The Motown Story

In any event, the common purpose of artist and producer was making records and the history of Motown is, as the logo on the Gordy label reads, "in the grooves." The best of them continue to speak for themselves both aesthetically and as pieces of personal history for those who lived with them in one way or another. The following list is intended to include some records of historical importance, some that achieved vast popularity and some of merely personal preference. Taken together, they are but a sample of the best Motown had to offer in the Sixties. And a sample of the best of Motown is a sample of the best, period.

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"Wonderful One," by Marvin Gaye. An early record and the best example of Motown's gospel-blues roots. The only element of the later style evident here is the treble recording sound and the beautiful lyrics written by Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland. In the record's crucial moment the lyrics skirt the gospel implications of the music for the secular intentions of the voice with the lines, "You make my burdens a little bit lighter/You make my life a little bit lighter/ you're a wonderful one." For a second you forget whether Gaye is singing about God or his woman. [Listen]

"Stubbon Kind of Fellow" by Marvin Gaye. On the threshold of the complete Motown sound, Gaye sings this one at the top of his range while Diana Ross and the Supremes sing a perfectly stylized background (in the Curtis May-field mold) over a rhythm section that churns like a pulse reacting to high blood pressure. [Listen]

"Come and Get These Memories," by Martha and the Vandellas. A song about a guy who has gone "and left behind so many memories." The whole thing is rather predictable until it gets to the brief, beautifully timed hook at the end! "Because of all these memories/I never think of anybody but you/ So come on and get 'em/Because I've found me somebody new." The deliberate quality of Martha's singing at this moment is so unexpected that it may well provide the supreme example of a Motown nuance. [Listen]

"Tracks of My Tears," by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. An acknowledged masterpiece by one of the great stylists in pop music history. I bought this single the same day I bought two other records — "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Do You Believe In Magic." I played those two once apiece and then played the "Tracks of My Tears" until I wore out its grooves. Of the three records — all hits in 1965 — is there any doubt that this is the one that has survived with its original intentions and beauty least faded by age? [Listen]

"Come See About Me," by the Supremes. First there was "Where Did Our Love Go," then there was "Baby Love," and then there was the one that made me a believer, "Come See About Me." It's the background voices that make it work: the call and response so calculated and yet so soothing. A superb arrangement and vocal performance. [Listen]

"Stop! In the Name of Love," by the Supremes. A great record in every respect, but one that deserves inclusion simply because of its title. [Listen]

"Ain't Too Proud to Beg," by the Temptations. "I know you want to leave me, but I refuse to let you go" — and then came the piano and David Ruffin was off and burning his way through another beautiful Motown R&B Temptations record. the Temptations may not have hit as many high spots as some of the others but, song for song, their first Greatest Hits album is more consistently enjoyable than any of the others. David Ruffin managed to make every performance memorable in some respect. Like so many other of his admirers, I wish he were still singing with them today. [Listen]

"I'm Losin' You," by the Temptations. Ruffin's last single with the group combined a beautiful lyric with the only man at the time who could do it justice: "Your touch, your touch has grown cold/ As if someone else controlled your very soul/ I've fooled myself for as long as I can/I feel the presence of another man." And then "It's in the air, it's everywhere, Ooh baby, I'm losin' you." As great as he is, Rod Stewart's interpretation of this song only confirms the matchless perfection of the original. [Listen]

"Uptight," by Stevie Wonder: "On the right side of the tracks she was born and raised/In a great big house filled with butlers and maids/Can't give her lots of things that money can't buy but I never, never make my baby cry." Stevie Wonder has always been the voice of pure R&B at Motown. Here he takes two chords and tells the story of his musical persona. It's one Motown record that no one will ever call slick. Listen to the bass player work out. [Listen]

"You're All I Need to Get By," by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" was musically more daring but this is probably the best of the Gaye-Terrell collaboration because it is the best song. It was written by the record's producers, Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who wrote "Let's Go Get Stoned" before coming to Motown. The higher ranges of the harmony are breathtaking but it is the superb attention to melodic detail throughout that mark it as a classic. [Listen]

