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Celebs Motown
Faith is the lady with red hair and is the ex-wife of Biggie Smalls
“Hitsville U.S.A.” is the nickname given to Motown Records’ first headquarters. Located at 2648 West Grand Blvd. in Detroit, Michigan Hitsville U.S.A., formerly a photographers’ studio, was purchased by Motown founder Berry Gordy in 1959, and converted into both the record label’s administrative building and recording studio, which was open 22 hours a day (closing from 8 to 10 AM for maintenance).
For those who are not familiar with Faith we posted a little video
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Bobby Taylor a brief outline of his story…
Bobby Taylor co-wrote with me for The Elgins, Mary Wells, Rare Earth, and so so many others, often turning his work around overnight.
Bobby Taylor sits over morning coffee and talks of the magical days of Motown music in the ’60s, when black pop artists from the Detroit label were vaulting over the recording race barrier and galloping through the white market.
Taylor had already signed his own group with Motown: Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. Now, in the summer of ’68, he brought in a group of young kids he wanted to introduce to Motown owner Berry Gordy, the Jackson 5. It should not be surprising that Bobby Taylor was somewhere in the Jackson 5 mix.
The 63-year-old singer/composer/producer had only one big hit himself–”Does Your Mama Know About Me?” in the mid-’60s–but he seems to have hung out with practically every important R&B and pop artist of the second half of the 20th century.
As a child prodigy, Taylor grew up in a Washington, D.C., housing project “doo-wopping” on street corners with a long, skinny kid named Marvin Gaye, played with Louis Jordan, hung out with Big Mama Thornton, performed on TV on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour alongside good friend Gladys Knight, formed Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers up in Canada with guitarist and backup vocalist Tommy Chong (who later turned to comedy with Cheech Marin).
Once fired a then-unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix because “his solos went on too long, like about a half an hour, and he played his guitar so loud you couldn’t hear the rest of the band”; toured for a while with George Clinton, played command performances for the Queen of England and “that guy with the big nose in France” (Charles de Gaulle); and got discovered for Motown by Mary Wilson and Flo Ballard of the Supremes.
Bobby recorded three albums for Motown, and recently had all his unreleased tracks released in the U.K. on a new CD. He is constantly remembered for his Northern Soul classics like “Oh I’ve Been Blessed” and the incredibly rare single on Mowest, “Just A Little Bit Closer”, but the killer was the album track “Don’t Be Afraid” which is beloved as one of the greatest classics. But around 1970, Motown’s hold on its great artists began to weaken. “Berry Gordy pulled the hooks on me in 1971,” Taylor says. He left the company, suing for unpaid royalties. Taylor says that he won the suit, but has still not gotten his money.
Bobby recorded for Playboy, Epic, Philadelphia International, and made a whole album for Motorcity, including this fabulous remake of his biggest Motown hit.
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Jermaine Dupri, we salute for your mix-tape concept. JD raps, “I think I’m Berry Gordy, Russell Simmons, Quincy Jones”.
For those of you who don’t know he has based this concept on a track by Rick Ross called B.M.F. The first line Rick Ross says “I think I’m Larry Hoover, Big Meech”. Larry Hoover and Big Meech are American Gangsters. Whereas Mr Dupri has turned it around and for his version given us more positive role models Berry, Russell and Quincy. WE LOVE IT!
To listen to the mixed tape go to Jermaine’s Official Blog
Another Listening Link – Click Here
Click to Listen to the Rick Ross Version
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The Jackson Connection
In 1977, elder siblings Tommy DeBarge and Bobby DeBarge formed a group called Switch along with Jody Sims, Greg Williams, Phillip Ingram and Eddie Fluellen. They were discovered by Motown artist Jermaine Jackson, and signed to the Motown label that same year. Their name Switch was due to their ability to ‘switch’ to different instruments during a song, the group got the attention of Jermaine Jackson, heard the group’s demo tape and within days the group was promply signed to the Motown Records subsidiary label, Gordy. There, they recorded and released their self titled debut album in 1978. Switch recorded several hits for Motown’s Gordy label, including “There’ll Never Be” and “I Call Your Name”.
