Magic! - Miss Jessie (1970) Brian Wilson - Just Say No (1986) C.W. McCall - Kidnap America (1980) The Soul Searchers - We The People (1972) Roogalator - Cincinnatti Fatback (1976) Note the Stiff Records logo on the upper left corner. This was one of the first Stiff releases. Danny Adler was an American ex-pat living in England. This was the second version of Roogalator (formed in 1972), and as much as this track smokes, the band got virtually no support from the label, and constant personnel changes killed the group. Could you have hung on that long with an entire movement (that you helped start) bubbling under your feet, only to be ignored and ultimately ripped off? Cliff Bennett and his Band - Back In The U.S.S.R. (1968) Con-Funk-Shun - Clique (1974) Sesame Street - Cracks (1976) "Cracks" is an animated musical insert produced for Sesame Street in the 1970s. A young girl is unable to go outside to play because of the rain, and so she imagines the cracks in her wall form a camel. The camel takes her on an adventure through the wall where she meets a hen and a monkey, also made out of cracks. The voice is the one and only Dorothy Moskowitz, who I featured on a recent show. She is mostly known as the female voice of The United States of America. Debby Dobbins - How You Gonna Feel (1979) A selection from the one and only album by Don Thompson - Fanny Brown/Just Plain Funk/Night Ladies/Hang Loose (1977) God, I love this funk. From Dusty Groove: The one and only album from drummer Don Thompson – a funky Brunswick classic from the 70s, and one of the most unique records we've ever heard from the label at the time! Don's got this style of singing that has a bit of a southern twang at times, but he works with grooves that are definitely northern in their orientation – served up in a range of styles that includes the funky drum break of the title cut, some mellow-stepping moments on a few other tunes, and the bouncing boogie that's really become the album's calling card over the years! There's loads of great bass work on most cuts, which really grounds that album alongside Don's drums – and titles include "Just Plain Funk", "Fanny Brown", "Lovin To The Bone", "Night Ladies (part 1 & 2)", and "Hang Loose". Donny Hathaway - The Ghetto (1970) His early records were expansive and unique, and his voice was second to none. He was every bit the equal of Stevie and Marvin, but you know him from his duets with Roberta Flack. Wikipedia: During the peak of his career, Hathaway began suffering from severe bouts of depression and exhibiting unusual behavior. In 1971, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia for which he was prescribed various medications. At one point, Hathaway was prescribed fourteen different medications that he was to take twice a day. After Hathaway was diagnosed and began taking medication, his mental state improved. However, Eulaulah Hathaway has said that her husband became less than diligent about following his prescription regimen when he began feeling better and often stopped taking his medications altogether. From 1973 to 1977, Hathaway's mental instability wreaked havoc on his life and career and required several hospitalizations. The effects of his depression and severe mood swings also drove a wedge in his and Flack's friendship; they did not reconcile for several years, and did not release additional music until the successful release of "The Closer I Get To You" in 1978. Flack and Hathaway then resumed studio recording to compose a second album of duets. You should investigate his discography, especially this stunning debut album, Everything Is Everything. He was brilliant. Donny Hathaway - To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (1970) Donnie Most - Rock Is Dead (1976) Enoch Light and the Light Brigade - Pick Up The Pieces (1975) John Miller on bass. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade - Puppet Man (1970) Fleetwood Mac - Sentimental Lady (1972) POACA will remember that Bob Welch rerecorded this with a more prominent Christine McVie backing vocal part. The singing members of Fleetwood Mac circa 1977-1980 could have crapped on a cracker and it would have gone gold. The Mothers of Invention - Help, I'm a Rock (Suite In Three Movements) I. Okay To Tap Dance II. In Memoriam, Edgard Varèse lll. It Can't Happen Here (1966) Ian Dury and the Blockheads - Reasons To Be Cheerful (Pt. 3) (1980) Kelly Gordon - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (1969) First version. Beautiful. Kid Creole and the Coconuts - Indiscreet (1983) Live. Goddammit, Carol Colman on bass. The Residents - Die In Terror (1980) Hoover Commercial with Brian Johnson of AC/DC on vocals. (1979) Carpenters - Suntory Pop Jingle (1977)

The Pat Walsh Show May 12th Hr 3

The Pat Walsh Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2022 37:23

More on National Limerick Day, space news, scientists grow plants in soil from the Moon for the first time, people high in narcissism are less likely to comply with COVID-19 mitigations, Happy Birthday to Norman Whitfield, news stories of the day and celebrating more Birthdays on the Birthday Board!

covid-19 moon happy birthday birthdays norman whitfield pat walsh

Willie Hutch - 4:5:22 2.11PM

CAT BEAR

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2022 3:28

Intro by: Gail NoblesPodcast vocal: Gail NoblesSong: Love PowerSong by: Willie HutchLove Power is a song by Willie Hutch, a singer, songwriter as well as a record producer, and recording artist for the Motown record label during the 1970s and 1980s. He passed away at age 60 in 2005. Hutch wrote, produced, and arranged songs for the 5th Dimension. In 1969, he signed with RCA records and put out two albums before he was asked by Motown producer Hal Davis to write lyrics to "I'll Be There", a song he wrote for The Jackson 5. The song was recorded by the group the morning after Hutch received the call. Motown CEO Berry Gordy signed Hutch to be a staff writer, arranger, producer, and musician shortly thereafter.I love the song Love Power by Willie Hutch. The song was released in 1975 on the Tamia Motown label. The song has a soul style. It reached number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. Hutch left Motown in1977 for Norman Whitfield's Whitfield Records, but he returned to Motown in 1982, where he scored the disco hit “ In and Out” that same year and also recorded a couple of songs for the 1985 film, The Last Dragon.The song Love Power is the truth. We need more Love Power just as Willie Hutch said. We need more songwriters and singers like Hutch to sing the truth out to the world. The world is needing it now more than ever. I'm Gail Nobles …

music soul dimension motown last dragon r&b tributes rca hutch billboard hot music history music news music commentary love power norman whitfield willie hutch

War? How to create a more compassionate world.

The Compassion Initiative: Just Two Guys in Brisbane talking Compassion. www.thecompassioninitiative.com.au

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2022 9:52

People everywhere are lovely, so why do we have wars? And why does it feel like we might be on the brink of one right now? Goodness knows I don't know the answer to that. But let's have a think about it from an evolutionary point of view, and see if there is anything we can do to create a more compassionate world. TARGETED PLAYLIST LINK: Compassion in a T-Shirt LINKS TO PAPERS Gilbert (2021). Creating a Compassionate World: Addressing the Conflicts Between Sharing and Caring Versus Controlling and Holding Evolved Strategies https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.582090/full The song "War" originally written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong and a number 1 hit for Edwin Starr in 1970. "War" was performed in concert by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1985 during his Born in the USA tour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(The_Temptations_song)#Edwin_Starr_version Say hi on social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drstansteindl Twitter: https://twitter.com/StanSteindl Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_stan_steindl/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-steindl-150a5264/ Website: https://www.stansteindl.com/ YouTube Video URL: https://youtu.be/k9D1ZpCf8rc *Affiliate Disclaimer: Note this description contains affiliate links that allow you to find the items mentioned in this video and support the channel at no cost to you. While this channel may earn minimal sums when the viewer uses the links, the viewer is in no way obligated to use these links. Thank you for your support! #compassion #self-compassion

united states war goodness bruce springsteen compassionate e street band edwin starr barrett strong norman whitfield

Rauhaa, rakkautta ja rock & rollia!

Rock Around The Blog

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 2, 2022 16:35

Muuttuneen maailmantilanteen vuoksi tässä jaksossa ollaan rauhan, rakkauden ja rockin asialla. Sami Ruokangas ja Juha Kakkuri ovat valinneet kumpikin kolme sotaa ja rauhaa käsittelevää biisiä. Musiikkia hyvän puolesta, pahaa vastaan! Jakson soittolista: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4a9EuTvtM3pUZQzWLprqMF?si=0cabee6267b7456c Matkalla mukana ovat Woodstock, Rolling Stones, James Brown, Bill Wyman, Molly Hatchet, Beatles, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Edwin Starr, Motown, Norman Whitfield, Bruce Springsteen, Black Stone Cherry, Nostradamus, Hitler, Darren Wharton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes, Hector, Ilkka Aaltonen, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Ward, Tony Iommi ja Geezer Butler.

Los fans de Bruce Springsteen Cap-58 (War)

Els Fans de Bruce Springsteen

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2022 77:19

La semana en que Putin invade Ucraïna, se nos remueve la historia. «War» es una canción de soul de la época de la contracultura escrita por Norman Whitfield y Barrett Strong para el sello Motown en 1969. Hoy hemos empezado con una versión de Springsteen, posicionandonos del lado de la paz. Con mucho R&R, comono. Seguimos recibiendo vuestras notas de voz al 670 27 91 60, vuestros comentarios, experiencias, dedicatorias... Muchas gracias por hacerlo posible una vez más. Nos escuchamos.

war nos vladimir putin muchas bruce springsteen seguimos motown rr ucra barrett strong norman whitfield

Isy Martin

Studio Funk

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 10, 2022 133:31

Aswad sits down with the wonderful talented Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist, Producer and Arranger — Isy Martin. Isy has an extensive history and story regarding his beginnings as a musician. Performing from a very young age, Isy Martin has worked with many artists including Marvin Gaye, Willie Hutch, Ray Charles, The Jackson's, The Gap Band, Rufus, Norman Whitfield and the list goes on! Together, Aswad and Isy discuss and reflect on his past and also modern day activities with his latest release of ‘Rug Burns' on Prime Time Records and Tapes and working with XL Middleton, Zackey Force Funk on the Modern Funk rework of his 80s cult boogie funk hit. As you can expect it's a packed show with gems of story telling, new music, notable classics and a tribute mix to tie the bow.

singer performing songwriter tapes guitarists marvin gaye ray charles rufus gap band aswad isy norman whitfield willie hutch xl middleton modern funk zackey force funk

Episode 63: MONKEY GRIP: Ain't Too Proud Too Beg (TEMPTATIONS COVER: Live @ Woodhull Taver/Commack, NY - 11/5/21)

The Monkey Grip Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 23, 2021 2:29

Words & music by Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland, Jr. Scott Kuchler - lead vocals, lead guitar; Steve Cafarelli - backing vocals, guitar, percussion

monkeys proud grip temptations woodhull norman whitfield

Episode 134: “In the Midnight Hour” by Wilson Pickett

Pod Gave Rock'N Roll To You

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2021

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.

god love new york time history black chicago apple soul las vegas woman land young michigan wild team alabama nashville south detroit grammy fame rev atlantic beatles sons mine cd wood rolling stones southern rock and roll knock atlanta falcons mercury paramount dolly parton northern floyd cocaine weil cream jerks chess elvis presley burke lowe aretha franklin johnny cash james brown motown marvin gaye blazers rock and roll hall of fame willie nelson duane mick jagger cannibal pow monument pentecostal wham rod stewart tilt blues brothers keith richards sam cooke kenny rogers pickett redding stills headhunters partly rock music booker t rca supremes manhattan project chicano smokey robinson atlantic records barry white lead singer otis redding schofield stubbs dominoes womack drifters merle haggard dyke isaac hayes waylon jennings gordy ruffin seesaw stax jimmy johnson hey jude mgs wexler muscle shoals midnight hour four tops pitiful rhinestones ninety nine bobby womack sister rosetta tharpe wilson pickett archies chubby checker yes lord ronnie wood man loves stax records ohio players my side robert gordon sugar sugar vanilla fudge steve cropper adlib duane allman solomon burke cropper willie dixon mercury records marc ribot fight it david ruffin green onions irma thomas percy sledge carla thomas mary wells al kooper chess records mercy mercy lloyd price rick hall elmore james jim stewart good lovin rufus thomas king curtis mitch ryder beechwood marvelettes al jackson funk brothers nine times rob bowman stagger lee mustang sally georgie fame andre williams eddie floyd young rascals so fine joe tex tom dowd ahmet ertegun jerry wexler everybody needs somebody levi stubbs norman whitfield billy ward arthur alexander detroit wheels blues project spooner oldham don covay monument records bert berns clyde mcphatter soul stirrers owen bradley robert west charles hughes man it northwestern high school chips moman melvin franklin robert bateman these arms soul explosion funky broadway nashville a team charles l hughes tilt araiza

Fun Size/Just My Imagination(Running Away with Me)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2021 8:28

kings songs collection imagination limit running away paul williams gordy fun size eddie kendricks barrett strong norman whitfield melvin franklin

Just My Imagination/Hooters Takeout

Pod Gave Rock'N Roll To You

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2021 31:14

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

kings songs collection imagination limit hooters takeout paul williams gordy eddie kendricks barrett strong norman whitfield melvin franklin

Episode 133: “My Girl” by the Temptations

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2021

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.

