In today's Guardian there is an obituary of the session / jazz drummer Steve Reid. This states,

"he (Reid) made his first recording (under Quincy Jones direction) on Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street.."

Whaaaat..???

I've always understood it to be Marvin Gaye who is drumming on "Dancing In the Streets". I'm sure I've read or heard this and it seems very plausible as he co-wrote it and worked as a session drummer for Motown before the singing took off. Anyone know for sure?

(Obviously, the bit about Quincy Jones' involvement is just plain wrong).

Thanks

(Sorry this is probably the wrong bit of the forum to post this in, please feel free to move, moderators )

Edited June 1, 201015 yr by son of stan

Caveat,it's from wiki

Gaye and Stevenson agreed and including new Motown songwriter Ivy Jo Hunter adding in musical composition, the song was recorded in two takes. The interesting loud beat of the drums in its instrumentation can be attributed to Hunter, who banged on a crowbar to add to the drum beat led by Gaye, who was often a drummer on many of Motown's earliest hits.

Hard to say, it seems each strand of info just comes from one source which has then been repeated over & over on the internet. Seems more plausible that Marvin Gaye drummed on it. But sometimes Motown used other session drummers. They could have had more than one drummer on the session. Reid could have drummed on a Quincy Jones arranged session of a cover of Dancing In The Street. Did Quincy Jones even lead the Apollo house band? That fact seems repeated over & over online, but wasn't he in Europe in 1960 & then busy with his own recording career etc through the mid-60s. There are a lot of variables, Reid could have been their live drummer, he may have been talking about a live Apollo concert which was recorded.

Edited June 2, 201015 yr by Kris Holmes

Of course it isn't Steve Reid, whoever he is, on DITS. I've never heard that name in connection with Motown.

Why would some completely obscure bloke play on one of the label's most famous recordings and, seemingly, not on anything else?

Also, Quincy Jones had no more to do with 60s Motown than I did. He was, in fact, working for Mercury and producing the likes of Lesley Gore at the time of the DITS session. He did lead the Apollo House band for a while in the 1950s, I believe, but whether that was before or after his long sojourn in France I couldn't say.

Don't these people ever check their facts before going into print?

In today's Guardian there is an obituary of the session / jazz drummer Steve Reid. This states,

"he (Reid) made his first recording (under Quincy Jones direction) on Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street.."

Whaaaat..???

I've always understood it to be Marvin Gaye who is drumming on "Dancing In the Streets". I'm sure I've read or heard this and it seems very plausible as he co-wrote it and worked as a session drummer for Motown before the singing took off. Anyone know for sure?

(Obviously, the bit about Quincy Jones' involvement is just plain wrong).

Thanks

(Sorry this is probably the wrong bit of the forum to post this in, please feel free to move, moderators )

appologies, but i would find it hard to envisage marvin being given the task of producing the backbeat on a worldwide hit such as this, regardless of the fact, he was an accomplished musician and, he had already had hits....beside that the complete house band were in place and it was 1965 just prior to tamla motowns u.k. inauguration ( original stateside release). at this point benny benjamin was at the helm and dispite having a quick scan of my numerous manuals, there is precisely nothing to suggest otherwise that this is not benny's trademark drumroll...remember benny was one of the first musicians to be recruited by gordy in 59 from amongst detroit's jazz club ranks.

Thanks folks. I get annoyed by this sort of lazy journalism. You know, they Google something and then just trot out whatever rubbish comes up without bothering to check...Anyone who knew anything about how those records were made would have had alarm bells ringing before they filed this copy... Seems to me that if they can't even get fairly trivial stuff like this right how can we trust them on more serious matters?

Googling this all last night I found an obit for Reid which also said he was the drummer on "Heat Wave" too. Can anyone dig out the Wax Poetics interview with him? Did he make these statements in print himself? Where did they come from. Someone has got their facts crossed at some stage.

Steve Reid was a reasonably important figure in jazz drumming, I wouldn't have thought he'd needed to make these things up himself.

I find it equally speculatory that Marvin Gaye himself is drumming on this, doesn't sound like his drumming, there has to be someone else like Benny Benjamin, Pistol Allen or Uriel Jones on there........ or by some weird happenstance Steve Reid. If Quincy Jones was leading the Apollo houseband in the 50s then that probably makes Reid too young to play under him too, he would have been 16 in 1960.

The mostly likely candidate is Benny Benjamin, Motowns mainman drummer from 59 through to the late 60's, although it could be Pistol Allen or Uriel Jones. There would have been no reason to bring in outside sessionmen as Motown had a rich pool of Detroit jazz players and the Funk Brothers were a large group of musicians on whom BG and other producers could call on at anytime.

if you pay attention to the interview with richard "pistol" on the SITSOM dvd, he quite clearly states whose trademark drumrolls were who's. this inevitably, for me anyway, suggests it was benny benjamin and it was 1965.....couldnt see stevie wonder doing it either.

with all the literal paraphenalia we have at our disposal, it appears we have come up short with a concise dictionary of who played on what....can you believe that after 50 years?.

and we'll never answer it because in the early years motown simply didnt have time to create an inventory of so many productions when they were searching for the next hit. sadly that applies also, to all the none hits, the tracks consigned to the vaults...and with many musicians now gone, who could maybe have shed light on our enquiries, we can only summise.

rob.h