Robbk

I have no sense of humour. That's why I'm a comedy writer! The sad thing is that there were many, many record company owners a LOT worse than Gordy. He was a saint compared to Goldner, Levy, Tarnopol and the like.

600 pages of 1st hand memories of Detroit music during the '50s through the '70s is well £40, even with misspellings.

If Mr. Wingate were still alive now, you can be 100% certain that Al wouldn't be saying anything but nice things about him.

It might interest you all to learn that during the 1960s, approximately 79% of the records pressed at Columbia Terre Haute were for Detroit labels, 20 % Chicago (+Northwest Indiana) labels, and 1% Other Midwest (mainly St. Louis and Indianapolis, and a couple from Milwaukee). Apparently, local and regional Michigan plants couldn't handle the tremendous volume of Detroit product, while Chicago pressing plant competition to Columbia had most of Chicagoland's market sewn up. So Columbia gobbled up the Detroit indie label market. Interesting situation. The '60s Soul (spurred by Motown) and the "Garage Band" phenomena in Detroit blossomed so quickly and unexpectedly, that local facilities and potential entrepeneurs couldn't keep up with it. Luckily for Columbia, Chicago and Terre Haute were close enough to Detroit to serve both big city markets.

NO-neither the Chicago, nor the New York artists with records shown above were the "Handy Man" Jimmy Jones.

Is a "Calvalier" a Knight who rides a baby cow, instead of a horse?

No. Al Williams had a rounder head. I've seen a photo of him years ago.

Yes. And we hope our Dutch friends didn't take a whipping from Swarte Piet! I'm not a Christian, so I know that Saint Nicholas died in Anatolia about 1,700 years ago. But Father Christmas was a Norseman, so Happy Christmas (Glad Jul, Glaedelig Jul, Prettige Kersdagen, Frölich Weihnachten, Joyeux Noël, Hyvää Joulua, Feliz Navidad, Buon Natale, Happy Chanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, enz.) anyway!

I used to think there were only 6 store stockers pressed up originally as the test press run for the first pressing, which was cancelled by Berry Gordy. I had seen only the 2 of them in The Motown and Jobete Record Files, and the 2 that were originally found by Ron Murphy at ARP, and the copy that was given to Quality Control (Berry Gordy's would have been the other of the 6 test copies. But, seeing the copy with the hole pressed into it (for sale at the reduced price, leads me to believe that there might have been a single, small press run made especially for The Andantes (similar to Raynoma Gordy's special press run of 50 of her Little Iva Miracle Record. I still think it is extremely rare, as I never saw one in circulation. The hole-pressed one may have bee among records from Motown that had been given to a Detroit store owner. It's very hard for me to believe that that issue ever got to any stores, as I was visiting Detroit record stores and thrift stores, and visiting distributorships 2 Saturdays a month in 1964, and asking for any new Motown releases, and never saw it. I saw virtually every record that was actually released. I Think there were actually small press runs of Kim Weston "A little More love" before the pull-back, and same with Oma Heard on VIP. But, I believe the only existing Patrice Holloway and Andantes on VIP were the 6 press run test pressings, and then those press runs were cancelled (just like the Frank Wilson), with the possibility that a small batch were pressed up to satisfy The Andantes. In any case, I think there have been only 5 or 6 copies seen by collectors and people in the industry. It should still go for very big money.

I see now. The "audition copy" is darker and sharper. So, maybe it was just a vanity press run.

So, there WAS a DJ issue! That means that it wasn't just a "vanity" press run, but, perhaps, a small "test" run, just in Detroit, to satisfy The Andantes that it was "officially" released, but, quickly called back, as was done with Oma Heard's VIP single.

As far as I know, he was the piano player in The Miles Grayson Trio, and started out working in San Diego, California. He moved to Los Angeles in the late early to mid 1960s. He had records out on several small Soul indie labels in L.A. and San Diego during the 1960s. He was arranger on many reecording sessions in L.A. during the '60s and '70s.

As I stated above, I don't think The andantes' release was ever intended to be marketed or have sales. Berry wanted The Andantes to always be available to sing backgrounds to sweeten most Motown releases. So, he didn't want them having a hit record, and wanting to have a featurede singing career and want to go out on road tours. He had no intention of putting a push behind marketing any release of theirs. I think their VIP release was just a token "gift" to placate them, and received a "personalised" pressing level of only 50 or 100 records, as was done for Raynoma on her Little Iva Miracle record release.

No. None of those I mentioned had a drill hole. So, THAT copy is yet one more. There must have been a special small press run for The Andantes, perhaps of 50 or 100? Something like what was done for Raynoma Gordy's Little Iva Miracle record.

I have a mint one, with Quality Control in green placed on it with a hand stamper. Tom DePierro had one and there was one in the Motown Corp. Record File and one in the Jobete Music Co. Record File, and Ron Murphy had one, and I had seen one more (all during the early '70s. So, I know that there were more pressed than the 6 usually made from the pressing plant test pressing run. They were all yellow store stock. I never saw nor heard of any white DJ issues.

I have no doubt about this. I'm sure a press run of bootlegs would be made not only with the Surinaamse Sweet Soul collectors residing in The Netherlands in mind, but also sales in The Caribbean (both Dutch-speaking and non-Dutch speaking islands).

