Motown Records was founded in Detroit by Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959; the original record label was Tamla Records, though Motown Records was in evidence later in the year. The label name is a contraction of “Motor Town”, reflecting the city’s status as the home of America’s largest automakers, and Motown later became a nickname for Detroit as well. (Technically the main power source in a car is an “engine”, though in the early years, everyone called it a “motor”).
Surprisingly, the Tamla Records label was named after the Debbie Reynolds song “Tammy” that was a hit from the film Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) – needless to say, “Tammy” is not at all an R&B song – and Berry Gordy originally wanted to name the label “Tammy Records”. Outside the U.S., the label was named Tamla Motown Records.
Berry Gordy’s first success as a songwriter was for a big hit for Detroit artist Jackie Wilson, “Lonely Teardrops”. He wasn’t too happy with his earnings from that song, however, so that led to the founding of the legendary record company, Motown Records.
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A record company needs a songwriting team, and Motown had one of the best in the business with “Holland-Dozier-Holland”, that is, Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland (the latter two being brothers). According to Wikipedia: “During their tenure at Motown from 1962 to 1967, [Lamont] Dozier and Brian Holland were the composers and producers for each song, and Eddie Holland wrote the lyrics and arranged the vocals.”
I was frankly thrilled to see the three of them together on television once; they made a half-hearted attempt to perform one of their classic songs, but sadly not all that well – clearly their talents primarily lay elsewhere. Eddie Holland did have some early success as a recording artist though. Also, as with many if not most songwriting teams, the individuals co-wrote songs with others over the years.
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Holland-Dozier-Holland is a songwriting powerhouse; besides writing some of Motown’s best-known hits, they wrote most of the songs on entire albums for some of the biggest stars on the label. For the Supremes’ second album Where Did Our Love Go (1964), not only did Holland-Dozier-Holland write the group’s three Number 1 hits that appear on the album (as well as 10 of their 12 Number 1 hits overall) – “Where Did Our Love Go”, “Baby Love”, and “Come See About Me” – they also wrote 5 of the 9 other songs on the album. About Where Did Our Love Go, Wikipedia says: “With the release of this album, the Supremes became the first act in Billboard magazine history to have three number-one hits from the same album. It was the album that introduced ‘The Motown Sound’ to the masses. It was also, at the time, the highest ranking album by an all female group.”
For the Four Tops, The Four Tops’ Second Album (1965) included two of the group’s best known hit songs, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and “It’s The Same Old Song” that were both penned by Holland-Dozier-Holland; in all, they wrote 10 of the 12 songs on the album.
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The Supremes were founded in 1959 by four teenagers – Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, Diana Ross, and Betty McGlown – under the name the Primettes; they started as a sister act to the Primes, who evolved into the Temptations. Barbara Martin replaced McGlown in 1960. Ross was going by the name “Diane Ross” initially; that was actually the name that her mother intended to give her, but through a clerical error, her birth certificate says Diana Ross. In order to distinguish themselves from other similar groups in that era, the Primettes hired guitarist Marvin Tarplin to accompany them so they would not have to lip sync.
When Diana Ross approached Smokey Robinson (who had been a neighbor previously) about getting an audition with Motown founder Berry Gordy, Robinson agreed to help but was more impressed with their guitarist; Marvin Tarplin quickly became the guitarist for his band the Miracles for more than a decade. For his part, Berry Gordy originally thought the girls were too young and inexperienced but finally signed them in January 1961.
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Interestingly, the Supremes’ little-known first album called Meet the Supremes was released in late 1962, more than a year before Meet the Beatles! came out. (Motown did the same with the debut album of the Temptations, another of their major groups, but Meet the Temptations came out two months afterward).
Some of the earliest tracks on the album date from 1960 and 1961 and feature Barbara Martin before she left to start a family in early 1962; the Supremes then went forward as a trio. Although not shown on the album cover, Martin performs background vocals on several songs and sings lead on “After All”, a song that was omitted on the original album but was included on later editions.
While the album made it to #13 on the British charts, Meet the Supremes didn’t sell well in this country; the two singles from the album, “Your Heart Belongs to Me” and “Let Me Go the Right Way” barely cracked the Billboard Hot 100, although the latter song made it to #26 on the R&B Singles chart.
All told, Motown released eight singles by the Supremes between 1961 and 1963, and none made it into the Billboard Top 40. In the Motown offices, the group was often referred to as the “No Hit Supremes”.