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Episode 132: “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops

richard pryor norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2021

Episode one hundred and thirty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Can't Help Myself” by the Four Tops, and is part two 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 "Colours" by Donovan. 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 No Mixcloud this week, as too many of the songs were by the Four Tops. Amazingly, there are no books on the Four Tops, so I've had to rely on the information in the general Motown sources I use, plus the liner notes for the Four Tops 50th Anniversary singles collection, a collection of the A and B sides of all their Motown singles. That collection is the best collection of the Four Tops' work available, but is pricey -- for a cheaper option this single-disc set is much better value. 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 This is the second part of a two-part look at the work of Holland, Dozier, and Holland, and part of a three-part look at Motown Records in the mid-sixties. If you've not listened to the last episode, on the Supremes, you might want to listen to that one before this. There's a clip of an old radio comedy show that always makes me irrationally irritated when I hear it, even though I like the programme it's from: [Excerpt of The Mark Steel Lectures, “Aristotle” episode. Transcript: "Which led him back to the problem, what is it that makes something what it is? Is an apple still an apple when it's decomposing? I went to see the Four Tops once and none of the original members were in the band, they were just session musicians. So have i seen the Four Tops or not? I don't know" ] That's the kind of joke that would work with many vocal groups -- you could make the joke about the Drifters or the Ink Spots, of course, and it would even work for, for example, the Temptations, though they do have one original member still touring with them. Everyone knows that that kind of group has a constantly rotating membership, and that people come and go from groups like that all the time. Except that that wasn't true for the Four Tops at the time Mark Steel made that joke, in the late 1990s. The current version of the Four Tops does only have one original member -- but that's because the other three all died. At the time Steel made the joke, his only opportunity to see the Four Tops would have been seeing all four original members -- the same four people who had been performing under that name since the 1950s. Other groups have had longer careers than that without changing members -- mostly duos, like Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers -- but I can't think of another one that lasted as long while performing together continuously, without taking a break at any point. So today, we're going to look at the career of a group who performed together for forty-four years without a lineup change, a group who were recording together before Motown even started, but who became indelibly associated with Motown and with Holland-Dozier-Holland. We're going to look at the Four Tops, and at "I Can't Help Myself": [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself"] The Four Tops have turned up in the background in several episodes already, even though we're only now getting to their big hits. By the time they became huge, they had already been performing together for more than a decade, and had had a big influence on the burgeoning Detroit music scene even before Berry Gordy had got involved with the scene. The group had started out after Abdul "Duke" Fakir, a teenager in Detroit, had gone to see Lucky Millinder and his band perform, and had been surprised to see his friend Levi Stubbs turn up, get on stage, and start singing with the band in a guest spot. Fakir had never realised before that his friend sang at all, let alone that he had an astonishing baritone voice. Stubbs was, in fact, a regular on the Detroit amateur singing circuit, and had connections with several other performers on that circuit -- most notably his cousin Jackie Wilson, but also Hank Ballard and Little Willie John. Those few singers would make deals with each other about who would get to win at a particular show, and carved things up between them. Stubbs and Fakir quickly started singing together, and by 1953 they had teamed up with two other kids, Obie Benson and Lawrence Payton. The four of them sang together at a party, and decided that they sounded good enough together that they should become a group. They named themselves the Four Aims, and started playing local shows. They got a one-off record deal with a small label called Grady Records, and released their only single under the name "The Four Aims" in 1956: [Excerpt: The Four Aims, "She Gave Me Love"] After that single, they tried teaming up with Jackie Wilson, who had just quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, but they found that Wilson and Stubbs' voices clashed -- Wilson's then-wife said their voices were too similar, though they sound very different to me. Wilson would, of course, go on to his own massive success, and that success would be in part thanks to Roquel Davis, who was Lawrence Payton's cousin. As we saw in the episode on "Reet Petite", Davis would co-write most of Wilson's hits with Berry Gordy, and he was also writing songs for the Four Aims -- who he renamed the Four Tops, because he thought the Four Aims sounded too much like the Ames Brothers, a white vocal quartet who were popular at the time. They explained to Davis that they were called the Four Aims because they were *aiming* for the top, and Davis said that in that case they should be the Four Tops, and that was the name under which they would perform for the rest of their career. In the early fifties, before Wilson's success, Davis was the person in the group's circle with the most music industry connections, and he got them a deal with Chess Records. I already talked about this back in the episode on Jackie Wilson, but the group's first record on Chess, with Davis as the credited songwriter: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Kiss Me Baby"] Sounds more than a little like a Ray Charles record from a couple of years earlier, which Davis definitely didn't write: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Kissa Me Baby"] But that wasn't a success, and it would be another four years before they released their next single -- a one-off single on Columbia Records. It turned out that Chess had mostly signed the Four Tops not for the group, but to get Davis as a songwriter, and songs he'd originally written for the Tops ended up being recorded by other acts on Chess, like the Moonglows and the Flamingoes. The group's single on Columbia would also be a flop, they'd wait another two years before another one-off single on Riverside, and then yet another two years before they were signed by Motown. Their signing to Motown was largely the work of Mickey Stevenson, Motown's head of A&R. Of course, Stevenson was responsible, directly or otherwise, for every signing to the label at this point in time, but he had a special interest in the Four Tops. Stevenson had been in the Air Force in the 1950s, when he'd wandered into one of the Detroit amateur shows at which the Four Aims had been performing. He'd been so impressed with them that he immediately decided to quit the air force and go into music himself. He'd joined the Hamptones, the vocal group who toured with Lionel Hampton's band, and he'd also become a member of a doo-wop group called The Classics, who'd had a minor hit with "If Only the Sky Was a Mirror": [Excerpt: The Classics, "If Only the Sky Was a Mirror"] Stevenson had moved into a backroom position with Motown, but it was arguably the most important position in the company other than Gordy's. He was responsible for putting together the Funk Brothers, for signing many of the label's biggest acts, and for co-writing a number of the label's biggest hits, including "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and "Dancing in the Street". Stevenson had wanted to sign the group from the start -- given that they were the group who were directly responsible for everything that had happened in his career, they were important to him. And Berry Gordy was also a fan of the group, and had known them since his time working with Jackie Wilson, but it had taken several years for everything to fall into place so that the group were able to sign to Motown. When they did, they naturally became a priority. When they were signed to the label, it was initially with the intention of recording them as a jazz group rather than doing the soul pop that Motown was best known for. Their first recordings for Motown were for their subsidiary Workshop Jazz. They recorded an entire album of old standards for the label, titled "Breaking Through": [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "This Can't be Love"] Unfortunately for the group, that album wouldn't be released for thirty-five years -- Workshop Jazz had been founded because Berry Gordy was still a jazz fanatic, but none of the records on it had been very successful (or, frankly, very good -- the Four Tops album was pretty good, but most of the music put out on the label was third rate at best), and so the label closed down before they released the Four Tops album. So the group were at a loose end, and for a while they were put to work as session vocalists on other people's records, adding backing to records by the Supremes: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Run Run Run"] And even after they started having hits of their own they would appear on records by other people, like "My Baby Loves Me" by Martha and the Vandellas: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "My Baby Loves Me"] You'll notice that both of these records were ones where the Four Tops were added to a female group -- and that would also be the case on their own records, once Holland, Dozier, and Holland took over producing them. The sound on the Four Tops' records is a distinctive one, and is actually made up of seven voices. Levi Stubbs, of course, took the lead on the singles, but the combination of backing vocalists was as important as the lead. Unlike several other vocal groups, the Four Tops were never replaced on their records -- Stubbs was always resistant to the idea that he was more important than the rest of his group. Instead, they were augmented -- Motown's normal session singers, the Andantes, joining in with Fakir, Payton, and Benson. The idea was to give the group a distinctive sound, and in particular to set them apart from the Temptations, whose recordings all featured only male vocals. The group's first hit single, "Baby I Need Your Loving", was a song that Holland, Dozier, and Holland had written but weren't too impressed with. Indeed, they'd cut the backing track two years earlier, but been too uninspired by it to do anything with the completed track. But then, two years after cutting the backing, Dozier was hit with inspiration -- the lines "Baby, I need your loving/Got to have all your loving" fit the backing track perfectly. Eddie Holland was particularly excited to work with the Four Tops. Even though he'd somehow managed never to hear the group, despite both moving in the same musical circles in the same town for several years, he'd been hearing for all that time that Levi Stubbs was as good as his rivals Little Willie John and Jackie Wilson -- and anyone that good must be worth working with. When they took the song into the studio, though, Levi Stubbs didn't want to sing it, insisting that the key was wrong for his voice, and that it should be Payton who sang the song. The producers, though, insisted that Stubbs had the perfect voice for the song, and that they wanted the strained tone that came from Stubbs' baritone going into a higher register than he was comfortable with. Eddie Holland, who always coached the lead vocalists while his brother and Lamont Dozier worked with the musicians, would later say that the problem was that Stubbs was unprepared and embarrassed -- they eventually persuaded Stubbs to take the song home and rehearse it over the weekend, and to come in to have a second go at the track the next Monday. On the Monday, Stubbs came in and sang the song perfectly, and Stubbs' baritone leads became the most distinctive sound to come out of Motown in this period: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Baby I Need Your Loving"] According to at least one source, Stubbs was still unhappy with his vocal, and wanted to come in again the next day and record it again. Holland, Dozier, and Holland humoured him, but that wasn't going to happen. "Baby I Need Your Loving" became a hit, making number eleven, and so of course the next record was a soundalike. "Without the One You Love (Life's Not Worthwhile)" even started with the line "Baby, I need your good loving". Unfortunately, this time Holland, Dozier, and Holland copied their previous hit a little *too* closely, and people weren't interested. Dozier has later said that they were simply so busy with the Supremes at the time that they didn't give the single the attention it deserved, and thought that cranking out a soundalike would be good enough. Because of this, they weren't given the group's next single -- the way Motown worked at the time, if you came up with a hit for an act, you automatically got the chance to do the follow-up, but if you didn't have a hit, someone else got a chance. Instead, Mickey Stevenson and Ivy Joe Hunter came up with a ballad called "Ask the Lonely", which became a minor hit -- not as big as "Baby I Need Your Loving", but enough that the group could continue to have a career. It would be the next single that would make the Four Tops into the other great Holland-Dozier-Holland act, the one on which their reputation rests as much as it does on the Supremes: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself"] "I Can't Help Myself" was inspired by Dozier's grandfather, who would catcall women as they passed him on the street -- "Hey, sugar pie! Hi there honey bunch!" Dozier married those words to a chord progression that's almost identical to the one from "Where Did Our Love Go?". Both songs go C-G-Dm-F-G, with the same number of beats between changes: [demonstrates] There's only one tiny change in the progression -- in the last beat of the last bar, there's a passing chord in "I Can't Help Myself", a move to A minor, that isn't there in "Where Did Our Love Go?" Even the melody lines, the syllabics of the words, and their general meanings are very similar. "Where Did Our Love Go?" starts with "Baby baby", "I Can't Help Myself" starts with "Sugar pie, honey bunch". "Baby don't leave me" is syllabically similar to "You know that I love you". The two songs diverge lyrically and melodically after that, but what's astonishing is how a different vocalist and arrangement can utterly transform two such similar basic songs. Compare the opening of "Where Did Our Love Go?": [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Where Did Our Love Go?"] With the opening of "I Can't Help Myself": [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself"] It's a perfect example of how Holland, Dozier, and Holland would reuse musical ideas, but would put a different spin on them and make the records sound very different. Of course, some of the credit for this should go to the Funk Brothers, the session musicians who played on every Motown hit in this period, but there's some question as to exactly how much credit they deserved. Depending on who you believe, either the musicians all came up with their own instrumental lines, and the arrangement was a group effort by the session musicians with minimal interference from the nominal producers, or it was all written by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier, and the musicians just did what they were told with no creative input at all. The arguments about who did what tend to get quite vicious, with each side pointing out, accurately, that the other needed them. It's true that Holland, Dozier, and Holland didn't do anything like as well as writers and producers after they left Motown. It's also true that the Funk Brothers didn't write or produce any hits themselves, but were reliant on the Motown staff writers and producers for material. I suspect, and it is only a suspicion, that the truth lies between the two, and that it was a collaborative process where Holland and Dozier would go into the studio with a good idea of what they wanted, but that there was scope for interpretation and the musicians were able to make suggestions, which the producers might take up if they were good ones. If Brian Holland sketched out or hummed a rough bassline to James Jamerson, saying something like "play bum-bum-bum-bum", and then Jamerson embellished and improvised around that rough bassline, it would be easy to see how both men could come out of the session thinking they had written the bassline, and having good reason to think so. It's also easy to see how the balance could differ in different sessions -- how sometimes Holland or Dozier could come in with a fully worked out part, and other times they might come in saying "you know the kind of thing I want", and how that could easily become remembered as "I came up with all the parts and the musicians did nothing" or "Us musicians came up with all the parts and the producers just trusted us". Luckily, there's more than enough credit to go around, and we can say that the Four Tops, Holland, Dozier, and Holland, the Funk Brothers, and the Andantes all played an important part in making these classic singles: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself"] "I Can't Help Myself" knocked the Supremes' "Back in My Arms Again" off the number one spot, but was itself knocked off the top by "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- but then a week later, "I Can't Help Myself" was at number one again, before being knocked off again by "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". The success of "I Can't Help Myself" meant that the group's singles on their old labels suddenly had some value. Columbia Records reissued "Ain't That Love", a single the group had originally released four years earlier, in the hope of having some success because of the group's new-found fame. As we saw last time when the Supremes rushed out "Come See About Me" to prevent someone else having the hit with it, there was nothing that Berry Gordy hated more than the idea that someone else could have a hit based on the success of a Motown act. The Four Tops needed a new single *now* to kill the record on Columbia, and it didn't matter that there were no recordings or even songs available to put out. Holland, Dozier, and Holland went into the studio to record a new backing track with the Funk Brothers, essentially just a remake of the backing from "I Can't Help Myself", only very slightly changed. By three o'clock in the afternoon on the day they found out that the Columbia record was being released, they were in the studio, Dozier fine-tuning the melody while Brian Holland rehearsed the musicians and Eddie Holland scribbled lyrics in another corner. By five PM the track had been recorded and mixed. By six PM the master stamper was being driven the ninety miles to the pressing plant so they could start pressing up copies. The next day, DJs started getting copies of the record, and it was in the shops a couple of days later. Of course, the record being made in such a rush meant that it was essentially a remake of their previous hit -- something that was acknowledged in the tongue-in-cheek title: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "It's the Same Old Song"] "It's the Same Old Song" wasn't as big a hit as "I Can't Help Myself", but it made number five on the charts, a more than respectable follow-up, and quite astonishing given the pressure under which the record was made. The next few singles that Holland, Dozier, and Holland wrote for the group weren't quite as successful -- this was early 1966, and Holland, Dozier, and Holland were in a mini slump -- they'd had a number one with "I Hear a Symphony", as we heard in the last episode, but then they produced two singles for the Supremes that made the top ten, but not number one -- "My World is Empty Without You" and "Love is Like an Itching in My Heart". And as the Four Tops weren't quite as big as the Supremes, so their next two singles, "Something About You" and "Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)", only just scraped into the bottom of the top twenty. Still hits, but not up to Holland, Dozier, and Holland's 1965 standards. And so as was the common practice at Motown, someone else was given a chance to come up with a song for the group. "Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever" was written by Ivy Jo Hunter, a songwriter and producer whose biggest contribution to this point had been co-writing "Dancing in the Street", and Stevie Wonder, a child star who'd had a hit a couple of years earlier but never really followed up on it, and who also played drums on the track: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever"] Within a few months, Wonder would begin a run of hit singles that would continue for more than a decade, and would become arguably the most important artist on Motown. But that golden period hadn't quite started yet, and "Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever" didn't make the top forty. At this point, it would have been easy for the Four Tops to have been relegated to the same pile as artists like the Contours -- people who'd had a couple of hits on Motown, but had then failed to follow up with a decent career. Motown was becoming ever more willing to drop artists as dead weight, as Gordy was increasingly concentrating on a few huge stars -- Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and especially the Supremes – to the exclusion of everyone else. But then Holland, Dozier, and Holland got back up on top. They came up with two more number ones for the Supremes in quick succession. "You Can't Hurry Love" was recorded around the same time that "Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever" was failing to chart, and quickly became one of the Supremes' biggest ever hits. They followed that with a song inspired by the sound of the breaking news alert on the radio, replicating that sound with the staccato guitars on what was their most inventive production to date: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "You Keep Me Hanging On"] Not only was that a number one record, it was soon followed by a top ten cover version by the heavy rock band Vanilla Fudge: [Excerpt: Vanilla Fudge, "You Keep Me Hanging On"] Holland, Dozier, and Holland were back on top, and they brought the Four Tops back to the top with them. The next single they recorded with the group, "Reach Out, I'll Be There", started with an instrumental introduction that Brian Holland was noodling with on the piano: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Reach Out I'll Be There"] Holland was playing that part, over and over, and then suddenly Lamont Dozier was hit with inspiration -- so much so that he literally pushed Holland to one side without saying anything and started playing what would become the verse: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Reach Out I'll Be There"] The interesting thing about that track is that it shows how the different genres that were charting at the time would have more influence on each other than it might appear from this distance, where we put them all into neat little boxes named "folk-rock" or "Motown". Because Lamont Dozier was very specifically being influenced by Bob Dylan and "Like a Rolling Stone", when it came to how the song was phrased. Now, this is not something that I would ever in a million years have thought of, but once you know it, the influence is absolutely plain -- the way the melody stresses and elongates the last syllable of each line is pure Dylan. To show this, I am afraid I'm going to have to do something that I hoped I'd never, ever, have to do, which is do a bad Bob Dylan impression. Everyone thinks they can impersonate Dylan, everyone's imitations of Dylan are cringeworthy, and mine is worse than most. This will sound awful, but it *will* show you how Dozier was thinking when he came up with that bit of melody: [demonstrates] Let us never speak of that again. I think we'd better hear how Levi Stubbs sang it again, hadn't we, to take that unpleasant sound away: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Reach Out I'll Be There"] That became the group's second and last number one single, and also their only UK number one. Unfortunately, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were so hot at this point that they ended up competing with themselves. Norman Whitfield, one of the other Motown songwriter-producers, had wanted for a while to produce the Temptations, whose records were at this point mostly written and produced by Smokey Robinson. He called on Eddie Holland to help him write the hit that let him take over from Robinson as the Temptations' producer, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"] Dozier and Brian Holland were fine with Eddie working with another writer -- they all did that kind of thing on occasion -- until the date of the BMI Awards. The previous two years, the trio had been jointly given BMI's award for most successful songwriter of the year. But that year, Eddie Holland got the award on his own, for having written more hits than anyone else (he'd written eight, Dozier and Brian Holland had written six. According to a contemporary issue of Billboard, John Sebastian was next with five, then Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards with four each.) Holland felt bad that he'd inadvertently prevented his collaborators from winning the award for a third year in a row, and from this point on he'd be much more careful about outside collaborations. Holland, Dozier, and Holland wrote two more classic singles for the Four Tops, "Standing in the Shadows of Love", and "Bernadette". That latter had been inspired by a coincidence that all three of Holland, Dozier, and Holland had at one time or another dated or felt unrequited love for different girls called Bernadette, but it proved extremely difficult to record. When the trio wrote together, Eddie Holland would always sing the songs, and the melodies were constructed around his tenor vocal range. Stubbs was a baritone, and sometimes couldn't hit some of the higher notes in the melodies, and he was having that problem with "Bernadette". Eddie Holland eventually solved the problem by inviting in a few fans who had been hanging around outside hoping for autographs. Stubbs being a performer wasn't going to make himself look bad in front of an audience, and sang it perfectly: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Bernadette"] "Bernadette" made the top five, and it was followed by a couple more top twenty hits with lesser Holland/Dozier/Holland songs, but then the writer-producers quit Motown, for reasons we'll look at in a few months when we take our last look at the Supremes. This left the Four Tops stranded -- they were so associated with their producers that nobody else could get hits with them. For a while, Motown turned to an interesting strategy with them. It had been normal Motown practice to fill albums up with cover versions of hits of the day, and so the label put out some of this album filler as singles, and surprisingly had some chart success with cover versions of the Left Banke's baroque pop hit "Walk Away Renee": [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Walk Away Renee"] and of Tim Hardin's folk ballad "If I Were a Carpenter": [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "If I Were a Carpenter"] And so for a while many of the singles the group released, both in the US and elsewhere, were covers of songs that were very far from the normal Motown style -- the Jimmy Webb ballad "Do What You Gotta Do" made the UK top twenty, their cover of another Jimmy Webb song, "MacArthur Park", made the lower reaches of the US top forty, their version of the old standard "It's All in the Game" made number twenty-four, and they released a version of "River Deep, Mountain High", teaming up with the Supremes, that became more successful in the US than the original, though still only just made the top forty. But they were flailing. Motown had no idea what to do with them other than release cover versions, and any time any of Motown's writing and production teams tried to come up with something new for the group it failed catastrophically. In 1972 they signed to ABC/Dunhill, and there they had a few hits, including a couple that made the top ten, but soon the same pattern emerged -- no-one could reliably get hits with the group, and they spent much of the seventies chasing trends and failing to catch them. They had one more big US hit in 1981, with "When She Was My Girl", which made number eleven, and which went to number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "When She Was My Girl"] But from that point on they were essentially a nostalgia act, though they carried on releasing records through the eighties. The group's career nearly came to a premature end in 1988. They were in the UK to promote their single "Loco in Acapulco", co-written by Lamont Dozier and Phil Collins, from the soundtrack of Collins' film Buster: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Loco in Acapulco"] That was a UK top ten hit, but it nearly led to the group's death -- they were scheduled to fly out of the UK on Pan Am flight 103 to Detroit on the twenty-first of December 1988. But the group were tired after recording an appearance on Top of the Pops the night before, slept in, and missed the flight. The flight fell victim to a terrorist bombing -- the Lockerbie bombing -- and everyone on it died. The group carried on performing together after that, but their last new single was released in 1989, and they only recorded one more album, a Christmas album in 1995. They performed together, still in their original lineup, until 1997 when Lawrence Payton died from cancer. At first the group continued as a trio, retiring the Four Tops name and just performing as The Tops, but eventually they got in a replacement. By the turn of the century, Levi Stubbs had become too ill to perform as well -- he retired in 2000, though he came back for a one-off performance for the group's fiftieth anniversary in 2004, and he died in 2008. Obie Benson continued performing with the group until three months before his death in 2005. A version of the Four Tops continues to perform, led by Abdul Fakir, and also featuring Lawrence Payton's son Roquel, named after Roquel Davis, who performs under the name Lawrence Payton Jr. The Four Tops were one of those groups that never quite lived up to their commercial potential, thanks in large part to Holland, Dozier, and Holland leaving Motown at precisely the wrong moment, and one has to wonder how many more hits they could have had under other circumstances. But the hits they did have included some of the greatest records of the sixties, and they managed to continue working together, without any public animosity, until their deaths. Given the way the careers of more successful groups have tended to end, perhaps it's better this way.

