The Motown Story

Motown began the decade groping for a style. Originally, it was just another R&B label, noteworthy primarily for the consistent high quality of its singles. Through the early Sixties and out of the combined efforts of artists such as the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Contours, and producers like Smokey Robinson, Mickey Stevenson, and Berry Gordy himself, Motown records began to achieve a certain stylistic identity. In 1964 Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier began producing the Supremes and with the unprecendented success of that group, the Motown sound came into full flower.

For the next three years Holland and Dozier defined, expanded and elaborated on that sound, their achievements towering over and affecting the work of their colleagues in both the largest and smallest of ways. In 1967 they left the company and Motown moved into its modern phase. No one production team has been allowed to dominate the creative process the way Holland and Dozier did in the middle Sixties. Instead a variety of men and women have emerged, each with their own special talents, each capable of consistently producing top ten records. As a result, the Motown sound today is more diversified than at any time since its earliest days, and yet, like those early records, they are all clearly Motown records.

What was the Motown sound? In its heyday, in the middle Sixties, it consisted of: 1) simply structured songs with sophisticated melodies and chord changes, 2) a relentless four-beat drum pattern, 3) a gospel use of background voices, vaguely derived from the style of the Impressions, 4) a regular and sophisticated use of both horns and strings, 5) lead singers who were half way between pop and gospel music, 6) a group of accompanying musicians who were among the most dextrous, knowledgeable, and brilliant in all of popular music (Motown bassists have long been the envy of white rock bassists) and 7) a trebly style of mixing that relied heavily on electronic limiting and equalizing (boosting the high range frequencies) to give the overall product a distinctive sound, particularly effective for broadcast over AM radio.

It is safe to say that from 1965 to 1967 ninety percent of all Motown records possessed every one of these qualities. But it is not true, as has been charged from time to time, that as a result, all Motown records sounded the same. They only did in the sense that all Warner Brothers detective pictures looked the same in the Forties. If you listen for the common elements, that's what you hear. But the beauty of the records is in the differences, subtle as they may be, that separate one from another. The nuances, the shadings, the giving and taking away of things to emphasize points: this became the area of personal creativity at Motown.

And as the song writing — both melody and lyrics — became ever more beautiful and singing ever more direct, the quality of the records improved at a pace that was all but astounding. For, like all great popular art, Motown confined itself in formal ways to liberate itself in other ways. You can't shatter conventions when none exist. And conversely, you can't invent a meaningful convention if you don't feel it.

Just as all Motown records do not really sound alike, so too must it be understood that the sound itself was not a contrivance but a style that grew out of the musical wisdom of some true rock and roll revolutionaries. They didn't add the four beat to the drum part because everyone else was doing a two-beat: they did it because it felt right to them. When it proved right to millions of record buyers, it only served to confirm their personal judgment, not to determine it. As slick as Motown records may sometimes sound, the sense of conviction and commitment seldom fails them; it's just that to fully appreciate it their records must be listened to as a totality.

I say as a totality, because it is often hard to know who to call the artist on a Motown record. No matter how much Sam Philips did for Jerry Lee Lewis in the studio no one has ever thought of calling a Jerry Lee Lewis record a Sam Phillips record. But, was "Baby Love" a Supremes record or a Holland and Dozier record? The only thing that can be said for sure is that the record wouldn't exist without either component. Diana Ross played her part so well it would be ludicrous to suggest that anyone else could have done it justice.

On the other hand it is impossible to form a picture of Diana Ross as a recording artist apart from the production that gave her her musical identity and image. With a Levi Stubbs (of the Four Tops) or a Martha Reeves (from the Vandellas) one is more tempted to give the artist the major share of the credit. They have built an identity through the production that often transcends the production.

Perhaps the true relationship between Motown artist and producer is revealed by what happened to Holland and Dozier after they left the company — and to the acts they produced. Their two biggest, the Four Tops and the Supremes, have never regained the hit-making consistency they had under Holland and Dozier, and the Tops in particular have suffered a long dry spell. However, Holland and Dozier themselves have fared far worse. Separated from their original group of artists they have yet to produce half a dozen memorable singles on their Invictus label, and not a single one that compares at all with the best of their Motown work. In fact, a great deal of their time has been spent trying to copy the styles of the groups they originally produced. All of which makes a strong case for the interdependence of producer and artist at Motown, in the first place.