"Like A Nightmare" and "If You Were Mine" are "Pop Crap"? Or did you mean The Cute-Teens' cuts were crap? - I'd agree with THAT. But, The Cute Teens were Raynoma Gordy and her cousins, NOT The Andantes. So, I'm confused. I think The HDH composition, "Like A Nightmare" is a decent up-tempo Motown song, and would have been a regular-level Martha & Vandellas' mid 1964 release. I can't imagine Motown releasing a version of either of those awful Cute-Teens' cuts, although, they DID release some Motown versions of pre-Motown songs written by Berry, Gwen, Anna and Billy Davis published by Bengal, Fidelity, and Ro-Gor Music. But, those were much better songs.

Thanks. I'll skip it, then.

Can you please give me the URL of the homepage of that forum? I haven't heard of it. I only know of Soulful Detroit Forum.

The Charters' record was released on Motown subsidiary, Mel-o-dy Records. So, it was more than Motown-related. It was a Motown record. Whereas, The Cute-Teens was a Berry Gordy producton leased to Aladdin, and, as far as I know, it was NOT produced at Motown (I guess because it was pre-Motown (recorded during the time Ray-Ber Music Co. operated (or, perhaps, a little before that firm started up?). The Charters were a Toledo, Ohio group, who had written their own songs, and, if I remember correctly, had recorded their songs in Toledo, and just paid Motown to press up one batch of demo records for them. Maybe it was 25, 50 or 100 of them. Only 2 white DJ copies are known to exist today. So, it is dead rare. No pressed records of The Charters' Mel-o-dy 104 were sitting among The Motown Record File's Mel-o-dy Records or The Jobete Music Record File during the 1970s to 1980, when I had access to them - unlike The Frank Wilson Soul 35019, both of which were there (and those were NOT the two White DJ copies Ron Murphy found at ARP. So, we know there were at least 4 copies of The Frank Wilson seen, but only 2 of The Charters'. So, The Charters' was technically rarer. The Berry Gordy-related Fidelitones' Aladdin release, pressed up at the same time as The Cute-Teens, was not nearly as rare as The Cute-Teens'. I never saw The Cute-Teens' release in circulation, only photos and scans. But I saw a few copies of The Fidelitones (and it had a store stock press run. I never heard of a Cute Teens store stocker seen. Freddie Gorman was a member of The Fidelitones. There were rumours that Eddie and Brian Holland were members of that group as well. But, in later interviews, they said they were not in that group. I've seen a list of that group's members, and they were all well-known Detroit '50s and early '60s singers, with members that had, at times been with well-known Detroit groups.

There wouldn't be any one song for me. I would have liked to have been working at Motown during 1962-66, and have watched all facets of the songwriting and recording process was handled, seeing how all the talented people did what they did and how the whole process came together to produce such fabulous recordings. I couldn't pick any one song or watching any one artist, musician, producer, arranger, or songwriter work. I saw a later version of that process at Motown in L.A. during the 1970s, and Airwave and Altair Records in the 1980s. But those weren't the same as how it was done in Detroit at Motown in the mid 1960s. I have a big appreciation for what those people did back then, based on my feeble attempts to take up playing the guitar, piano and harmonica (failing to get very far), and also trying to write songs (both music and lyrics). My "songs" were well-known chords and musical phrases patched together (with no Soul or life of their own). They weren't TRULY inspired.

I love ALL my records. There are a few thousand I could get rid of, and still survive. But, if I were to start selling them off, If it ever got down to the last 1000 or so, it would already be so disastrous and anguishing that it wouldn't help to keep just that few. I'd have a difficult time in deciding which 1000 to keep, and it wouldn't have been worth it to keep that few to play or even look at, if most of their label run issues are missing. They all go well together in a collection. They are all like "old friends" I used to be able to remember where and when I got each one of many thousands. I've lost some of that memory, already. But it would rip my heart out to see them go, being sold off in installments, as I need money. I hope I never NEED to sell them off to survive. I might rather pull the plug on the old oxygen tank before that could happen. Luckily, I'm and artist and writer, and not a longshoreman/stevedore or day labourer. So, I can possibly continue to earn money drawing into my nineties or early 100s, as long as my eyesight holds out, and my hands are not too shaky (and then I can move to computer animation as long as I can even punch keyboard keys with my nose ); and I can write stories, as long as I can think coherently, and what I write still reaches the emotions of the reader enough to bridge the generation gap (e.g. isn't based on outmoded ways of thinking, but spans all generations).

That makes sense, as according to Ron Murphy, one or both of those same two DJ copies (I can't remember which, but believe that it was both) were found (rescued ) in a box of mid 1960s test pressings at ARP. Ron told me long ago (early 1970s), that the Midwest pressing plants (probably ALL US pressing plants) generally kept 2 of the usual 6 pre-press run test pressing records at their facility, in case subsequent press run would be ordered. Oldies runs made years later were sometimes made based on the original test pressings. That was done, at the very least at ARP, Columbia Terre Haute, and RCA Indianapolis, and probably at Archer and others. I was told that of the remaining 4 of the test pressings, one went into The Motown Corp. Record File, one into The Jobete Music Co. Record File, one to Quality Control, and the other to Berry Gordy's own record file.