"I Want You Back," by the Jackson 5. Along with Stevie Wonder's tribute to Stax records, "Signed, Sealed and Delivered," this has to be the finest recent Motown record. The group's harmony, in execution and conception, surpasses the work of all pop white practitioners of the art. The arrangement, energy, and simple spacing of the rhythm all contribute to the record's spell-binding impact. Surely the coupling, of this group with the Motown production staff is one of the most fortuituous events in the recent history of pop music. [Listen]

Finally, perhaps because I was most involved personally with Motown's music in the mid-Sixties, I would pick three songs from that period that form an apex in the company's development and together define the summit of its accomplishment. "You Keep Me Hanging On" was Holland and Dozier when it looked like they would never stop. It is lyrically their finest work, rhythmically stunning although subtly complex, and considered as a performance it as perfect as a record can be and still convey feeling. Diana Ross never conveyed more than when she sang:

Why do you keep comin' around,
playing with my heart,
Why don't you get out of my
life and let me make a new start,
Let me get over you the way
you've gotten over me,
Set me free why don't you babe,
Let me be, why don't you babe,
You don't really love me,
You just keep me hanging on.

The song expresses a state of mind with such confidence and accuracy that I doubt it has been done better anywhere else, in any other form. [Listen]

All of this applies even more to the Four Tops' song of the same time period, "Reach Out I'll Be There." Holland and Dozier bowed in Bob Dylan's direction on this one, coming up with a structured, repetitive verse that built to a climax in exactly the manner of Dylan's middle period songs. The song's intentions were the same as Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" but a far superior statement of the theme.

Simon's song is a studied and affected attempt at communication: it strains for effect. The Tops' song is conversation pared down into lyrics, interwoven with a music that does not aim for intensity, but is intensity itself. As Levi says, in the spoken introduction to the song on The Motown Story, it just meant, "C'mon girl, reach out for me." [Listen]

Finally, I would choose one of Holland and Dozier's first hit records, Martha and the Vandellas's "Heat Wave." Everything Motown is and can ever hope to become is on that record. Because it came in the struggling period it has none of the decadent qualities that marred some of the company's later work. It is, in fact, the purest of Motown singles. And if ever an artist expressed herself through production it is on this record: Martha takes everything, the song, the band, the sound, the background singing — and goes for herself. How many moments on albums by white guitar bands could ever compare with Martha singing: "Sometimes I stare in space,/ Tears all over my face,/Can't explain it, can't understand it,/ You know I never felt like this before." And then, over the horn break, and in answer to her cries, the Vandellas answer her back with startling intimacy, "Go ahead girl" and "It ain't nothing but love" and, finally, "This sounds like true romance, like a heatwave." It is a song to live with and music to learn from. [Listen]

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Through these records we can get a sense of the continuing growth of the company as well as its continuing musical accomplishments. Behind that growth has been the vision of the company's founder, the record business's closest thing to Howard Hughes, Berry Gordy, Jr. He was there to start it, there to make it work, and is there now to make it continue. Like the movie moguls and the independent record men that preceded him, he provides the company's continuity. Artists and producers may come and go; Berry Gordy will still be there.

His company has past through ten years of growth and come out of them a giant in every respect. In the decade ahead, it is my personal hope that Motown will keep alive the tradition they upheld so brilliantly in the Sixties: the independent record company. As an independent they have created a body of work that, for what it is intended to be, is without peer; they have mastered the art of the single. For me personally they have done more. When I hear Barrett Stong, Mary Welles, Martha and the Vandellas, Brenda Holloway, Smokey and the Miracles, the Marvelettes, David Ruffin, the Temptations, Junior Walker, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Jackson 5, the Supremes, or even, and in someways, especially, Diana Ross — when I hear them at their best I hear a voice calling me and it can't be denied. May that call be as loud and clear during the next ten years as it was during the first.

[From Issue 82 — May 13, 1971]