The recent Live 8 thing made me realise just how lucky we are. Unlike those unfortunate millions who happily accept and enjoy geriatric rockers churning out the same old tried, tested and then tried again rubbish at every conceivable excuse for a benefit concert, we enjoy a style of music that seems to be constantly evolving, developing and expanding. Whether it be records you didn’t know before, or missed when they were first ‘discovered’, obscurities on tiny labels that have only recently come to light, previously unreleased material that the major companies have been sitting on, gloriously unaware that there was any demand or interest in them or different styles within the genre, the choices available are varied, wide ranging and extensive.

It’s easy to see why soul music from the past decades is flourishing. ...little more than unintelligible, inane drivel...Popular musical culture has ground to a creative halt.(Why else would our television screens be full of ads for artists or albums that have already been hits in the past?) Most of the current artists seem quite happy to either ‘cover’ a previous success, appeal to the monosyllabic banality of drug induced nightclub wallops or imitate past masters. The format of a song – with a melody, a verse, a chorus and a bridge seems to have disappeared. What we are left with are riffs – the same few notes played over and over again with little variation and no respite. What passes for lyrics is little more than unintelligible, inane drivel.



All is not lost however. From the annuls of time, like phantoms emerging from the mist, comes the cavalry, or in this case a new ‘old’ Motown set, to save our collective souls and re affirm our faith in music. Soul and sentiment, groove and gusto, passion and penance – it’s all here. 42 previously unreleased songs from a wide variety of the roster, mainly the less well known artists, but at the same sky high standard that we’ve come to expect. I can’t think of any other kind of music that continually enriches itself with additional material than Soul, and Motown in particular. Can you imagine the fuss that would be made if a previously unknown Beatles, Stones or Elvis song turned up? We’d never hear the end of it. And yet this is the second volume of this particular series, with even more to come! Berry Gordy’s policy of recording every creative outpouring, and only releasing the most commercially viable, is undoubtedly at the heart of this delightful deluge. The amount of material produced by Motown during their glory years is truly staggering. It is estimated that the company only actually released 40% of what they recorded but that 80% of it hit (I’m guessing that album tracks were included). There are reputed to be tens of thousands of unreleased tracks in the Motown vaults – a fact not disputed by Universal, the current custodians. ...reputed to be tens of thousands of unreleased tracks in the Motown vaults – a fact not disputed by Universal...
But the most significant contributory factor to the vast amount of releases finally seeing the light is the most basic – financial gain. Despite the urgings of many interested fans over the years, the corporate owners ( and there have been several) have never been convinced that there was any genuine commercial viability in going to the trouble of manufacturing what they regarded as inferior, minority interest ‘back catalogue’ material. Only after the sales figures confirm a significant return did corporate execs. exploit the wealth.

Having said that, it is to Universal’s credit that they have delegated responsibilities diligently, particularly in the areas of compilation, research and presentation, so that the overall packaging is good and the choice of material is innovative.(Except, it must be said, the cretin responsible for the dwarf script and vomit inspired colour combinations) Also, at some point in the proceedings, some one had the guts to risk the considerable outlay involved in releasing unproven ‘product’ in an unpredictable marketplace. This certainly makes a change from the years of re packaging the hits that has come to characterize the marketing of Motown, and the cynical practice of adding a couple of newly discovered songs to a collection before issuing it again so that true fans have to buy the same stuff twice. With imagination, expertise and improved communication with the target audience, Universal could not only retain the loyalty of the diehards, but expand and increase the fan base.

How sad, then, that some musically dysfunctional dunderhead decided to commission the truly awful ‘Motown Remixed’ Or, is this a misguided attempt to attract ‘new’ fans, and squeeze the last drops of profit out of the back catalogue, by perverting classic, proven material into current parlance? What is it with Motown planners that they always seem to want to change, amend or adapt things – some of us can still remember when much of the material was given the ‘disco’ treatment, complete with high hat drums and new bass lines mixed over the existing backing. Words cannot adequately describe how bad that was. New heights of cynical manoeuvring were reached back then…until now. LEAVE IT ALONE.