The managers of Switch also became aware of Bobby and Tommy’s younger brothers including Randy, Marty and El, whose vocal talent was often compared to Bobby’s, as was that of eldest sister, Bunny.
After an impromptu audition in front of Jermaine Jackson, Switch’s producer, the group was signed to Motown’s Gordy imprint in 1979 as a quartet of Bunny, Randy, Marty and El (younger brother James would join in 1982). As “The DeBarges”, they released their self-titled debut in 1981 featuring the first single, “What’s Your Name.” Neither the album nor the single charted, and the group was later determined to produce themselves on the next record.
I Wanna Be Closer written by Jermaine Jackson for Switch. From the “Switch” album in 1979
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DeBarge (Bunny, Randy, Mark, El and James)
Forming in 1979 as The DeBarges, the band originally included four members – Bunny, Randy, Mark and El – moved to Los Angeles and signed with Motown where they went under a two-year training process by Motown’s staff before releasing their first album in 1981.
With the inclusion of 18-year-old James (Janet’s Ex) in early 1982, the group changed their name to DeBarge and released their first million-selling album, All This Love, later that year.
Following a new lineup – now featuring James DeBarge in the fold – the newly christened quintet, DeBarge, record a mostly self-penned and produced album titled All This Love in 1982. After releasing the dance single, “Stop! Don’t Tease Me”, the group released the smoother “I Like It”, in January 1983. Featuring lead vocals from Randy and El, the song raced up to number two on the Billboard R&B singles chart while also crossing over to pop radio eventually peaking at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100.
A second single, the sole El DeBarge composition, “All This Love”, became an even bigger hit reaching number one on the R&B chart and peaking at number 17 on the pop chart and also becoming the group’s first number-one hit on the Billboard AC chart. Its success helped its parent album reach gold status.
DeBarge made their first live appearance on Motown 25, where they performed a number with fellow Motown band High Inergy.
From 1982 to 1985, DeBarge released three gold-certified albums and released more than ten hit singles. After disbanding shortly in 1986, a reinvented version of the group now featuring Bobby DeBarge and excluding El and Bunny, released a record in 1988 before disbanding the following year due to Bobby’s conviction of drug offenses.
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Stevie Wonder, singer, songwriter, producer:
Because Berry Gordy owned the company, it was not “tore up from the floor up.” It was something he built. It was not something that somebody else had and passed on to him; it was his and his family’s and all the people who were part of it who built this thing. That alone gives us a sense of pride.
Smokey Robinson:
Way before we started Motown, Berry said, “I’m going to work with you and your group,” and he just turned my whole life around. I played him about 20 of my songs, and he critiqued every song. He told me the songs made no sense because I was talking about five different things in one song; the first verse had nothing to do with the second verse, and the second verse had nothing to do with the bridge. He told me a song has got to be a short book, a small movie, or a short story. He taught me how to structure my songs.
Berry Gordy:
At Motown, I hired a white salesman to go to the South. I didn’t have pictures of black artists on the record covers until they became big hits. The Isleys had a cover with two white people on the cover. Smokey’s Mickey’s Monkey had a monkey on the cover. No one knew or cared; they thought it was brilliant.
Stevie Wonder:
The competition at Motown was not the competition that said, “I don’t like you.” It was more like the Brill Building: it was a challenge to come up with great music, great songs, and to me that was cool. I love Berry to pieces—Berry Gordy was, for my life, a blessing.