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Early on, Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, and Diana Ross shared lead-vocal duties on their recordings. Berry Gordy though was always impressed mainly with Diana Ross; from Wikipedia: “In Berry Gordy’s autobiography, To Be Loved, Gordy recalled he was heading to a business meeting when he heard Ross singing ‘There Goes My Baby’ and Ross’ voice ‘stopped me in my tracks’.”
Even before the name was changed to Diana Ross and the Supremes in 1967, the heavy promoting of Diana Ross was causing turmoil in the Supremes and even in other Motown groups. Florence Ballard in particular felt that she was being pushed into the background; she gained weight and began drinking heavily, eventually failing to show up for rehearsals and arriving at concerts too inebriated to perform. She was eventually eased out entirely in April 1967 and was replaced by Cindy Birdsong of Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles. (Patti LaBelle performed on Dancing with the Stars in the current season).
Diana Ross left the Supremes in 1970 to start a solo career, though Berry Gordy had been thinking about that as early as 1966. Guinness World Records lists Diana Ross as the most successful female recording artist in history; combining her recordings with the Supremes and individually, Diana Ross has had 70 charting hit singles and sales of more than 100 million albums. In 1976, Billboard magazine named Diana Ross the “female entertainer of the century”.
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The saga of the Supremes formed much of the story line for the hit musical Dreamgirls. The musical opened on Broadway in 1981 and won 6 Tony Awards. Twenty-five years later, in 2006, Dreamgirls was made into a popular film starring Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, and (fresh from finishing as a finalist on American Idol) Jennifer Hudson. At $80 million, Dreamgirls is the most expensive film ever to feature an all–African-American starring cast.
Dreamgirls created drama at the Oscars that year to match what was being portrayed on the screen. Despite not being nominated for Best Director or Best Picture (or any nominations for Best Actor or Best Actress either, for that matter), Dreamgirls had the most Academy Award nominations in 2007 with eight – a first at the Academy Awards. In a rare feat for an actor in a debut role, Jennifer Hudson was named Best Supporting Actress, but Eddie Murphy’s loss to Alan Arkin (for his role in the quirky and delightful comedy Little Miss Sunshine) as Best Supporting Actor was regarded as an upset. Three of the songs from Dreamgirls were nominated for Best Song, but they also lost out to the Melissa Etheridge song “I Need to Wake Up” from the Al Gore documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth.
It was a different story at the Golden Globes, where both Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy won in their categories, and Dreamgirls took the award for Best Picture – Comedy or Musical; Beyoncé Knowles was also nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.
If you ask me, the insistence on having only one category of film or performer is a major flaw at the Academy Awards, and the recent decision to multiply the nominations for Best Picture to 10 or 12 only highlights the problem. The Golden Globes is a more enjoyable television experience than the Oscars nearly every year; each Golden Globe actually means something, in contrast to the parade of technical awards that almost no one cares about that composes the middle two-thirds of the Academy Awards show.
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As I wrote about Bob Dylan in my last post, his first album, Bob Dylan sold modestly; and Dylan became known as “Hammond’s Folly” around Columbia Records – John H. Hammond had decided to sign Dylan on the spot after hearing him perform on September 14, 1961 at the apartment of Carolyn Hester and Richard Fariña (two folksingers that I also wrote about last month), though he evidently made a formal audition first (no recorded evidence of that audition survives, unfortunately).
As can be seen from his example and that of Diana Ross and the Supremes, who were referred to at Motown Records early in their career as the “No Hit Supremes”, record companies give up on musicians pretty quickly; and any number of the Under Appreciated Rock Bands and Under Appreciated Rock Artists that I have written about over the years could potentially have had high-profile careers. This doesn’t seem to be true so much for, say, Hollywood actors, as many of them are able to hang around for years or even decades before making it big.
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The first band signed to Motown Records was the Miracles (originally called the Matadors). The leader of this band was William “Smokey” Robinson, Jr., who was also an important songwriter and record producer who helped develop the “Motown Sound”.
Among Smokey Robinson’s own hit songs that were also his compositions (at least as a co-writer, and usually also as the song’s producer) are classics like “Shop Around” – Motown’s first million-selling hit record – plus “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”, “I Second That Emotion”, “Ooo Baby Baby”, “Going to a Go-Go”, “The Tracks of My Tears”, and “Tears of a Clown”. Smokey Robinson also wrote or co-wrote (as outlined in Wikipedia) “Two Lovers”, “The One Who Really Loves You”, “You Beat Me to the Punch”, and “My Guy” for Mary Wells; “The Way You Do The Things You Do”, “My Girl”, “Since I Lost My Baby”, and “Get Ready” for the Temptations; “When I’m Gone” and “Operator” for Brenda Holloway; “Don’t Mess With Bill”, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game”, and “My Baby Must Be a Magician” for the Marvelettes; and “I’ll Be Doggone” and “Ain’t That Peculiar” for Marvin Gaye.
