Motown is very underrated and it's a stereotype that it was just factory/ assembly line production with lots of strings, sweetened for the white market etc...

Some very hard rocking rhythm and blues sounds in the early days, too... Check Barrett Strong's "Money", the first Contours single "Whole Lotta Woman", or Eddie Holland's "Leaving Here"... of course, I also like a lot of the sweet sounds...

Smokey Robinson is a genius!

And what against Martha & The Vandellas? Nowhere to run!!!

The early stuff that influenced The Beatles is better, sure.  It fucked up around the time big hair, big lapels and big funky boots arrived on the scene.

LOL, nice story!

Seeing as Mr Starr spent the last couple of decades living in the midlands this is not too surprising. Very much like Champion Jack Dupree settling in West Yorkshire.

Motown is a strange thing and this is probably not the correct place to go into all my own feelings about it. It's a fascinating story and throws up many anomalies. For a brief time it was the most successful independent record company of all time, but taken as a whole it can also be said to be the most spectacularly unsuccessful record company in history. When Gordy finally sold all his interests in the record company it was making colossal losses, decade after decade. His golden egg is the song publishing which will continue to make his family rich for generations to come.

Artistically I find the 'hit' era (1965-68) the least interesting and can have sympathy with those who feel that the productions and songs of Holland-Dozier-Holland at the time when The Supremes and Four Tops couldn't fail are often banal and formulaic. What came immediately either side of that is often wonderful. The early Miracles, Marvelettes, Mary Wells, Temptations and Mabel John records are beautiful transitional R&B with a very distinct flavour. The late 1960s and early 70s saw the company release a high volume of very high quality and often very individual soul music from a maturing roster which included talents as rounded and visionary as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and other great material sung by some of the greatest voices Black America ever produced in G.C. Cameron, David Ruffin etc.

Also worth bearing in mind that this was a Black owned and staffed corporation, something which cannot be said of competitors like Stax, Atlantic, Fame and Hi who are often cited as being somehow 'rootsier'.

Oddly enough, I liked 'There's A Ghost In My House'.  My grandmother changed his sheets when he was staying at the hotel she worked in.

Last edited by Maximilien de Robespierre (2010-08-10 08:34:03)