christmas love women history game babies uk fall detroit standing dancing columbia shadows fellow rolling stones sugar robinson air force holland lonely steel depending bob dylan billboard classics djs compare chess temptations stevie wonder symphony pops riverside tops aristotle motown bmi stevenson excerpt loco marvin gaye panam phil collins tilt ray charles colours my heart acapulco rock music garfunkel supremes smokey robinson reach out stubbs dominoes drifters columbia records itching gordy dozier four tops everly brothers get no satisfaction motown records berry gordy contours lockerbie fakir my world loving you jackie wilson jimmy webb lionel hampton vandellas lennon mccartney john sebastian moonglow mountain high lamont dozier too proud dave thompson macarthur park same old song chess records ink spots mark steel funk brothers jamerson hurry love tim hardin brian holland something about you help myself holland dozier holland james jamerson nelson george to be loved levi stubbs motown sound how sweet it is norman whitfield billy ward little willie john flamingoes that love left banke where did our love go shake me bmi awards walk away renee mickey stevenson scott b bomar tilt araiza

#Starguard which way is up

THE MISTERman's Take

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2021 4:07

#Starguard which way is up# Norman Whitfield songwriter# catchy funky groove# Richard Pryor movie# soulful singing and catchy lyrical feel song# respect --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mr-maxxx/support

Black Gold 6/12/2021 - The Songwriters - Norman Whitfield, Sylvia Voy & Aliah Sheffield

Accelerated Radio Network

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2021 119:21

Black Gold every Saturday 2pm on AcceleratedRadio.Net

sheffield songwriters black gold aliah norman whitfield

The Heart of Soul

Debts No Honest Man Can Pay

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2021 144:18

On this week's show, it's a Black History Month homage to three of the most important record labels in the history of soul music, in the history of pop music, and in the history of music in general. All this & much, much less!

soul hip hop jazz black history month funk folk americana temptations singer songwriters stevie wonder motown new wave punk rock marvin gaye hard rock bluegrass diana ross r&b quirky supremes witty folk music otis redding soul music indie music post punk isaac hayes stax alternative rock mavis staples four tops glam rock trip hop blues rock mary wilson power pop charles bradley outlaw country college radio blues music alternative music staple singers sam moore punk music robert white alt country streaming music steve cropper edwin starr roots music david ruffin tammi terrell rock&roll antibalas eddie kendricks funk music al jackson funk brothers roots rock budos band eddie floyd barrett strong james jamerson dave porter daptone bob babbitt levi stubbs menahan street band joe hunter norman whitfield mississippi fred mcdowell valerie simpson pops staples joe messina celtic rock gabriel roth cowpunk eclectic music progressive radio al bell freeform radio sharon jones & the dap-kings

Me And Mrs. Jones by Billy Paul

Classic 45's Jukebox

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2021

Label: Phil. Int'l. 3521Year: 1972Condition: M-Price: $15.00Listening to this Philly Soul classic again today, I was thinking that the spark of genius at work here, in the collaboration among Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Bobby Martin, is precisely the same as that which gave life to the Motown genius of producer/writers like Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, with miracles of Soul music such as "Just My Imagination" by the Temptations. Anyway, what I mean is... I love it! Not on the Rolling Stone, Dave Marsh or Kev Roberts lists? I think I'm hearing something those guys don't, cause to me this is a 2-star recommendation (our highest)! Note: This beautiful copy comes in a vintage Philadelphia Int'l Records factory sleeve. It looks very close to Mint (Labels, Vinyl) and has gorgeous, pristine Mint audio.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson - Toward a Meaningful Life

Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2020 56:31

Rabbi Simon Jacobson – Toward a Meaningful LifeAired Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at 5:00 PM PST / 8:00 PM ESTIn 1970, Motown’s The Temptations had a number one hit song entitled, “Ball of Confusion.” The lyrics, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, included the powerful and challenging refrain, “Ball of confusion, that’s what the world is today.” Fifty years later and the song is as apropos and perhaps even more so for 2020. It is obvious that we need deep wisdom, understanding and compassion to navigate all that this unprecedented year has manifested. Is there a source that we may turn to for this guidance and may it be found within ancient wisdom from more than three millennia ago? My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, Rabbi Simon Jacobson, says these answers and much more may be found in ancient Jewish teachings. Rabbi Simon is considered one of the greatest scholars and most sought-after speakers in the Jewish world, yet his message is for all people. He is the author of the best-selling book Toward a Meaningful Life, a William Morrow publication that has sold more than 400,000 copies and has been translated into eleven languages. He has been interviewed on more than 300 radio and TV shows, including CBS, CNN, PBS, MSNBC, FOX, and NPR. Rabbi Jacobson is Founding Dean of The Meaningful Life Center. His website is https://www.meaningfullife.com/ and he joins me this week to share his experience and the wisdom we need to navigate our rapidly changing and often confusing world.Visit the Destination Unlimited show page https://omtimes.com/iom/shows/destination-unlimited/Connect with Victor Fuhrman at http://victorthevoice.com/#RabbiSimonJacobson #TowardAMeaningfulLife #VictorFuhrman #DestinationUnlimited

TRUTH IN RHYTHM Podcast - Trey Stone (Norman Whitfield, P-Funk)

power deep hall of fame stone tower funk rhythm jimi hendrix famer creativeasin george clinton bootsy collins p funk rose royce undisputed truth keith washington norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2020 58:11