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One of the Motown artists that I discovered more or less by accident is Jr. Walker and the All-Stars. I knew their big hit “Shotgun” of course, but I picked up a double album called Anthology (1974) on Motown Records cheap, and it was great all the way through. Jr. Walker’s distinctive style on the saxophone drives their sound. Wikipedia says that Jr. Walker and the All-Stars is one of Motown’s “signature acts”, and I was certainly happy to discover more of that great music.
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But not all of the bands and artists signed by Motown Records were African-American. Not long after I got to college, the cover of the Smokey Robinson song “Get Ready” by a band called Rare Earth was released. While they were not the first white band signed by Motown, they were the first to have a hit. Originally called the Sunliners, Rare Earth had previously released an album on Verve Records called Dreams/Answers in 1968. When they were signed by Motown Records, the company was starting a new label for white acts. The band jokingly suggested Rare Earth Records, and to their surprise, that is what Motown named the label.
“Get Ready” (which was evidently recorded live) was a million-selling record by Rare Earth that was certified gold; the extended version of this song was also one side of an album called Get Ready (1969). The other side features among its tracks two oft-covered songs on 1960’s albums, “Feeling Alright” and “Tobacco Road”.
Other hits by the band include another Motown cover, “(I Know) I’m Losing You” plus “I Just Want to Celebrate”. The latter song has recently been used in commercials for Nicoderm, a nicotine patch product, which features a miniature band performing the main chorus after a man passes on an offered cigarette.
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Particularly in the 1970’s, Motown Records began signing a more wide-ranging group of musical acts. Many were established artists from years past, such as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Bobby Darin, “twang” guitarist Duane Eddy, and the Easybeats (an Australian band who had had a worldwide hit in 1966 with “Friday on My Mind”). Like Rare Earth though, most were new to the music scene, such as Kiki Dee; she was the first female artist from England that was signed to Motown Records, though Kiki Dee had better success with Elton John’s label Rocket Records, including the 1974 hit “I’ve Got the Music in Me” and her well-known duet with Elton John on the 1976 hit “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”.
Before releasing his monster hit album in 1971 called Bat out of Hell, Meat Loaf was in a duo called Stoney & Meatloaf that was signed by Motown the year before. Others include Crystal Mansion (a white psychedelic/R&B band that is a future UARB), Toe Fat (a British band that included two future members of Uriah Heep), Love Sculpture (a Welsh blues-rock band that was led by Dave Edmunds), and a Dutch band called the Cats.
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This month’s Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month, BLACK RUSSIAN became the first recording artist from the Soviet Union to be signed to a major American record label, in this case, Motown Records. Their sole album, Black Russian came out in 1980 on Motown Records – evidently the label had decided that there was no reason to segregate their white acts any longer.
Bandmembers in Black Russian were Serge Kapustin and Natasha Kapustin, a married couple, along with Natasha’s brother Vladimir Shneider. The two Shneiders were the children of folk musicians and had been trained as classical pianists. Although identified as Russian, they were actually born in Latvia, a separate country now. In 1973 at an underground rock gathering at Moscow University, Natasha Shneider met Serge Kapustin, the son of a radio broadcaster, and he joined her in the Soviet orchestra where she was employed. The three began making plans to emigrate to America as early as May of that year.
They had been successful musicians in the U.S.S.R. but were worn down by the capricious restrictions of the Communist establishment. Serge Kapustin said that he was once forced to take out a bass line in one of their songs because it sounded “too Western”, and not more than one fourth of their songs could typically be sung in English.
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One might think that the name Black Russian naturally arose from a Russian band being signed to a black record label, and there is also a drink called a Black Russian, composed of vodka mingled with coffee liqueur; but it wasn’t really like that. In an Associated Press interview that was printed in the London newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Natasha Kapustin said: “It means we are black Russians, not red Russians. And we were black sheep.” Serge Kapustin added: “And there is our influence from black rhythm ’n’ blues and soul music. ‘Black Russian’ became our nickname in underground circles in Moscow.”