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Marvin Gaye & Anna Gordy Gaye
with Gwen Gordy Fuqua & Harvey Fuqua
Anna Gordy Gaye
Though she is often remembered more for her volatile marriage to Motown legend Marvin Gaye, Anna Gordy was one of Motown’s earliest songwriters penning several hits mainly for her first and only husband. Anna was also part-founder of a self-named music label that would first nationally established Motown’s records including Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)”. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Anna co-wrote The Originals’ biggest hits, “Baby I’m For Real” and “The Bells” alongside Marvin and also co-wrote “God Is Love” and “Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)” on Marvin’s famed What’s Going On album. Despite an acrimonious divorce in 1977, Gordy remained friends and lovers with Gaye until his 1984 death, in which afterwards, Anna retreated into seclusion only coming out briefly to celebrate Marvin’s music career attending ceremonies including Marvin’s 1987 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The couple’s only child, Marvin Gaye III, had a brief career as a music producer.
Gwen Gordy Fuqua
Another important member of Motown’s growing success was Gwen Gordy, who partnered with her brother Berry and then-boyfriend Billy Davis to co-pen several hits for Jackie Wilson in the mid-1950s. In 1959, Gwen, Billy and sister Anna formed Anna Records in Detroit. Anna would be the site where the hit song, “Money (That’s What I Want)”, then a regional single for Berry’s Tamla Records, would get its first national distribution. Two years later, Anna was absorbed by Motown. In 1961, Gwen married The Moonglows’ Harvey Fuqua and the two presided over the labels Harvey Records and Tri-Phi Records, the latter label included acts like The Spinners. By 1964, Gwen would join Motown’s staff songwriting team later writing “Distant Lover” for her brother-in-law, Marvin Gaye, and later discovering the disco group High Inergy in 1976. Gwen died of cancer in 1999.
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Smokey Robinson: One of the reasons Berry started Motown was because [the distributors] didn’t pay you [for record sales] in those days, especially if you were fledgling. We started Motown so everybody could get paid. And everybody was paid. The beautiful, wonderful, magnificent, incredible thing about Motown was that we began to bombard them with hits. The same distributors who hadn’t paid at first would pay us in advance just to get our records. The disc jockeys would call us and say, “Could we please have the record first?”
Lionel Richie, lead singer of the Motown group the Commodores and multi-platinum solo recording artist: In the creative world there were a lot of [black] singers. There weren’t a lot of [black] owners. This guy owned the company. Imagine, this is not happening in the 90s. This is happening during the civil-rights movement, during the 1960s—not exactly the greatest land of opportunity for a black businessman. To be a [black] businessman in America then, here’s political correctness: “Yes, sir, no, sir. Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am.” So here’s somebody who’s saying, “Go to hell.” This man took no shit.
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Gaye was married twice. His first marriage was to Berry Gordy Jr.’s sister, Anna Gordy, who was 18 years his senior. Marvin and Anna were married on January 8, 1964 when Gaye was 24 and Gordy was 42. The marriage imploded after Marvin began courting Janis Hunter, the daughter of Slim Gaillard, in 1973. Anna filed for divorce in 1975; the divorce was finalized in March 1977. Gaye had three children. Marvin Pentz Gaye, III (b. 1965 see below) was adopted by Marvin and his first wife Anna.
Stories on how Gaye eventually met Berry Gordy and how he signed to Motown Records vary. One early story stated Gordy discovered Gaye singing at a local bar in Detroit and that he had offered to sign him on the spot. Gaye’s recollection, and also a story Gordy later reiterated, was that Gaye invited himself to Motown’s annual Christmas party inside the label’s Hitsville USA studios and played on the piano singing Mr. Sandman. Gordy saw Gaye from afar and upon noting that Gaye was connected with Fuqua began to make arrangements to absorb Fuqua’s labels to Motown bringing all of the labels’ acts to Motown. Gordy said he immediately wanted to bring Gaye to Motown after seeing him perform, impressed by his vocals and piano playing. While working out negotiations, Fuqua would sell fifty percentage interest in Gaye to Gordy, which Gaye would find out later. After Gordy absorbed his brother and sister, Anna and Harvey to work with him in March 1961, Gaye was assigned to Motown’s Tamla division.
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American soul singer Aretha Franklin as she rehearses at a microphone in a dance studio, 1961
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REMOVE THAT SCARF! YOUR HANDSOME!
Awww…
