Motown Classics

the original sixties stars of Motwon

the Good Girls were a 90's LA version of the Supremes

The Motown production process has been described as factory-like.  The Hitsville studios remained open and active 22 hours a day, and artists would often go on tour for weeks, come back to Detroit to record as many songs as possible, and then promptly go on tour again.  Barry Gordy held quality control meetings every Friday morning, and used veto power to ensure that only the very best material and performances would be released.  The test was that every new release needed to fit into a sequence of the top five selling pop singles of the week.  Several tracks that later became critical and commercial favorites were initially rejected by Gordy; the two most notable being the Marvin Gaye songs I Heard It Through the Grapevine and What's Going On. In several cases, producers would re-work tracks in hopes of eventually getting them approved at a later Friday morning meeting, as producer Norman Whitfield did with Grapevine and The Temptations' Ain't Too Proud to Beg.

Tamala records party with Barry Gordy on piano, Stevie Wonder foreground and Smokey Robinson in the background

Many of Motown's best-known songs, including all the early hits for the Supremes, were written by the songwriting trio of Holland–Dozier–Holland (Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland).  Other important Motown producers and songwriters included Norman Whitfield, William "Mickey" Stevenson, Smokey Robinson, Barrett Strong, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Frank Wilson, Pamela Sawyer & Gloria Jones, James Dean & William Weatherspoon, Johnny Bristol, Harvey Fuqua, Gil Askey, Stevie Wonder and Barry Gordy himself. In addition to the songwriting prowess of the writers and producers, one of the major factors in the widespread appeal of Motown's music was Gordy's practice of using a highly select and tight-knit group of studio musicians, collectively known as the Funk Brothers, to record the instrumental or band tracks of a majority of Motown recordings.  The band's career and work is chronicled in the 2002 documentary film Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which publicised the fact that the Funk Brothers played on more number-one records than The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined.

Gladys Knight & The Pips

Artist development was a major part of Motown's operations.  The acts on the Motown label were fastidiously groomed, dressed and choreographed for live performances.  Motown artists were advised that their breakthrough into the white popular music market made them ambassadors for other African-American artists seeking broad market acceptance, and that they should think, act, walk and talk like royalty, so as to alter the less-than-dignified image commonly held of black musicians by white Americans in that era.  Given that many of the talented young artists had been raised in housing projects and were short on social and dress skills, this Motown department was not only necessary, it created an elegant style of presentation long associated with the label.  The artist development department specialized primarily in working with younger, less experienced acts; experienced performers such as Jr. Walker and Marvin Gaye were exempted from artist development classes.

Thelma Houston, Grammy Award winner for 1977 single Don't Leave Me This Way

Barry Gordy relocated Motown to Los Angeles in 1972, and there it remained an independent company until June 28, 1988, when Gordy sold the company to MCA and Boston Ventures (which took over full ownership of Motown in 1991).  Motown was then sold to PolyGram in 1994, before being sold again to MCA Records' successor, Universal Music Group, when it acquired PolyGram in 1999. Motown spent much of the 2000's as a part of the Universal Music subsidiaries Universal Motown and Universal Motown Republic Group, and headquartered in New York City.  From 2011 to 2014, Motown was a part of The Island Def Jam Music Group division of Universal Music.  On April 1, 2014, Universal Music Group announced the dissolution of Island Def Jam; subsequently Motown relocated back to Los Angeles to operate under the Capitol Music Group.

Wanderin' Spirit
October, 2014
"Motown Classics"

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