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As quoted in the blog What Fresh Hell is This (overall the best source on information on Black Russian that I was able to find on the Internet), People magazine said of the group in their October 16, 1980 issue: “The Kapustins were members of Sovremennik, a state-run pop orchestra, with Natasha [Kapustin] on vocals and piano and Serge [Kapustin] on guitar and percussion. Vladimir [Shneider] produced and played piano for the Singing Hearts, which was one of Russia’s hottest groups in the mid-’70s. But, as Vladimir notes, they were pumping out more agitprop than pop. ‘We’d sing 37 songs about how good the Communist Party is, and at the end — if we were lucky — we were allowed to play a mellow song like ‘Killing Me Softly’ or ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’. But never rock.”
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The People magazine article ends with a proposal by Serge Kapustin of Black Russian: “Just put 100 rock ’n’ roll radio stations along the Soviet border. You’d kill off Russian Communism — snap — just like that.”
As I am sure I have said before in these posts, IMHO the growing prominence of rock music in the Soviet Union, and the sense of freedom that kind of music engenders is a big part of why the Iron Curtain fell. Maybe something like that can happen in the Middle East also, if the younger generation tires of the way everyone is living over there now.
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Serge Kapustin, Natasha Kapustin and Vladimir Shneider of Black Russian were dissident Russian Jews who defected in May 1976 and came to New York City. They eventually saved enough to go to Hollywood where they auditioned for Berry Gordy at Motown Records. People magazine notes that this delay in their success in this country was just as well: “The group couldn’t go public with its fascinating story until six additional family members arrived safely in the U.S.”
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What Fresh Hell is This quotes this item in the June 14. 1980 issue of Billboard Magazine about Black Russian: “Actually from the U.S.S.R., Black Russian is a pop trio which makes crystalline pop/r&b that comes across as a more r&b-oriented ABBA. Natasha Kapustin has an excellent soaring voice. ‘Leave Me Now’ really gives her room to show off her vocal strength. The production is exceptionally clean with Vladimir Shneider’s keyboard and the synthesizers of Serge [Kapustin] and Natasha Kapustin lending a cushy sheen. The album is evenly divided between uptempo dance cuts and moody ballads. Best cuts: ‘Mystified’, ‘Leave Me Now’, ‘Emptiness’, ‘New York City’, ‘Love’s Enough’.”
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Actually the song that has been running through my head most of the times I played Black Russian is “’Cause I Love You”. Black Russian are professionals who put their heart and soul into this album. The music stacks up well with the other albums of that era, and truly, “Mystified” should have been a hit single. As with most of the UARB’s and UARA’s that I write about, I love the whole album, and it is difficult for me to single out particular songs. My personal favorite though would have to be “Leave Me Now”, a plaintive ballad that is as compelling as any that I can remember from the 1980’s.
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Although there is nothing about Black Russian in Wikipedia, there is a Wikipedia article about Natasha Shneider that has some information about Black Russian; Wikipedia as well has a write-up about the hard rock band Eleven that included Natasha Shneider and her second husband Alain Johannes. Allmusic lists Black Russian but has no information at all about the album or the artist.
Most of the posts that I found on the Internet seem more interested in the Black Russian story than in the music. Writing for Orange Coast magazine of Orange County, California, Keith Tuber stated in an article entitled “Black Russians Mix Well Socially”: “The problem with the album, which is musically interesting and contains an assortment of classical chord structures – a manifestation of the trio’s early training – is the lyrics. Only ‘’Cause I Love You’ is entirely written by one of the bandmembers (Serge [Kapustin]), while the others are collaborations. To my mind, the words are vastly inferior to the music.”
Along with links to two of the songs, “Move Together” and “’Cause I Love You”, the blog called The Homoerratic Radio Show says of the album: “Unfortunately, most of their songs sound like numbers cut from the final version of a mediocre Broadway musical. Still, the group’s got an interesting story, and these two songs aren’t that bad.”
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Not everyone feels that way though. Doc Dosco, a jazz guitarist who played on Black Russian wrote of his early session work on his website www.docdosco.com: “‘I did tons of “guitar for hire” studio dates back then’, says Doc, ‘and I gigged a lot during the late seventies and eighties. I was a funky fusion style player and there was lots of funk style work. I also did pick-up work, casuals, society gigs and played numerous concerts with old timers such as Little Anthony, the Drifters, the Diamonds, the Platters, Freddy Cannon, Connie Stevens. I worked for composer Dennis McCarthy on the Barbara Mandrell [and the Mandrell Sisters] TV show. I also wrote songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and German pop sensation Nina Hagen, produced “Billboard Queen” Angelyne, and recorded an album with the revolutionary Motown recording artists Black Russian.’”