Ball of Confusion - The Temptations

1AM

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2020 13:53

A quoi ressemblait le monde quand les Temptations ont composé Ball of Confusion ? Les voix de l'épisode : Dans l'intro il y a deux petits caméos. Lalex Andrea est autrice. Vous pouvez la retrouver sur Twitter @LalexAndrea et lire ses publications feuillesdevelours.fr Werner R. est vidéaste chroniqueur musical. Vous pouvez le retrouver sur Twitter @Werner_Riboulot et sur sa chaîne Flow Juste avant la première intervention du Président, il y a un petit caméo Kimi D_B est vidéaste chroniqueuse de ballets. Vous pouvez la retrouver sur Twitter [@Kimi_D_B] (https://twitter.com/Kimi_D_B) et sur sa chaîne [Du Ballet] (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCABL8MUTe96ShdTdG8UjkPA) Les personnages : Ext. JOUR. Un restaurant.L'anecdote veut que l'enregistrement du morceau prit uniquement 3 heures et que le gang s'était retrouvé pour manger des BLT (sandwichs Bacon Letuce Tomato). J'ai utilisé cette petite histoire pour centrer le propos de l'épisode autour de deux personnages fil-rouge : Norman et Barrett. Norman Whitfield est une des pointures de la Motown, il a entre autres co-écrit I Heard it through the grapevine, Papa was a Rollin' Stone et Ball of Confusion. Son personnage est joué par Le Tropeur qui s'est bien pris au jeu ! Vous pouvez le retrouver sur Twitter [@LeTropeur] (https://twitter.com/LeTropeur) et sur sa chaîne [Le Tropeur] (https://www.youtube.com/user/linkesoncable) où il parcourt les tropes des films et séries. Barrett Strong, l'autre personnage fil-rouge est interprété par Noé Chaput qui s'est lancé dans son premier rôle vocal, motivé par la période !Barrett est le binôme de Norman et il a travaillé sur les mêmes titres à succès que son ami. Il était important de les lier.Il n'est pas évident que l'un ou l'autre ait vu 2001, l’Odyssée de l'espace, mais j'ai trouvé le parallèle intéressant. INT. NUIT. Un appartement. Richard Nixon. On ne présente plus vraiment le 37è président des États-Unis. L'homme de la trahison, celui responsable entre autres de deux fusillades sur des campus universitaires (c'est repris dans le film Watchmen)* C'est Patrice du podcast Binouze USA qui s'est collé au rôle ! Et quel président !Vous pouvez l'entendre, lui et son complice de dégustation [ici] (podcast.ausha.co/binouze-usa). V.O.1970 c'est l'année du procès Manson, le commanditaire et "sa famille" doivent répondre de leurs actes devant le tribunal. C'est Christophe qui commente le passage avec sa voix de velours. Vous pouvez l'entendre dans son émission Enjoy the Noise [ici] (https://podcloud.fr/podcast/enjoy-the-noise-le-podcast-musical) mais aussi le voir [ici] (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDTg3IRVIylTLcX-vUaYwow).Enfin n'hésitez à suivre ses chroniques sur soundbather.fr INT.NUIT. Une salle de campus. Michael Tabor a été une des figures importantes des Black Panthers. On parle souvent Huey P. Newton et de Bobbie Seal mais beaucoup d'autre orateur.rice.s ont enflammé le micro.Le discours prononcé est un mix entre les piques de Michael Tabor et les propos très structurés de Newton. Si vous avez l'oreille, vous retrouverez quelques passages de la VF de **Blackkklansman* utilisés pour habiller la scène. C'est Michael Roch qui incarne Tabor. Il est auteur et coach littéraire. Vous pouvez retrouver une partie de ses livres publiés [ici] (https://www.babelio.com/auteur/Michael-Roch/255672) et suivre ses ateliers d'écriture [ici] (https://www.twitch.tv/michaelroch). INT.NUIT. Studios CNBC. David Brinkley a été la voix d'une partie de l'Amérique. Son air austère et son ton sec incarnent bien les valeurs d'une époque qui vit ses dernières années avant la transition.*Les faits annoncés sont authentiques. Il y a encore disponible sur le net, en cherchant bien l'extrait original. C'est Justin Izura Ganivet, cuistot vegan d'enfer et vidéaste sur Youtube. Vous pouvez le retrouver sur Twitter [ici] (https://twitter.com/Izura) et sur Youtube [ici] (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe-0FAoHZyDLPMLHnYAuXsw).

The George Bohanon Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 3, 2020 51:32

Chico Hamilton, Charles Kynard, Norman Whitfield, Motown, Oscar Brashear, The Jake Feinberg Show --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

motown chico hamilton norman whitfield

Showdown/The Drug Dealing 7th

Pod Gave Rock'N Roll To You

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2020 43:21

ELO “Showdown” 1973 album “On the Third Day” on Harvest label written and prod by Jeff LynnePersonnel:Jeff Lynne – vocals, guitarsBev Bevan – drums, percussionRichard Tandy – piano, Moog, clavinet, Wurlitzer electric pianoMike de Albuquerque – bass, backing vocalsMike Edwards – celloWilf Gibson – violinColin Walker – celloCover:Josh Bond rhythm guitar/vocalNeal Marsh lead guitarIntro:For the Kings “Shithouse” 2010 “A Collection of Songs for the Kings” written by Josh Bond prod Frank Charlton released independentlyOther artists/songs mentioned:James Brown Marvin Gaye 1968 “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” single released on Tamla written by Norman Whitfield and Barret Strong Prod by WhitfieldELO 1975 “Evil Woman” from “Face the Music” on United Artists writ and prod by Jeff LynneELO 1979 “Don’t Bring Me Down” from “Discovery” on Jet writ and prod by Jeff LynneTravelling Wilburys Bob DylanJoe Cocker 1969 “With a Little Help From My Friends” from same name album on A&M Lennon/McCartney prod Denny CordellVan Morrison David Bowie 1975 “Golden Years” from “Station to Station” on RCA writ prod by David Bowie prod Harry MaslinThe Beatles 1967 “I Am the Walrus” single on Capitol Lennon/McCartney George MartinELO 1977 “Telephone Line” from “A New World Record” on UA Jeff LynneELO 1974 “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” from “El Dorado” on WB/UA Jeff LynneMozart’s “Turkish March”Mrs. America theme “Beethoven’s 5th” from Symphony No 5 Beethoven 1808Tame Impala Fruit Bats Band of Horses Freddy Johnston 1994 “Bad Reputation” from “This Perfect World” on Elektra writ Freedy Johnston Prod Butch VigCurtis Mayfield

Episode 93: "Please Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2020 33:51