Pre release copies of ‘Cellarful of Motown Volume Two’ are accompanied by a slick promotional blurb that refers to the company as “…the world’s best pop music label” and the music as “…archive pop music” , and it got me thinking. Was this the usual publicity company smarm designed to impress the client, justify their exorbitant fee but distort reality …or was this really true?

Is Motown actually nothing more than pop music? Are we all no better than the clones who adore Cliff or Barry or worst yet Elton ? Mere ‘bit’ players in the corporate master plan slavishly obeying our masters’ every command like the rest of the sheep? The ‘soul snobs’ would have it so – you know, those sanctimonious gasbags who try to laud it over us by claiming that real black music doesn’t have strings or that if it was a hit it can’t be genuine or that only R&B is ‘real’ music or that only whites predominantly bought Motown in America. And so I started to consider – how is Motown perceived? Despite the success, does it deserve a legitimate place in the history of black music? Did it significantly contribute to our cultural landscape? And, perhaps most importantly, was the music taken seriously or is it simply a collection of inane ditties designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of public taste?

The word ‘Motown’ itself was synonymous with a particular type of music – but even that has become blurred and vague, as the boundaries of its own musical styles expanded. Everything from the early gospel flavoured hits like ‘Please Mr. Postman’, ‘Money’ and ‘Do you love me’ through the ‘glory’ days of sixties domination and into the harder edged sass and sophistication of the seventies and beyond, gets lumped into one great generic mish mash of confused depiction. The most revered Motown music is probably from that purple patch from 1964 to around 1967 when its distinctive ‘sound’ bombarded the American R&B and ‘Pop’ charts. Although black teenagers provided the initial momentum, it wasn’t long before the rest of the country, and the world, joined in. Great songs, attractive performers and brilliant musicianship, with a kind of ingrained surreal excitement throughout, ensured a significant presence on the charts for decades. The effect of Motown’s success on black music was immediate, comprehensive and far reaching. Literally hundreds of record companies, large and small, scrambled to replicate the sound and cash in. ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ certainly applied here.

But America’s embrace differed greatly from the British passion. Whereas America provided far more chart success from a much earlier period, the British ‘pop’ market only embraced the most commercially acceptable material. Many sixties Motown songs regarded as ‘classics’ today did not make a significant dent on the UK charts on their initial release. It was the Rare Soul scene in England that first began to dig deeper and exploit the unknown, undiscovered, forgotten or uncared for in the early 1970s, when the rest of the world had moved on – and this extended to the huge array of failed Motown soundalikes that languished in cut out bins and old warehouses throughout the U.S. ...and this reactivation led to belated success for a few forgotten artists. Some of the label’s finest material surfaced this way too....
Rare soul DJs were quite willing to consolidate their reputations by playing obscure, hard to find Motown records – and this reactivation led to belated success for a few forgotten artists. Some of the label’s finest material surfaced this way too.


Success allowed Berry Gordy to expand and explore far and wide. Motown’s subsidiary labels embraced every possible
form of music (including country and western!), ‘established’ stars like Sammy Davis, Billy Eckstine, Bobby Darin and their ilk recorded in Detroit, and the company firmly identified itself alongside the black liberation struggle of the late 1960s. Motown pervaded mainstream consciousness and assumed an iconic presence in the world.



Yet, apologists continued to discredit and devalue its place in the development of black achievement, integration or cultural benefaction. Peter Guralnick’s book “Sweet Soul Music” ( the major influence in the planning of BBC’s ‘Soul Deep’ series) ignores Motown COMPLETELY in his appraisal of the 1960s ‘Soul’ movement, and there are many others not far behind. The popular success of Gordy’s enterprise should not be confused with the significant artistic contribution it made, or the incredible influence it had, and continues to have, on modern music – both in style and form. For enthusiasts, the rich cache of unreleased material still to be resurrected from the vaults proves that the quality of the music remains completely unaffected by its lack of release or popular endorsement. It’s unlikely that any of the tracks included in ‘Cellarful of Motown Volume 2’ will make the modern pop charts. Who cares? What’s important is that yet another piece of the Motown legacy is available to us.

And this is why we are the truly fortunate ones. Motown Ad Astra

Rob Moss

http://www.hayleyrecords.co.uk