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When thinking about Black Russian, I am reminded of a review of one of Sade’s albums in the Village Voice (maybe Promise) that I have been unable to find online. The reviewer noted that the album sounds like music that you have heard before, but you actually haven’t. I can imagine that one or two casual listens to Black Russian could lead to the opinions given above – particularly if one is predisposed to dissing anything that even hints of disco – but to these ears, this music represents brilliant songmaking that combines an appreciation of older R&B music with what was happening in the modern scene. It might be my imagination, but sonically, Black Russian seems louder than most of the other albums that I have been playing recently.
I once wrote about Patti Smith in another connection that she “sounds like nothing so much as the Beat poets of the 1950’s”. Despite their groundbreaking sound, Annie Lennox’s vocals for Eurythmics – who came onto the music scene at about the same time as Black Russian – sounded like a 1940’s chanteuse to me. Similarly, Black Russian is a startling album from the very beginning of the lively decade of the 1980’s whose source is from a decade or two earlier. In 2015, the album is not a bit passé but still sounds as fresh as it must have the day it was released; today, the album gives the listener a double dose of looking back.
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Two singles were released from the Black Russian album, “Leave Me Now” and “Mystified”. In addition to the U.S., the album was released in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Spain; and the “Mystified” single was also released in those European counties. According to a blog post that I saw, Black Russian made an appearance on the Dinah Shore Show.
Despite the novelty of being able to hear Russian music and the thawing of relations with the Soviet Union – “Détente” had begun around 1969 – sales of the album and singles alike were poor. I have long since given up trying to figure out why some songs are hits, and others are not.
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The songs by Black Russian are all in English, with Natasha Kapustin handling most of the vocals; they have something of a disco-lite vibe in keeping with the time period. The bandmembers wrote all of the music and also produced and arranged all of the songs on the album. Besides vocals, Serge Kapustin plays keyboards and guitar, Natasha Kapustin plays keyboards and synthesizers, and Vladimir Shneider plays synthesizers. Another eight musicians are listed on the credits at Discogs; Guy Costa – their first contact at Motown Records – is identified as co-producer.
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Black Russian had some assistance with the lyrics, perhaps because English is not their native language; they hardly spoke the language at all at the time that they defected. Lyricists who lent a hand include Allee Willis, who co-wrote the lyrics for their beautiful first single “Leave Me Now”. Willis has had a long career as a writer, songwriter, set designer, and artist. Her musical credits are as wide-ranging as can be imagined; together with Stephen Bray and Brenda Russell, Allee Willis wrote the music for the 2005 Broadway musical The Color Purple, based on the 1982 novel, The Color Purple by Alice Walker and the 1985 movie, The Color Purple that was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Rae Dawn Chong. Allee Willis was also one of the writers of the song by the Rembrandts, “I’ll be There for You” that was the theme song for the massively popular sitcom Friends and one of the best selling TV theme songs of all time. Willis won a Grammy Award in 1985 for Best Soundtrack for Beverly Hills Cop.
From Wikipedia: “[Allee Willis]’ songs have sold over 50,000,000 records, including ‘September’ and ‘Boogie Wonderland’ by Earth, Wind and Fire, ‘Neutron Dance’ by the Pointer Sisters, ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ by Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield, and ‘Lead Me On’ by Maxine Nightingale. Willis has collaborated with hundreds of leading artists and composers from all fields of music, including Bob Dylan, Patti LaBelle, James Brown, Herbie Hancock, Deniece Williams, and Motown legend Lamont Dozier.”
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Nan O’Byrne wrote the lyrics for Black Russian’s second single “Mystified” and the flip side of the first single, “Love’s Enough”; and she co-wrote the lyrics for two other songs on the album. Nan O’Byrne also co-wrote “You Might Need Somebody” that was a UK hit for Randy Crawford in 1981, and “You Might Need Somebody” was later a hit for Shola Ama in 1997; “You Might Need Somebody” was first recorded by Turley Richards in 1980, and “You Might Need Somebody” was also covered by Joe Walsh. Nan O’Byrne’s songs have been recorded by Earth, Wind and Fire, the Pointer Sisters, Weather Report, Bonnie Raitt, and Philip Bailey.
Ed Whiting and Beth Forer wrote the lyrics for another Black Russian song, “Move Together”.
(April 2015/1)