Episode ninety-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Please Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes, and the career of the first group to have a number one on a Motown label. 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 "Take Good Care of My Baby" by Bobby Vee. 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---- Erratum After recording this, I happened to discover that in 2017 Katherine actually came out of retirement and formed a new “Marvelettes”, who recorded in the UK in 2017 with someone called “Hitsville Chalky”. Resources This week's Mixcloud playlist is split into two parts, because of the number of Marvelettes songs. Part one, and part two. The Original Marvelettes: Motown's Mystery Girl Group by Marc Taylor is the only biography of the group. Sadly it currently goes for silly money. 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, including Katherine Anderson Schaffner. 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. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 693 tracks released on Motown singles. There is a Complete Motown Singles 1959-62 box available from Hip-O-Select with comprehensive liner notes, but if you just want the music, I recommend instead this much cheaper bare-bones box from Real Gone Music. And this three-CD set contains the group's complete discography up to mid-1966 -- the Gladys Horton years. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Tamla Motown family of labels, a couple of months back, they'd finally had their first big hit with Barrett Strong's "Money", and the label was starting to pull together the full creative team that would be responsible for its later successes. But while "Money" is a great record, it's not a record with what would later become known as the "Motown Sound" -- it sounds far more like a Ray Charles record than the records that would later make Motown's name. So today, we're going to look at the first number one to come out of Motown -- a record that definitely did have the Motown sound, and which established the label as the sound of young America. Today, we're going to look at "Please Mr. Postman": [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Please Mr. Postman"] The story of the Marvelettes starts with Gladys Horton, who lived in the small town of Inkster in Michigan. When Horton was only fourteen, she had formed a group called the Del-Rhythmettes, who made one single, "Chic-A-Boomer": [Excerpt: The Del-Rhythmettes, "Chic-A-Boomer"] That had got a little bit of airplay on local radio, but had otherwise been unsuccessful, and the Del-Rhythmettes had split up. But Gladys still wanted to make music, and she started looking around for other people to sing with. One who caught her eye was a young girl who would appear in the High School talent contests, named Georgia Dobbins. By the time Gladys got to high school herself, Georgia had graduated, but Gladys persuaded her to join a group she put together for her own talent contest entry. The group she formed originally jokingly named themselves the Casinyettes -- because they "can't sing yet" -- and that was the name under which they performed at the talent contest. There was a reason that Gladys wanted Georgia for this talent contest -- this one had, as its first prize, the chance of an audition at Motown. Motown was still a small label, but it had started to have hits, and everyone in Michigan with an interest in music knew about Berry Gordy. In particular, Motown had just released "Shop Around" by the Miracles. Smokey Robinson had written that song, and it had been released to no real effect. The record had been pulled, and another version released. THAT had had no success either, and then at three o'clock in the morning Berry Gordy had suddenly realised that the record needed a new, faster, arrangement. He'd phoned up Smokey and told him to get the group together and into the studio, before he lost the inspiration, even though it was the middle of the night. They did, and the second version of "Shop Around" was pulled and replaced with the new third version, which went to number two on the pop charts and sold a million copies: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Shop Around"] So Motown were now in the big leagues, and the chance of recording for them was an exciting one, and one that the girls, and Gladys in particular, wanted. The Casinyettes at this point consisted of Gladys, Georgia, Georgeanna Tillman, Katherine Anderson, and Juanita Cowart -- I've also seen Juanita's name reported as Wyanetta, and can't find anything which definitively says which it was. At the talent show, they sang "Maybe" by the Chantels: [Excerpt: The Chantels, "Maybe"] The group came fourth -- but one of their teachers, Shirley Sharpley, knew the person from Motown who was arranging the auditions, and persuaded them to offer auditions to the top five, rather than just to the winners. The Cansinyettes went to their audition, and Motown were interested, but told them they had to come up with something original before they'd be signed. They went back to Inkster and got to work. A friend of Georgia, William Garrett, had started a blues song about a postman, and Georgia worked on his idea, writing most of the lyrics and recasting it as something less bluesy. But then Georgia had to quit the group. Her father hadn't known she was singing until she brought the record contract home for him to countersign -- as she was under twenty-one, she needed a parent to sign it, and her mother was too ill. Her father believed the entertainment industry to be sinful, and wouldn't sign. She was so depressed that she gave up singing altogether, and by her own account didn't sing a note until 1978. By the time they came back to Motown with the beginnings of a song, Georgia had been replaced by Wanda Young, though the remaining group members were still singing her song. The song was decent, but it needed work. The group were assigned to Brian Holland, who had a listen to the song and had a brainwave. Holland and his brother Eddie were both on Motown staff at the time, but before joining Motown Holland had been in a group called the Fidelitones. The Fidelitones had recorded some tracks for Aladdin, produced by Gordy, in the late fifties but they'd never been released: [Excerpt: The Fidelitones, "Is It Too Late?"] Holland had stayed in touch with Freddie Gorman, another member of the group. Gorman still had musical ambitions, and he would pop into Motown every day after he finished work -- as a postman. So when Gorman popped in that day, Holland asked him to chip in ideas for the song and use his experience to make it more realistic -- though there's nothing much in the finished song that would seem to require expertise. Gorman became one of five credited writers on the song, along with Holland, Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, and Holland's normal songwriting partner Robert Bateman, who worked with Holland as a songwriting and production team called "Brianbert". Before moving into production, Bateman had been a member of the Satintones, who had made several unsuccessful records for Motown, including this one that was a knock-off of "There Goes My Baby": [Excerpt: The Satintones, "My Beloved"] The Casinyettes weren't the first girl group to be signed to the label -- Motown had already signed one girl group, a group called the Primettes, who had been renamed and who had so far released two singles: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "I Want a Guy"] But the Supremes, as they were renamed, wouldn't become successful for several years, and were generally regarded as a joke among the Motown staff, who thought -- not entirely without reason -- that they had been signed more because Berry Gordy was attracted to Diane Ross, one of the members of the group, than because of any talent they had. One of the girls, though, Florence Ballard, was very popular at Motown, and was generally regarded as being helpful and friendly. She worked with Gladys on her lead vocal part, and helped her craft her performance. The production that Brian Holland crafted for the song was very heavy on the percussion -- along with piano player Popcorn Wylie, guitarist Eddie Willis, and bass player James Jamerson, the backing musicians included a percussion player, Eddie "Bongo" Brown, and two drummers -- the normal session drummer on most of the Motown recordings, Benny Benjamin, and a young man who had been a member of the last lineup of the Moonglows before Harvey Fuqua had moved over to working for the Gordy family labels, and who was now doing whatever he could around the studio, named Marvin Gaye. There was one final change that needed to be made -- The Casinyettes was obviously a joke name, and they needed a better one. The name they were eventually given supposedly came after Berry Gordy heard them sing and said "those girls are marvels". The Marvelettes were born, and their first single was the catchiest thing Motown had put out to that point: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Please Mr. Postman"] "Please Mr. Postman" became the second million seller from Motown, and its first number one on the pop charts. It only stayed there for one week, but that one week was all that was needed -- Motown was now a label that everyone in the industry had to notice. And "Please Mr. Postman" was the record that saved Motown. I've talked before about how a hit record could put a small label out of business -- they had to pay for the records to be pressed up and distributed, but it would be many months before the distributors would actually pay them the money they were owed. And many distributors would not pay at all -- they reasoned that a small label wasn't going to be able to do anything about it if they didn't pay, so why bother? The only leverage a small label with a big hit had was a second big hit. If they had another record the distributors wanted from them, then they could tell the distributors they wouldn't get it until they paid up. And after "Shop Around" sold a million copies, Motown's follow-ups had all sold poorly. They were running out of money, and they needed another hit quickly before they went bankrupt altogether. Berry Gordy had, early on, given the label a slogan -- Create, Make, and Sell -- because he wanted to make great records and then have them sell a lot of copies -- but around this time he realised that there was no point in selling the records if they didn't get paid for them. So reasoning that "create" and "make" were near-synonyms, he changed that slogan to Create, Sell, and Collect. By being a second million-seller for Motown, "Please Mr. Postman" ensured that they got paid for the first one. If it hadn't come along, it's possible that Motown would just be a footnote in histories of Chess Records -- "Chess also distributed a handful of records from a small Detroit label owned by Harvey Fuqua's brother-in-law, who co-wrote several hits for Jackie Wilson, before that label went bankrupt." But as it is, the Marvelettes were now big stars. For the followup, Berry Gordy wanted to do something that was as close to the hit as possible . This would be the policy from this point on with Motown -- if someone had a hit, the same producers and songwriters would be assigned to come up with something that sounded like the hit, and the artist would only go in a different direction once they stopped having hits with their original formula. In this case, the Marvelettes' second single was designed not only to capitalise on their original hit, but on the popularity of the Twist craze, and so they released "Twistin' Postman": [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Twistin' Postman"] "Twistin' Postman" went top forty, but it didn't do anything like as well as "Please Mr. Postman". But just as with their first single, one of the group brought in a new song which brought them back to the top ten, if not number one. This time it was Gladys, who came up with a song called "Playboy", which Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, and Mickey Stevenson rewrote, and which made number seven on the pop charts and number four on the R&B charts. [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Playboy"] Meanwhile, Freddie Gorman had continued working with Brian Holland as well, and had put out a single under his own name, "The Day Will Come": [Excerpt: Freddie Gorman, "The Day Will Come"] Unfortunately, that wasn't a success, and Freddie had to continue on his post rounds. That also meant that his songwriting partnership with Holland came to an end -- Freddie kept finding that when he came round to Hitsville after work, if Brian Holland had had an idea for a song, he'd already finished it -- usually with the help of his brother Eddie and their new writing partner Lamont Dozier. And there were problems brewing for the Marvelettes, too. They'd felt all along that they were looked down on a bit by the people from Detroit, who thought of them as hicks from the sticks because they came from Inkster. They were so self-conscious about this that it led to the first member leaving the group. They appeared on American Bandstand, and Juanita said that Detroit was a suburb of Inkster, when she'd meant to say that Inkster was a suburb of Detroit. She felt so bad about this slipup and the way she was mocked for it that she had a breakdown, and ended up leaving the group. That didn't bother Motown too much -- when "Please Mr. Postman" had been a hit but the girls had been at school, it had been suggested that they could just send any five girls out on the road as the Marvelettes, until the girls put their foot down about that. Not only that, but at one point when Wanda had been pregnant, Motown had replaced her on the road with Florence Ballard from the Supremes -- the contracts for that tour had specified five Marvelettes, the Supremes were the least successful group on Motown at the time, and the girls got on well with Florence. If Motown were willing to do that, they were definitely willing to have the group just carry on with one member gone, and just make sure the contracts said there would be four Marvelettes. They carried on as a four-piece group, and had a few more records, mostly written and produced by Smokey Robinson but with others like Mickey Stevenson and Marvin Gaye sometimes contributing, but while those records did okay on the R&B charts, they didn't have much success on the pop charts, mostly getting to around number fifty. At one point, Motown started to wonder if they needed to change things up a little -- they put out a single by the group with Gladys and Wanda singing a dual lead, and with the group joined by Motown's in-house backing vocal group The Andantes. The record was put out under the name The Darnells, but was unsuccessful: [Excerpt: The Darnells, "Too Hurt Too Cry, Too Much In Love To Say Goodbye”] Unfortunately for them, they missed the chance at a really big hit. Holland, Dozier, and Holland had written a song for them, but Gladys didn't like it, she thought it was too simplistic, and so they took it to the group who were still known within Motown as the no-hit Supremes. We'll be looking at "Where Did Our Love Go?" in more detail next year. Eddie Holland did cowrite a hit for them with Norman Whitfield, though -- though it wasn't a monster hit like "Where Did Our Love Go?", it did give all the girls a chance to have a solo spot, a rarity for them: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Too Many Fish in the Sea"] That took them back into the top thirty, and made the top five on the R&B chart. It would be the last hit that they would have with Georgeanna in the group, though -- she'd been diagnosed with sickle-cell anaemia as a child, and the constant strain of touring made her more ill. The tours had been a shock for all of them, to be honest. Their first major national tour was the first Motor Town Revue in 1962 -- a tour with a lineup that seems preposterously good these days. All of Motown's major acts, and several acts that weren't yet major but soon would be, were on the same bill -- the Miracles, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Temptations, Marv Johnson, Stevie Wonder, the Contours, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, and Singing Sammy Ward. The girls had grown up in Michigan, and while they had an intellectual understanding that the South was different, they were unprepared for the realities of segregation, of not being able to use public toilets or eat in the same restaurants that white people did. That was awful enough, but there was also the fact that all those acts were on the same bus. And starting the year before, there had been the phenomenon of Freedom Riders -- black people from the North who had been coming down to the south to sit in whites-only seats on Greyhound buses, to protest segregation. In several places in the South, the sight of a lot of black people on a bus brought the Freedom Riders to mind, and people actually took pot-shots at the bus. A couple of years living like that took an immense toll on Georgeanna's health, and she started suffering from unexplained fatigue. Eventually it was realised that she had lupus, an autoimmune disease which is now largely treatable if not curable, but at the time was often a death sentence. She retired from music, going to work for Motown as a secretary instead. She died in 1980, aged only thirty-six. The remaining three carried on as a trio, and they were about to have a second commercial wind. After a couple of flop follow-ups to "Too Many Fish in the Sea", Smokey Robinson took over their production, and decided to start using Wanda as the lead vocalist, rather than Gladys, who had sung lead on their hits up to that point. "Don't Mess With Bill", their first single of 1966, became their first top ten pop hit since "Playboy" in early 1962: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Don't Mess With Bill"] Robinson also wrote the marvellous "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" for the group: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game"] Or, at least, he wrote it for Wanda. By this point, while the records were getting released as by "the Marvelettes", Robinson was only using Wanda for lead vocals, and having the Andantes sing all the backing vocals. The explanation for this was generally that the group were on tour all the time, and it was easier to make the records without them and then get Wanda just to sing the lead, and the other members reluctantly accepted that, but it rankled. There were other problems, too. Juanita and Georgeanna had been the glue holding the group together -- they'd been the ones who had been friends with all the others. Katherine, Gladys, and Wanda, hadn't known each other before forming the group, and they started to discover that they weren't hugely fond of each other now. At first, they still worked well together, each having their assigned area of responsibility -- Gladys was a combination musical director and choreographer, working out the group's setlists and dance moves, Katherine was the spokesperson in interviews, and looked after the group's money, and Wanda was the lead singer. This worked for a while, but as Katherine would later put it, when there had been five of them, they'd been friends. Now they were somewhere between acquaintances and co-workers. And then in 1967, Gladys decided to leave the group. This made the group an even lower priority for Motown -- while Wanda was by now the undisputed lead singer, within Motown they were thought of as Gladys' group, as she'd been the leader in the beginning. Motown did decide to get someone else in to replace her. They could cope with the group going from five members to four, and from four to three -- three women, after all, was still a girl group. But once they'd got down to two members, they needed a third. Harvey Fuqua suggested Ann Bogan, who he'd discovered a while before and recorded a few duets with: [Excerpt: Harvey and Ann, "What Can You Do Now?"] Ann was a sort of general utility singer around Motown -- she'd sung with the Andantes and the Challengers Three, and she'd also gone out on the road with Marvin Gaye, subbing for his duet partner Tammi Terrell, when the latter had become sick with the brain tumour that eventually killed her. Ann replaced Gladys, and the group made two further albums, and Ann was at least allowed to sing on album tracks. The group continued having R&B hits, but while they kept releasing great records like "Destination: Anywhere", they were by now barely scraping the hot one hundred on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Destination: Anywhere"] And Wanda was having problems. She'd been doing too much cocaine and drinking too much, and was starting to act strangely. Then in 1969 her younger sister was shot dead, by her other sister's estranged husband (who seems to have thought he was shooting the other sister), and to compound matters while the group were on tour in Europe someone spiked Wanda's drink. She was never the same again, and has had mental health problems for the last fifty years. The group split up, though nothing was announced -- they just didn't get booked on any more tours, and went their separate ways. Bogan went on to join a group called Love, Peace, and Happiness, who had a minor hit with a song that had been, coincidentally, co-written by Katherine, who wrote it for Gladys Knight: [Excerpt: Love, Peace, and Happiness, "I Don't Want to Do Wrong"] That group then joined with Harvey Fuqua in a seventeen-piece funk band called New Birth, with Bogan singing on their hit "I Can Understand It": [Excerpt: New Birth, "I Can Understand It"] Motown decided to give the Marvelettes one more try, and in 1970 they got Wanda in to record an album titled The Return of the Marvelettes. This was essentially a solo album, produced by Smokey Robinson, but they did try to get Katherine to appear on the cover photograph. She told the label that if she wasn't good enough to sing on the record, she wasn't good enough to appear on the cover, either, and so the cover, like the record, only featured Wanda of the original Marvelettes. Over the next few decades, various groups toured under the Marvelettes name, none featuring any of the original members -- Motown, rather than the women, had owned the group name, and had sold it off. Gladys, Katherine, and Juanita were busy being homemakers, and Wanda and Georgeanna were too ill to consider a music career. Then in the late 1980s, Ian Levine entered the picture. Levine is a British DJ who at the time owned and ran Motor City Records, which put out new recordings by people who had released records on Motown in the sixties. He got over a hundred former Motown artists to record for him, and one album he put out was a Marvelettes reunion of sorts -- he managed to persuade Gladys and Wanda out of retirement to make a new Marvelettes album with two new backing vocalists, Echo Johnson and Jean Maclean. The new record was a mixture of remakes of their old hits and new songs by Levine, like "Secret Love Affair": [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Secret Love Affair"] Wanda was still too ill to perform regularly, but Gladys went out on tour on the oldies circuit, singing her old hits as "Gladys Horton of the Marvelettes", as none of the group owned the original name. She and Katherine were in the process of suing to regain the name under the Truth in Music Act, when she died of a stroke in 2011. Of the other Marvelettes, Katherine and Juanita are retired, though Katherine still gives regular interviews about her time with the group, and Wanda's mental health has apparently improved enough in the last few years that she can perform again. They're all apparently happy with their situations now, and don't miss the old life. They do miss the recognition, though. For the twenty-fifth, fortieth, fiftieth, and sixtieth anniversary celebrations of Motown, TV specials were produced featuring many of the label's acts, and honouring the label's history. None of the members of the first group to hit number one on the label were invited to be part of any of them.

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Episode 93: “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2020

