Newspaper Page Text
- The beat goes on in
■- "Motown 40 on ABC
By Jacqueline Cutler
©TVData Features Syndicate
Doctors declare death when hearts
stop or brain waves cease. But there’s
another sure sign: if Motown’s play
ing and you’re not moving.
Just a smattering of songs from
Hitsville, USA - “I Heard It Through
the Grapevine,” “My Girl,” “Stop! In
the Name of Love” or “Tracks of My
Tears” - prompts otherwise staid folk
to sing in tortured falsettos or forced
basses. They can’t help themselves;
it’s Motown.
The latest 45 with the navy and
silver label once guaranteed dancing
in the streets. Now, members of the
younger generation ask what a 45 is.
They don’t realize that becoming a
Pip was a career goal - regardless of
gender, race or talent.
For anyone who ever hugged his
main squeeze tighter than Smokey
Robinson's sweet voice caressed that
high note, there’s a treat in store. The
infectious sound of Detroit celebrates
its 40th anniversary in Motown 40:
The Music Is Forever, a four-hour
ABC documentary airing Sunday,
Feb. 15, and Thursday, Feb. 19.
Hosted by Diana Ross, the special
includes interviews with many of the
label’s performers and behind-the
scenes people.
The show also features singers
who were not Motown artists, such as
Aretha Franklin and James Taylor.
Suzanne de Passe, the show’s pro
ducer, says she wanted to show those
who were influenced by the genre.
She then admits that would have to
include anyone who has turned on a
radio during the past 40 years.
“We talked to family members and
tried to make it very intimate at what
was always so glitzy and glamorous
and big,” de Passe says.
The sequins and oh-so-smooth
choreography were no accident.
Motown founder Berry Gordy
demanded his stars move right, pre
sent a song and always look perfect.
To achieve this, performers attended
Motown’s artist development school.
There, dance greats perfected those
slides and rolling hands, and a
doyenne of charm school taught the
ladies poise.
“I didn’t have to go to charm
school, but I wanted to,” says Martha
Reeves in that lush, throaty voice that
gave life to Martha and the
Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street.”
Now a grandmother twice over,
Reeves, like many Motown greats,
started out as a kid from the Detroit
slums. Thirty-five years later, she is
still touring.
Otis Williams, the sole remaining
original member of the Temptations,
took time out from recording his 56th
album to be interviewed.
Williams so loved the golden days
at Motown (Gordy moved it to Los
Angeles in 1971, and sold the com
pany in ’B9) ’that he used to help
clean the offices. Reeves answered
phones and scheduled time on the
one piano in the house where the
original Motown offices were locat
ed.
“Aside from coming to a place to
achieve your dreams by singing and
dancing and performing,” Williams
says, “it was the chemistry, the
camaraderie and the love of all these
people. We were all pulling together.
There was no animosity or any of
this stuff you normally run into.”
All credit Gordy, and God, for
making it happen. Until he was 27,
Gordy considered himself a failure.
Then he became the world’s most
successful black entertainment
mogul, bringing African-American
talent into the then stubbornly white
mainstream.
“He was flying in the face of
odds,” says de Passe, who became
Gordy’s creative assistant after drop
ping out of her freshman year of col
lege 30 years ago.
“Berry Gordy is such a perfection
ist and such an exacting boss that I
call him not my mentor, but my tor
mentor,” she adds. They were busi
ness partners for years.
Gordy remains best friends with
Robinson to this day. Their lifelong
collaboration began after the teen
age Robinson and his then group, the
Matadors, failed an audition. Gordy
asked Robinson about the group’s
material, and the teen-ager produced
a notebook crammed with original
100 songs and began singing.
Today, Gordy is the executive pro
ducer on Robinson’s latest album.
What number is this for Robinson?
“Honey, you might as well have
asked me what number breath I just
drew,” says he of the aquamarine
eyes.
Over the years, people have tried
to copy the sound that gets people on
the dance floor no matter how dead
ly the party.
“People have said it’s more bass,
more drums, the beat,” Robinson
says. “The Motown sound is and was
the people who made it, the writers,
the producers, the artists. That’s the
Motown sound.
“When we were really just begin
ning to get really hot throughout the
record world, people would bring
their acts to Detroit from all over the
world,” Robinson continues. “They
thought the Motown sound was in
the air there. If you recorded out on
the expressway, you would get the
Motown sound. At the same time,
our acts would be performing in
London, Europe, Nashville, and we
always got the Motown sound. And, I
defy someone to tell me which acts
were recorded where. The Motown
sound was the people.”’" k b r ;l
fl
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Smokey Robinson is among the many musicians appearing in Motown 40: The Music Is Forever. The two-part trib
ute airs Sunday hnd Thursday on ABC. |
Entertainmente?ctra»?/13/98 thru 2/19/98*
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