Episode ninety-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes, and the career of the first group to have a number one on a Motown label. 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 “Take Good Care of My Baby” by Bobby Vee. 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—- Erratum After recording this, I happened to discover that in 2017 Katherine actually came out of retirement and formed a new “Marvelettes”, who recorded in the UK in 2017 with someone called “Hitsville Chalky”. Resources This week’s Mixcloud playlist is split into two parts, because of the number of Marvelettes songs. Part one, and part two. The Original Marvelettes: Motown’s Mystery Girl Group by Marc Taylor is the only biography of the group. Sadly it currently goes for silly money. 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, including Katherine Anderson Schaffner. 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. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 693 tracks released on Motown singles. There is a Complete Motown Singles 1959-62 box available from Hip-O-Select with comprehensive liner notes, but if you just want the music, I recommend instead this much cheaper bare-bones box from Real Gone Music. And this three-CD set contains the group’s complete discography up to mid-1966 — the Gladys Horton years. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Tamla Motown family of labels, a couple of months back, they’d finally had their first big hit with Barrett Strong’s “Money”, and the label was starting to pull together the full creative team that would be responsible for its later successes. But while “Money” is a great record, it’s not a record with what would later become known as the “Motown Sound” — it sounds far more like a Ray Charles record than the records that would later make Motown’s name. So today, we’re going to look at the first number one to come out of Motown — a record that definitely did have the Motown sound, and which established the label as the sound of young America. Today, we’re going to look at “Please Mr. Postman”: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Please Mr. Postman”] The story of the Marvelettes starts with Gladys Horton, who lived in the small town of Inkster in Michigan. When Horton was only fourteen, she had formed a group called the Del-Rhythmettes, who made one single, “Chic-A-Boomer”: [Excerpt: The Del-Rhythmettes, “Chic-A-Boomer”] That had got a little bit of airplay on local radio, but had otherwise been unsuccessful, and the Del-Rhythmettes had split up. But Gladys still wanted to make music, and she started looking around for other people to sing with. One who caught her eye was a young girl who would appear in the High School talent contests, named Georgia Dobbins. By the time Gladys got to high school herself, Georgia had graduated, but Gladys persuaded her to join a group she put together for her own talent contest entry. The group she formed originally jokingly named themselves the Casinyettes — because they “can’t sing yet” — and that was the name under which they performed at the talent contest. There was a reason that Gladys wanted Georgia for this talent contest — this one had, as its first prize, the chance of an audition at Motown. Motown was still a small label, but it had started to have hits, and everyone in Michigan with an interest in music knew about Berry Gordy. In particular, Motown had just released “Shop Around” by the Miracles. Smokey Robinson had written that song, and it had been released to no real effect. The record had been pulled, and another version released. THAT had had no success either, and then at three o’clock in the morning Berry Gordy had suddenly realised that the record needed a new, faster, arrangement. He’d phoned up Smokey and told him to get the group together and into the studio, before he lost the inspiration, even though it was the middle of the night. They did, and the second version of “Shop Around” was pulled and replaced with the new third version, which went to number two on the pop charts and sold a million copies: [Excerpt: The Miracles, “Shop Around”] So Motown were now in the big leagues, and the chance of recording for them was an exciting one, and one that the girls, and Gladys in particular, wanted. The Casinyettes at this point consisted of Gladys, Georgia, Georgeanna Tillman, Katherine Anderson, and Juanita Cowart — I’ve also seen Juanita’s name reported as Wyanetta, and can’t find anything which definitively says which it was. At the talent show, they sang “Maybe” by the Chantels: [Excerpt: The Chantels, “Maybe”] The group came fourth — but one of their teachers, Shirley Sharpley, knew the person from Motown who was arranging the auditions, and persuaded them to offer auditions to the top five, rather than just to the winners. The Cansinyettes went to their audition, and Motown were interested, but told them they had to come up with something original before they’d be signed. They went back to Inkster and got to work. A friend of Georgia, William Garrett, had started a blues song about a postman, and Georgia worked on his idea, writing most of the lyrics and recasting it as something less bluesy. But then Georgia had to quit the group. Her father hadn’t known she was singing until she brought the record contract home for him to countersign — as she was under twenty-one, she needed a parent to sign it, and her mother was too ill. Her father believed the entertainment industry to be sinful, and wouldn’t sign. She was so depressed that she gave up singing altogether, and by her own account didn’t sing a note until 1978. By the time they came back to Motown with the beginnings of a song, Georgia had been replaced by Wanda Young, though the remaining group members were still singing her song. The song was decent, but it needed work. The group were assigned to Brian Holland, who had a listen to the song and had a brainwave. Holland and his brother Eddie were both on Motown staff at the time, but before joining Motown Holland had been in a group called the Fidelitones. The Fidelitones had recorded some tracks for Aladdin, produced by Gordy, in the late fifties but they’d never been released: [Excerpt: The Fidelitones, “Is It Too Late?”] Holland had stayed in touch with Freddie Gorman, another member of the group. Gorman still had musical ambitions, and he would pop into Motown every day after he finished work — as a postman. So when Gorman popped in that day, Holland asked him to chip in ideas for the song and use his experience to make it more realistic — though there’s nothing much in the finished song that would seem to require expertise. Gorman became one of five credited writers on the song, along with Holland, Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, and Holland’s normal songwriting partner Robert Bateman, who worked with Holland as a songwriting and production team called “Brianbert”. Before moving into production, Bateman had been a member of the Satintones, who had made several unsuccessful records for Motown, including this one that was a knock-off of “There Goes My Baby”: [Excerpt: The Satintones, “My Beloved”] The Casinyettes weren’t the first girl group to be signed to the label — Motown had already signed one girl group, a group called the Primettes, who had been renamed and who had so far released two singles: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “I Want a Guy”] But the Supremes, as they were renamed, wouldn’t become successful for several years, and were generally regarded as a joke among the Motown staff, who thought — not entirely without reason — that they had been signed more because Berry Gordy was attracted to Diane Ross, one of the members of the group, than because of any talent they had. One of the girls, though, Florence Ballard, was very popular at Motown, and was generally regarded as being helpful and friendly. She worked with Gladys on her lead vocal part, and helped her craft her performance. The production that Brian Holland crafted for the song was very heavy on the percussion — along with piano player Popcorn Wylie, guitarist Eddie Willis, and bass player James Jamerson, the backing musicians included a percussion player, Eddie “Bongo” Brown, and two drummers — the normal session drummer on most of the Motown recordings, Benny Benjamin, and a young man who had been a member of the last lineup of the Moonglows before Harvey Fuqua had moved over to working for the Gordy family labels, and who was now doing whatever he could around the studio, named Marvin Gaye. There was one final change that needed to be made — The Casinyettes was obviously a joke name, and they needed a better one. The name they were eventually given supposedly came after Berry Gordy heard them sing and said “those girls are marvels”. The Marvelettes were born, and their first single was the catchiest thing Motown had put out to that point: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Please Mr. Postman”] “Please Mr. Postman” became the second million seller from Motown, and its first number one on the pop charts. It only stayed there for one week, but that one week was all that was needed — Motown was now a label that everyone in the industry had to notice. And “Please Mr. Postman” was the record that saved Motown. I’ve talked before about how a hit record could put a small label out of business — they had to pay for the records to be pressed up and distributed, but it would be many months before the distributors would actually pay them the money they were owed. And many distributors would not pay at all — they reasoned that a small label wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it if they didn’t pay, so why bother? The only leverage a small label with a big hit had was a second big hit. If they had another record the distributors wanted from them, then they could tell the distributors they wouldn’t get it until they paid up. And after “Shop Around” sold a million copies, Motown’s follow-ups had all sold poorly. They were running out of money, and they needed another hit quickly before they went bankrupt altogether. Berry Gordy had, early on, given the label a slogan — Create, Make, and Sell — because he wanted to make great records and then have them sell a lot of copies — but around this time he realised that there was no point in selling the records if they didn’t get paid for them. So reasoning that “create” and “make” were near-synonyms, he changed that slogan to Create, Sell, and Collect. By being a second million-seller for Motown, “Please Mr. Postman” ensured that they got paid for the first one. If it hadn’t come along, it’s possible that Motown would just be a footnote in histories of Chess Records — “Chess also distributed a handful of records from a small Detroit label owned by Harvey Fuqua’s brother-in-law, who co-wrote several hits for Jackie Wilson, before that label went bankrupt.” But as it is, the Marvelettes were now big stars. For the followup, Berry Gordy wanted to do something that was as close to the hit as possible . This would be the policy from this point on with Motown — if someone had a hit, the same producers and songwriters would be assigned to come up with something that sounded like the hit, and the artist would only go in a different direction once they stopped having hits with their original formula. In this case, the Marvelettes’ second single was designed not only to capitalise on their original hit, but on the popularity of the Twist craze, and so they released “Twistin’ Postman”: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Twistin’ Postman”] “Twistin’ Postman” went top forty, but it didn’t do anything like as well as “Please Mr. Postman”. But just as with their first single, one of the group brought in a new song which brought them back to the top ten, if not number one. This time it was Gladys, who came up with a song called “Playboy”, which Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, and Mickey Stevenson rewrote, and which made number seven on the pop charts and number four on the R&B charts. [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Playboy”] Meanwhile, Freddie Gorman had continued working with Brian Holland as well, and had put out a single under his own name, “The Day Will Come”: [Excerpt: Freddie Gorman, “The Day Will Come”] Unfortunately, that wasn’t a success, and Freddie had to continue on his post rounds. That also meant that his songwriting partnership with Holland came to an end — Freddie kept finding that when he came round to Hitsville after work, if Brian Holland had had an idea for a song, he’d already finished it — usually with the help of his brother Eddie and their new writing partner Lamont Dozier. And there were problems brewing for the Marvelettes, too. They’d felt all along that they were looked down on a bit by the people from Detroit, who thought of them as hicks from the sticks because they came from Inkster. They were so self-conscious about this that it led to the first member leaving the group. They appeared on American Bandstand, and Juanita said that Detroit was a suburb of Inkster, when she’d meant to say that Inkster was a suburb of Detroit. She felt so bad about this slipup and the way she was mocked for it that she had a breakdown, and ended up leaving the group. That didn’t bother Motown too much — when “Please Mr. Postman” had been a hit but the girls had been at school, it had been suggested that they could just send any five girls out on the road as the Marvelettes, until the girls put their foot down about that. Not only that, but at one point when Wanda had been pregnant, Motown had replaced her on the road with Florence Ballard from the Supremes — the contracts for that tour had specified five Marvelettes, the Supremes were the least successful group on Motown at the time, and the girls got on well with Florence. If Motown were willing to do that, they were definitely willing to have the group just carry on with one member gone, and just make sure the contracts said there would be four Marvelettes. They carried on as a four-piece group, and had a few more records, mostly written and produced by Smokey Robinson but with others like Mickey Stevenson and Marvin Gaye sometimes contributing, but while those records did okay on the R&B charts, they didn’t have much success on the pop charts, mostly getting to around number fifty. At one point, Motown started to wonder if they needed to change things up a little — they put out a single by the group with Gladys and Wanda singing a dual lead, and with the group joined by Motown’s in-house backing vocal group The Andantes. The record was put out under the name The Darnells, but was unsuccessful: [Excerpt: The Darnells, “Too Hurt Too Cry, Too Much In Love To Say Goodbye”] Unfortunately for them, they missed the chance at a really big hit. Holland, Dozier, and Holland had written a song for them, but Gladys didn’t like it, she thought it was too simplistic, and so they took it to the group who were still known within Motown as the no-hit Supremes. We’ll be looking at “Where Did Our Love Go?” in more detail next year. Eddie Holland did cowrite a hit for them with Norman Whitfield, though — though it wasn’t a monster hit like “Where Did Our Love Go?”, it did give all the girls a chance to have a solo spot, a rarity for them: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Too Many Fish in the Sea”] That took them back into the top thirty, and made the top five on the R&B chart. It would be the last hit that they would have with Georgeanna in the group, though — she’d been diagnosed with sickle-cell anaemia as a child, and the constant strain of touring made her more ill. The tours had been a shock for all of them, to be honest. Their first major national tour was the first Motor Town Revue in 1962 — a tour with a lineup that seems preposterously good these days. All of Motown’s major acts, and several acts that weren’t yet major but soon would be, were on the same bill — the Miracles, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Temptations, Marv Johnson, Stevie Wonder, the Contours, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, and Singing Sammy Ward. The girls had grown up in Michigan, and while they had an intellectual understanding that the South was different, they were unprepared for the realities of segregation, of not being able to use public toilets or eat in the same restaurants that white people did. That was awful enough, but there was also the fact that all those acts were on the same bus. And starting the year before, there had been the phenomenon of Freedom Riders — black people from the North who had been coming down to the south to sit in whites-only seats on Greyhound buses, to protest segregation. In several places in the South, the sight of a lot of black people on a bus brought the Freedom Riders to mind, and people actually took pot-shots at the bus. A couple of years living like that took an immense toll on Georgeanna’s health, and she started suffering from unexplained fatigue. Eventually it was realised that she had lupus, an autoimmune disease which is now largely treatable if not curable, but at the time was often a death sentence. She retired from music, going to work for Motown as a secretary instead. She died in 1980, aged only thirty-six. The remaining three carried on as a trio, and they were about to have a second commercial wind. After a couple of flop follow-ups to “Too Many Fish in the Sea”, Smokey Robinson took over their production, and decided to start using Wanda as the lead vocalist, rather than Gladys, who had sung lead on their hits up to that point. “Don’t Mess With Bill”, their first single of 1966, became their first top ten pop hit since “Playboy” in early 1962: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Don’t Mess With Bill”] Robinson also wrote the marvellous “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” for the group: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game”] Or, at least, he wrote it for Wanda. By this point, while the records were getting released as by “the Marvelettes”, Robinson was only using Wanda for lead vocals, and having the Andantes sing all the backing vocals. The explanation for this was generally that the group were on tour all the time, and it was easier to make the records without them and then get Wanda just to sing the lead, and the other members reluctantly accepted that, but it rankled. There were other problems, too. Juanita and Georgeanna had been the glue holding the group together — they’d been the ones who had been friends with all the others. Katherine, Gladys, and Wanda, hadn’t known each other before forming the group, and they started to discover that they weren’t hugely fond of each other now. At first, they still worked well together, each having their assigned area of responsibility — Gladys was a combination musical director and choreographer, working out the group’s setlists and dance moves, Katherine was the spokesperson in interviews, and looked after the group’s money, and Wanda was the lead singer. This worked for a while, but as Katherine would later put it, when there had been five of them, they’d been friends. Now they were somewhere between acquaintances and co-workers. And then in 1967, Gladys decided to leave the group. This made the group an even lower priority for Motown — while Wanda was by now the undisputed lead singer, within Motown they were thought of as Gladys’ group, as she’d been the leader in the beginning. Motown did decide to get someone else in to replace her. They could cope with the group going from five members to four, and from four to three — three women, after all, was still a girl group. But once they’d got down to two members, they needed a third. Harvey Fuqua suggested Ann Bogan, who he’d discovered a while before and recorded a few duets with: [Excerpt: Harvey and Ann, “What Can You Do Now?”] Ann was a sort of general utility singer around Motown — she’d sung with the Andantes and the Challengers Three, and she’d also gone out on the road with Marvin Gaye, subbing for his duet partner Tammi Terrell, when the latter had become sick with the brain tumour that eventually killed her. Ann replaced Gladys, and the group made two further albums, and Ann was at least allowed to sing on album tracks. The group continued having R&B hits, but while they kept releasing great records like “Destination: Anywhere”, they were by now barely scraping the hot one hundred on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Destination: Anywhere”] And Wanda was having problems. She’d been doing too much cocaine and drinking too much, and was starting to act strangely. Then in 1969 her younger sister was shot dead, by her other sister’s estranged husband (who seems to have thought he was shooting the other sister), and to compound matters while the group were on tour in Europe someone spiked Wanda’s drink. She was never the same again, and has had mental health problems for the last fifty years. The group split up, though nothing was announced — they just didn’t get booked on any more tours, and went their separate ways. Bogan went on to join a group called Love, Peace, and Happiness, who had a minor hit with a song that had been, coincidentally, co-written by Katherine, who wrote it for Gladys Knight: [Excerpt: Love, Peace, and Happiness, “I Don’t Want to Do Wrong”] That group then joined with Harvey Fuqua in a seventeen-piece funk band called New Birth, with Bogan singing on their hit “I Can Understand It”: [Excerpt: New Birth, “I Can Understand It”] Motown decided to give the Marvelettes one more try, and in 1970 they got Wanda in to record an album titled The Return of the Marvelettes. This was essentially a solo album, produced by Smokey Robinson, but they did try to get Katherine to appear on the cover photograph. She told the label that if she wasn’t good enough to sing on the record, she wasn’t good enough to appear on the cover, either, and so the cover, like the record, only featured Wanda of the original Marvelettes. Over the next few decades, various groups toured under the Marvelettes name, none featuring any of the original members — Motown, rather than the women, had owned the group name, and had sold it off. Gladys, Katherine, and Juanita were busy being homemakers, and Wanda and Georgeanna were too ill to consider a music career. Then in the late 1980s, Ian Levine entered the picture. Levine is a British DJ who at the time owned and ran Motor City Records, which put out new recordings by people who had released records on Motown in the sixties. He got over a hundred former Motown artists to record for him, and one album he put out was a Marvelettes reunion of sorts — he managed to persuade Gladys and Wanda out of retirement to make a new Marvelettes album with two new backing vocalists, Echo Johnson and Jean Maclean. The new record was a mixture of remakes of their old hits and new songs by Levine, like “Secret Love Affair”: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Secret Love Affair”] Wanda was still too ill to perform regularly, but Gladys went out on tour on the oldies circuit, singing her old hits as “Gladys Horton of the Marvelettes”, as none of the group owned the original name. She and Katherine were in the process of suing to regain the name under the Truth in Music Act, when she died of a stroke in 2011. Of the other Marvelettes, Katherine and Juanita are retired, though Katherine still gives regular interviews about her time with the group, and Wanda’s mental health has apparently improved enough in the last few years that she can perform again. They’re all apparently happy with their situations now, and don’t miss the old life. They do miss the recognition, though. For the twenty-fifth, fortieth, fiftieth, and sixtieth anniversary celebrations of Motown, TV specials were produced featuring many of the label’s acts, and honouring the label’s history. None of the members of the first group to hit number one on the label were invited to be part of any of them.

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Grapevine (Motown) - 9:22:18, 9.58 AM

CAT BEAR

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2020 2:02

Story by: Gail NoblesPhoto credit: Pixabay.comVocals: Gail NoblesSong by: Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongYa'll know the song, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". It is a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966. Gladys Knight and the Pips and Marvin Gaye both recorded the song.So what does it mean to hear something through the grapevine? It means to hear gossip or a rumor spreading around from person to person.According to the lyrics, the broken hearted one heard through the grapevine about his lover's plan to make him blue. He learned that he would be loosing her.He said, "You could of told me yourself that you loved someone else. Instead I heard it through the grapevine. Not much longer would you be mine."This song can be for a guy or a girl to sing. There are a lot of broken hearted men as well as broken hearted women loosing the one that they love. And I betcha some of them think of this song.....

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THE 51s: Ain't Too Proud To Beg (TEMPTATIONS COVER: Live @ Bartini Bar/Babylon, NY - 6/27/20)

The 51s

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2020 2:53

Words & music by Norman Whitfield & Edward Holland, Jr. Scott Kuchler - lead vocals, lead guitar; Steve Cafarelli - backing vocals, drums; Dave Drew - backing vocals, acoustic guitar; Frank Mascaro - backing vocals, bass Photo by Joe Cuminale

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Broadway's Jarvis B. Manning Jr. - The Upbeat Hang Ep. 20

The Upbeat Hang

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2020 83:41

There are few measuring sticks of talent greater than the “Lights on Broadway” and in Episode 20, K-Bo, Amy and Duke sit down with the uber-talented actor/singer/writer/artist Jarvis B. Manning, Jr. Manning currently plays the part of Al Bryant, an original member and co-founder of the epic Motown group, The Temptations, in the Broadway smash hit Ain't Too Proud. The show chronicles the history of the legendary group and in addition to playing Bryant, Manning also plays the part of Norman Whitfield who was a staple in the Motown scene and he also produced virtually all of The Temptations' music in addition to co-writing some of the group's biggest hits. Listeners will quickly learn what made Manning a first-call for his roles in Ain't Too Proud as the young artist demonstrates a masterful understanding, desire, and ability to perform at the top of his craft. A Texas native who frequented Louisiana on family visits eventually moved on to Broadway, Manning has left little doubt with theatergoers that his own lights are shining bright. Initially excelling in sports, then into so many artistic roles, listeners will be interested to hear Manning describe his fascination and dedication to studying and recreating the magical genesis of the Motown greats. Follow Jarvis on Instagram: @brainart Check out his nightclub performance in Canada with the band The Grind: https://youtu.be/Ubp_XytqLgk Purchase his single “Suga Foot” on iTunes

Soulbeat - The O'Jays (18/05/20)

SoulBeat

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2020

Gamble y Huff estaban al tanto de los últimos desarrollos en R&B, incluidas las importantes producciones de Norman Whitfield para Motown y el rock negro psicodélico de Sly Stone. Tenían la esperanza de que los artistas que firmaran con Neptune contrarrestaran los esfuerzos de Intruders en la etiqueta Gamble. Los primeros artistas que firmaron en su nuevo sello fueron un trío de Akron, Ohio, llamado O’Jays.

ohio gamble motown akron neptune huff intruders sly stone o'jays norman whitfield soulbeat

Soulbeat - The O'Jays (18/05/20)

SoulBeat

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2020

soul ohio gamble musica motown akron neptune huff extremadura intruders sly stone o'jays norman whitfield soulbeat

TRUTH IN RHYTHM Podcast - Dennis Coffey (The Funk Brothers)

motown losin norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2020 59:18

** PLEASE SUBSCRIBE **Brought to you by FUNKNSTUFF.NET and hosted by Scott "DR GX" Goldfine — musicologist and author of “Everything Is on THE ONE: The First Guide of Funk” ― “TRUTH IN RHYTHM” is the interview show that gets DEEP into the pocket with contemporary music’s foremost masters of the groove.Featured in TIR Episode 133: Funk guitar giant Dennis Coffey. Already an experienced session player, by the late 1960s funk guitar icon Dennis Coffey became a member of the Funk Brothers studio band.He played on dozens of recordings for Motown Records, and introduced a hard rock guitar sound to Motown record producer Norman Whitfield's recordings, including distortion, Echoplex tape-loop delay, and wah-wah; most notably heard on "Cloud Nine," "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)" and "Psychedelic Shack" by The Temptations. He played on numerous other hit records of the era including No. 1 singles like Edwin Starr's "War," Diana Ross & The Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together" and Freda Payne's No. 3 hit (No. 1 in the U.K.) "Band of Gold."In 1971, Coffey recorded "Scorpio," a million-selling instrumental single that peaked in the U.S. at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart and at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. The instrumental track featured former Motown "funk brother" Bob Babbitt on bass. On Jan. 8, 1972, Coffey became the first white artist to perform on TV's Soul Train, playing "Scorpio." That record received a gold disc awarded by the Recording Industry Association of America in December 1971.The follow-up in 1972 was "Taurus," both credited to Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band. Since then, he has recorded several solo albums, most of them for the Sussex and Westbound labels. While at Sussex Records, Coffey arranged and produced along with Mike Theodore the million-selling "Nice To Be With You" by the group Gallery. In addition, Coffey scored the blaxploitation film, Black Belt Jones (1974).Coffey was interviewed in the 2002 film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which told the story of Funk Brothers and explained that he had sold his Fender Stratocaster to buy a Gibson Firebird after he heard Eddie Willis of Funk Brothers play it during a Motown session. In 2004, he published a memoir, Guitars, Bars and Motown Superstars. Coffey was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame as a member of the Funk Brothers in 2010 and as a solo artist in 2018.He recounts most of it here, as well as his still active performing schedule and 2019's jazz album, Down by the River.RECORDED FEBRUARY 2020Get your copy of "Everything Is on the One: The First Guide of Funk" today! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541256603/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1541256603&linkCode=as2&tag=funknstuff-20&linkId=b6c7558ddc7f8fc9fe440c5d9f3c4008

Episode 7: The Ways of Motown

The Peter Rivera Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2020 20:43

In this episode Peter describes learning how Motown makes records, Norman Whitfield, and the origins of Losin' You.

Lakeside - Outrageous (Petko Turner Edit) Monster Disco Boogie Funk Jam Free DL

Sky Wave Radio Hosted By Petko Turner

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2019 8:00

Lakeside - Outrageous Master & Edit By Petko Turner Here >> https://hypeddit.com/track/b38llw Formed in Dayton, Ohio, U.S. from the combination of members of two groups - The Montereys and The Nomads. Originally named Ohio Lakeside Express. They met Frank Wilson just before he'd quit Motown and they were signed at ABC Records and they released their debut in 1977 produced by Frank Wilson. In 1978 their manager and friend Dick Griffey founded Solar and signed the group. Norman Whitfield as well had made them an offer for Whitfield Records but Lakeside turned it down. They contributed instead to Willie Hutch' "In Tune" released in Whitfield's label. They also contributed in "Danceland" (from Carrie Lucas' third album in 1979) and produced 7th Wonder's "Stop Before You Break My Heart" (from their third and last album). They would release nine albums at Solar between 1978 - 1990. Their main line up (after several changes) were Otis Stokes (guitar, vocals), Thomas Shelby (lead vocals), Mark Adam Wood, Jr. (lead vocals, keyboards), Stephen Shockley (guitar), Fred Alexander Jr. (drums), Tiemeyer McCain (lead vocals), Marvin Craig (bass), Fred Lewis (2) (percussion), Norman Beavers (keyboards). They became famous for their flamboyant theatrical costumes on their album covers and for the rich, heavy, uplifting funk soul sound. Their biggest legacy remains their 1980 single "Fantastic Voyage" (No.1 in the r'n'b charts, the closest they came to a crossover success - No.55 in the U.S. pop chart) that was included in the soundtrack of 1992's "South Central" and Coolio covered -among other rappers- in 1994. Other big hits are "It's All The Way Live" (No.4 in 1977, R'n'B charts), their cover on The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (1981, No.5, R'n'B charts), "Raid" (1983, No.8 R'n'B charts) and "Outrageous" (1984, No.7 R'n'B charts).

Kunst des Glaubens: Kanye Wests neues Album "Jesus Is King"

QUASIMODO - Aussicht vom katholischen Glockenturm

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 26, 2019 24:27

"Jesus ist King" meint Kanye West, nannte so sein im Oktober 2019 erschienenes Album .... und erregt damit Aufsehen. Wieviel Glaube können wir zwischen den Songzeilen des neuen Albums heraushören? Und wieviel Kunst? Wir haben uns auf eine akustische Spurensuche begeben. In diesem Podcast sind folgende Songs enthalten: 1) Intro: „Everything We Need“ Album: Jesus Is King (2019) Artist(s): Kanye West, Featured artists: Ty Dolla Sign, Ant Clemons Producer(s): Kanye West, Ronny J, FNZ, Federico Vindver, BoogzDaBeast, Mike Dean Interpolates: „The Storm“ (Kanye West, Ty Dolla Sign, XXXTentacion) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrfu0FBB110 2) „Jesus Walks“ Album: The College Dropout (2004) Artist(s): Kanye West Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam Songwriter(s): Kanye West, Che Smith Producer(s): Kanye West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Walks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF7H_fpc-g 3) „Gorgeous“ Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) Artist(s): Kanye West Featured artists: Kid Cudi, Raekwon Songwriter(s): Kanye West, Ernest Wilson, Mike Dean, Malik Jones, Che Smith, Corey Woods, Scott Mescudi, Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn Producer(s): Kanye West, No I.D., Mike Dean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgeous_(Kanye_West_song) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJAfs7jhak 4) „Saint Pablo“ Album: The Life of Pablo (2016) Artist(s): Kanye West Featured artists: Sampha Label: GOOD, Def Jam Songwriter(s): Kanye West, Sampha Sisay, Michael Dean, Allen Ritter, Shawn Carter, Deric Angelettie, Ronald Lawrence, Norman Whitfield, Noah Goldstein Producer(s): Kanye West, Mike Dean, Allen Ritter, Noah Goldstein Samples: „Where I'm From“ (Jay Z) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pablo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9rzz4pDFwA 5) „God Is“ Album: Jesus Is King (2019) Artist(s): Kanye West Producer: Kanye West, Angel Lopez, Federico Vinder, Robert Fryson, Timothy Lee Mckenzie, Victory Elyse Boyd, Warryn Campbell Samples: „God Is“ (James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8u3P7Xqlvo 6) „Every Hour“ feat. Sunday Service Choir Album: Jesus Is King (2019) Label: GOOD, Def Jam Songwriter(s): Kanye West, Benjamin Scholefield, Fereico Vindver Producer(s): Kanye West, Budgie, Federico Vindver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T58tRXzjC7c 7) „Jesus Is Lord“ Album: Jesus Is King (2019) Artist(s): Kanye West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rns_n82HiMo 8) „Selah“ Album: Jesus Is King (2019) Artist(s): Kanye West Label: GOOD, Def Jam Songwriter(s): Kanye West, Cydel Young, Dexter Raymond Mills Jr., Federico Vindver, Gene Thornton, Jahmal Gwin, Jeffrey La Valley, Rennard East, Terrence Thornton, Evan Mast Producer(s): Kanye West, E*vax, BoogzDaBeast, Federico Vindver, Benny Blanco, Francis Starlite Samples: „Hallelujah, Salvation and Glory“ Interpolates: „Ultralight Beam“ (Kanye West, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin, The Dream, Chance The Rapper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selah_(Kanye_West_song) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CNPg2IQoC0 9) Ausklang: „Water“ Album: Jesus Is King (2019) Artist(s): Kanye West Featured artists: Ant Clemons Label: GOOD, Def Jam Songwriter(s): Kanye West, Alexander Nelson Klein, Angel Lopez Anthony Clemons, Bruce Haack, Federico Vindver, Jahmal Gwin, Timothy Mosley, Victory lyse Boyd Producer(s): BoogzDaBeast, Kanye West, Angel Lopez, Federico Vindver, Timbaland Interpolates: „We Are All Water“ (Yoko Ono) Samples: „Snow Job“ (Bruce Haack) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_(Kanye_West_song) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YfG1Xbo4OA Anzeigebild: By Bryan Horowitz - P1000391, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74382922

M59: Manakinz

Monologues.

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2019 63:23

Click here to listen to our new release from Manakinz on 'Dialogue Vol. 4' Follow Manakinz on SoundCloud No-one is making house music we love more right now than Manakinz. The newly-minted project of Sub Club legend Harri and his production partner Max, Manakinz make hot, heavy, relentless, chunky-ass house music. Thickly packed with layers of samples, rolling percussion, disco grooves, rasping synths all licked by fat distortion, their tracks absolutely go off in the club. Play one and you’ll see and hear the mood change. We’re ecstatic to be releasing a bunch of their material through Monologues Records over the coming months, kicking off with ‘Robopubez (Rust In Peace)’ on our ‘Dialogue Vol. 4’ vinyl sampler on September 20. We wanted to give them a proper introduction, so here’s their slammin’ mix of unreleased material, with a slew of Monologues bits in there. And Billy Connolly…? *How would you describe your sound?*Genre-neutral dance music for all the family.*What and who inspires you and influences your sound?*Having fun, dub, soul, jazz, afrobeat, house, techno, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Norman Whitfield, Fela Kuti and Henrik Schwarz. We share the same vision, so often swap specs...*Can you tell us a little about this mix and what it means to you?*Cobbled together Thursday and Friday afternoon, using stuff we've just recently made and stuff we made earlier in the year. As for its meaning, we both thought that it sounded good and just hope that others do too. Tracklist:Manakinz - Jingle [unreleased]Manakinz - Billy's intro [unreleased]Manakinz - Choo Choo Loco [unreleased]Manakinz - Cowboy Crocs [unreleased]Manakinz - Noodlegate [unreleased]Manakinz - Snackpoint Charlie [unreleased]Manakinz - Stooky [forthcoming Monologues Records]Manakinz - Spaceships In The Night [forthcoming Monologues Records]Manakinz - Rustoline Pandera [forthcoming Monologues Records]Manakinz - I.T.Y.T. [unreleased]Manakinz - Beach House [forthcoming Monologues Records]Manakinz - Traq Zoot Tap [unreleased]Manakinz - Martian Mallows [unreleased]Manakinz - Big Talk Small Talk [unreleased]

monologues fela kuti lee scratch perry henrik schwarz norman whitfield sub club

The Temptations - "I Can't Get Next To You"

I'm In Love With That Song

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2019 18:49

The Temptations' first #1 Hit on the Billboard "Hot 100" chart was "My Girl" in 1965. 4 years later, they had their 2nd #1 with "I Can't Get Next To You", and the difference between these 2 songs tells you a lot about the 1960's. "I Can't Get Next To You" features a different lead vocalist, a more aggressive, funky beat and a trippy vibe courtesy of producer & songwriter Norman Whitfield. The early Temptations songs are great, but for my money, they were never better than when they teamed up with Whitfield and created "psychedelic soul". Let's listen to each piece of the puzzle that created this masterpiece. "I Can't Get Next To You" (Barret Strong & Norman Whitfield) Copyright 1969 Jobette Music Co., Inc. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. on behalf of Stone Agate Music (A division of Jobette Music Co., Inc.)

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Episode 10: Squeeze, Ani DiFranco, Oliver Tree, Whethan and Lizzo

enemy rolling stones papa lizzo squeeze ozzy osbourne tempted truth hurts ani difranco tony iommi war pigs oliver tree geezer butler bill ward whethan chris difford norman whitfield glenn tilbrook both hands

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2019 9:42

In the tenth episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Squeeze’s “Tempted” (written by Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford) and Ani DiFranco’s “Both Hands,” and another of Oliver Tree and Whethan’s “Enemy” (written by Ethan Snoreck and Oliver Tree) and Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” (written by Melissa Jefferson, Eric Frederic, Jesse Saint John and Steven Cheung).Episode video: https://youtu.be/MFPosq5RuekSong List:(1) “Squeeze Both Hands” - a mashup of “Tempted,” written by Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, and “Both Hands,” written by Ani DiFranco(2) “Truthful Enemy” - a mashup of “Enemy,” written by Ethan Snoreck and Oliver Tree, and “Truth Hurts,” written by Melissa Jefferson, Eric Frederic, Jesse Saint John and Steven CheungBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.netSupport this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Episode 09: Barry White, Whitesnake, Aretha and Erasure

night respect rolling stones papa give up ozzy osbourne erasure whitesnake barry white otis redding tony iommi war pigs david coverdale geezer butler never gonna give you up bill ward john sykes vince clarke norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2019 9:30

In the ninth episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Barry White's "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up" and Whitesnake's “Still of the Night,” and another of Aretha's version of Otis Redding's "Respect" and Erasure's “A Little Respect”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/JBd9AgvqAHoSong List:(1) “Give Up the Still of the Night” - a mashup of “Still of the Night,” written by David Coverdale and John Sykes; and “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up,” written by Barry White(2) “Twice the Respect” - a mashup of “Respect,” written by Otis Redding and “A Little Respect,” written by Vince Clarke and Andy BellBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.netSupport this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Episode 08: Angie Stone, Pink Floyd, Gnarls Barkley and Patsy Cline

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2019 12:07

In the eighth episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Angie Stone’s “Wish I Didn’t Miss You” and Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” and another of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/MmnTql84a_MSong List:(1) “Miss You Numb” - a mashup of “Wish I Didn’t Miss You,” written by Andrea Martin and Ivan Matias; “Back Stabbers,” written by Leon Huff, Gene McFadden and John Whitehead; and “Comfortably Numb,” written by David Gilmour and Roger Waters(2) “Twice As Crazy” - a mashup of “Crazy,” written by Brian Burton, Thomas Callaway, Gian Franco Reverberi and Gian Piero Reverberi; and “Crazy,” written by Willie NelsonBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.netSupport this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Episode 07: The Velvet Underground, Weezer, Snoh Aalegra and Stevie Wonder

rolling stones papa stevie wonder weezer ozzy osbourne lou reed velvet underground tony iommi rivers cuomo snoh aalegra war pigs furs geezer butler bill ward norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2019 10:33

In the seventh episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” and Weezer’s “Undone - The Sweater Song,” and another of Snoh Aalegra’s “Feels” and Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/x4IK-pVnX7kSong List:(1) “Furry Sweater” - a mashup of “Venus in Furs,” written by Lou Reed; and “Undone -- The Sweater Song,” written by Rivers Cuomo(2) “Feels Love” - a mashup of “Feels,” written by Snoh Aalegra; and “My Cherie Amour,” written by Stevie Wonder, Henry Cosby and Sylvia MoyBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.net Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Edwin Starr – The Deep Dive Podcast

95.7 The Lake

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2019 2:02

Edwin Starr is best known for his massive 1970s hit “War,” which was actually not a song produced originally for the Tennessee-native singer. Starr began his career as a late 50s R&B singer with Ric Tic records, which was later purchased by Barry Gordie’s Motown records in Detroit. Motown of course was heralded as the smash-record producing house that brought fame for many African American artists, but at the time, Starr was only a B level artist. War became the song that Motown songwriter Norman Whitfield would be better suited to have an anthem-style production with James Brown overtones that could help steer scrutiny away from the Temptations’ already phenomenal career, and put the risky counter-culture anti-Vietnam song in the hands of a relatively unknown artist. Starr's version of "War" was a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1970, and is not only the most successful and well-known record of his career, but it is also one of the most popular protest songs ever recorded. If you can believe it, Edwin’s interjections in War of “good God ya’ll” and “absolutely nothing” were actually not part of the original songwriting. They were simply ad-libs on-the-spot that naturally came to him during the recording process. Even Bruce Springsteen has taken a crack at singing and releasing War as a single, having first shown up as a live performance on the Boss’ Born in the USA tour, and then appearing as a single on his Live box set. Since the theme of the song complimented his own Born in the USA hit single, it was a natural fit for his shows. Though the song was powerful to his live shows, he still couldn’t quite remember the lyrics. He apparently used to tape them to his arm so he wouldn’t screw them up. Portions of this profile were attributed to Wikipedia.org’s Edwin Starr entry.

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Episode 06: Billy Joel, Neil Sedaka, Blind Melon and Harvey Danger

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2019 11:04

In the sixth episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Billy Joel’s “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” and Neil Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain,” and another of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta” and Blind Melon’s “No Rain”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/zn_dX2biKTsSong List:(1) “Movin’ Out in the Rain” - a mashup of “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” written by Billy Joel; and “Laughter in the Rain” written by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody(2) “Flagpole Sittin’ in the Rain” - a mashup of “Flagpole Sitta,” written by Sean Nelson, Jeff J. Lin, Aaron Huffman and Evan Sult; and “No Rain,” written by Christopher John Thorn, Thomas Rogers Stevens, Brad Smith, Glen Graham and Shannon HoonBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.net Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Episode 05: Somethin’ for the People, The Romantics, N.W.A. and Pachelbel

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2019 13:01

In the fifth episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Somethin’ for the People's “My Love Is the Ssh!” and The Romantics' “Talking in Your Sleep,“ and another of N.W.A.’s “Express Yourself” and Pachelbel's “Pachelbel's Canon”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/1T4FIWXCvuU Song List:(1) “Ssh! You're Sleeping!” - a mashup of “My Love Is the Shh!,” written by Curtis "Sauce" Wilson, Roshad Holiday, Jeff "Fuzzy" Young, Tamara Powell, James Baker and Melvin Young; and “Talking in Your Sleep” written by Coz Canler, Jimmy Marinos, Wally Palmar, Mike Skill and Peter Solley(2) “Express Yourself in D” - a mashup of “Express Yourself,” written by Charles Wright; “Express Yourself,” written by O’Shea Jackson and Andre Young; “Hook,” written by John Popper; and “Pachelbel’s Canon,” composed by Johann PachelbelBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.net Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Episode 04: The Carpenters, Joe Cocker, Roy Orbison and The Motels

rolling stones papa lonely ozzy osbourne masquerade carpenters roy orbison joe cocker motels leon russell tony iommi war pigs geezer butler bill ward cry me norman whitfield arthur hamilton

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2019 11:08

In the fourth episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of The Carpenters’ “This Masquerade” and Joe Cocker’s “Cry Me a River,“ and another of Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” and The Motels’ “Only the Lonely”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/0X1y4nCCOTISong List:(1) “Teary Masquerade” - a mashup of “Cry Me a River,” written by Arthur Hamilton and “This Masquerade,” written by Leon Russell(2) “Only the Lonelies” - a mashup of “Only the Lonely,” written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson; and “Only the Lonely” written by Martha Davis and Jeff JourardBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.net Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

Episode 03: Genesis, Sly and the Family Stone, Lady Gaga and System of a Down

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2019 11:39

In the third episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Genesis’s “Misunderstanding” and Sly and The Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,“ and another of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” and System of a Down’s “Holy Mountains”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/fbI6oc6QpoISong List:(1) “Hot Misunderstanding” - a mashup of “Misunderstanding,” written by Phil Collins and “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” written by Sly Stone(2) “Holy Poker Face Mountains” - a mashup of “Poker Face,” written by Stefani Germanotta and Nadir Khayat; and “Holy Mountains” written by Daron Malakian and Serj TankianBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.net Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

TRUTH IN RHYTHM Podcast: Mark Kenoly (Rose Royce, Norman Whitfield), Part 1 of 3

deep rhythm tir podcast mark rose royce norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2019 51:11

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE – THANK YOU! Brought to you by FUNKNSTUFF.NET and hosted by Scott Goldfine — musicologist and author of “Everything Is on THE ONE: The First Guide of Funk” ― “TRUTH IN RHYTHM” is the interview show that gets DEEP into the pocket with contemporary music’s foremost masters of the groove. Featured in TIR […]

TRUTH IN RHYTHM Podcast: Mark Kenoly (Rose Royce, Norman Whitfield), Part 2 of 3

deep rhythm tir podcast mark rose royce norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2019 49:56

TRUTH IN RHYTHM Podcast: Mark Kenoly (Rose Royce, Norman Whitfield), Part 3 of 3

deep rhythm tir podcast mark rose royce norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2019 39:36

Episode 02: Pink Floyd, Billy Joel, The Beatles and Taylor Swift

taylor swift beatles rolling stones papa pink floyd billy joel cigars ozzy osbourne roger waters shake it off big shot max martin let me down tony iommi war pigs geezer butler lennon mccartney bill ward norman whitfield

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2019 12:47

In the second episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast- Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” and Billy Joel’s “Big Shot,“ and another of The Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”.Episode video: https://youtu.be/7v40x6FjbxkSong List:(1) “Have a Cigar, Big Shot” - a mashup of “Have a Cigar,” written by Roger Waters and “Big Shot,” written by Billy Joel(2) “Don’t Let Me Shake It Off” - a mashup of “Don’t Let Me Down,” written by Lennon-McCartney and “Shake It Off” written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin and ShellbackBackground music: “Papa Was a Bloody War Pig,” - a mashup of “War Pigs,” written by Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward; and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett StrongIf you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.net Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Le Temps d'une Chanson

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2019 17:36

David (@vinylophyle sur Instagram) vous raconte l'histoire de I Heard It Through The Grapevine, de Norman Whitfield et Barrett Strong. Le premier enregistrement date du 6 août 1966 par Smokey Robinson & The Miracles mais ne sortira qu'en 1968. Le deuxième enregistrement date du printemps 1967 par Marvin Gaye mais ne sortira que le 26 août 1968 sur In The Groove (album republié par la suite sous le titre I Heard It Through The Grapevine). Le troisième enregistrement est enfin publié en septembre 1967 (c'est donc le premier à paraître) par Gladys Knight & The Pips. Sortent ensuite la version des Temptations sur Cloud Nine en 1969 et celle de Creedence Clearwater Revival sur Cosmo's Factory en 1970. Celle des Slits n'est parue qu'en face B de leur premier 45 tours en 1979. Enfin, j'ai participé au podcast Ma Chanson Préférée que vous pouvez écouter et auquel vous pouvez vous abonner. Le générique est une version de La Javanaise (Serge Gainsbourg) interprétée par Tony Feront. Retrouvez-nous sur chronicast.com et sur Twitter @ChronicastFr.

miracles heard temptations enfin marvin gaye smokey robinson grapevine gladys knight creedence clearwater revival pips cloud nine slits sortent barrett strong norman whitfield in the groove i heard it through the grapevine cosmo's factory ma chanson pr

Episode 01: Janis Ian, Frank Sinatra, Britney Spears and Paul Simon