19th March 2009.
In the past couple of weeks part of my soul has been devoted to “The Complete Motown Singles Collection 1959-1970. In a very real way it has been the sonic equivalent of comfort food. It is warm, familiar and instantly satisfying. And pretty moreish too. The familiarity is its immediate allure, out of the 1300 or so tracks more than a third will be easily recognised by anyone with only a passing interest in modern music. And here lies both its unique selling point and its fatal flaw; Motown is so utterly ubiquitous, it has permeated every section of our lives, surreptitiously becoming the soundtrack to our our daily routine. It’s everywhere, it has been in the background of every event for more than the last half century and shows no sign of abatement. In Britain this is no more so than in the terrifying world of the working class. From the dank cellars of Liverpool and Manchester a movement grew up of earnest young men with an overwhelming bent for amphetamines and matrix numbers. It spread like wild fire. Soon it was in every parish hall and gin juke. Bass heavy, melodic and alarmingly catchy, a new age of pop. An uplifting hybrid of Gospel and Rhythm And Blues, it infected the universe in little more than a year making the Motown Corporation the biggest black owned business in apartheid USA.
There’s a popular misconception among record collectors and matrix number bores that if a record sells 3.5 million copies, it mustn’t be that good. In their microscopic world there’s always some obscurity or other that is ultimately more worthy and blows your million seller out of the water. Which as we all know is utter tosh. Some of the prize nuggets of the Northern Soul tithing are indeed magnificent records. But their scarcity is not what makes them so. They almost all approximations of Motown’s prolific output. The answer usually lies in their close proximity to the works of Smokey Robinson and Holland-Dozier-Holland.
Say It Loud! HOLLAND-DOZIER-HOLLAND! And here’s where the the theory really does fall to the ground. Unlike their Brill Building peers (Goffin-King, Bacharach-David, Mann-Weill) H-D-H wrote, arranged, produced all their output on one label. In the Snakepit at Hitsville USA they crafted a sound and feel for music that is so wonderfully uniq that over 50 years later I am so bowled over by its wonder that I am struggling to find words to convey how monumental it actually is. If they had only worked with one act, let’s say the Four Tops, their art and craft would be rightly lauded as some of the greatest of the last century. In any medium. Of course, it didn’t stop there, the Four Tops were not the golden goose, that tag belonged to The Supremes who scored 12 consecutive US number ones that progressed from the cute high school charm of Whete Did Our Love Go? to the deep, sophisticated heartbreak of You Keep Me Hanging On in less than two years. (Smokey Robinson himself said that everything Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote prior to The Supremes’ Stop! In The Name Of Love was simply nursery rhymes. Listen to them, he’s bang on the money.)
We live in a museum culture these days, where anything and everything is held up as an item to be to be marvelled at at a later date. Does anybody remember Spangles? The Complete Motown Singles Collection are an item of great cultural and historical significance. A vitally essential component of The Sixties like Alex Young, Bob Dylan and Ho Chi Minh. They are an integral part of of Northern working class life; youth culture was founded on a bassline played by James Jameson with one finger on the most elevating array of of seven inch records we are fortunate enough to have laughed, cried and danced to. Every day. Now, can I get a witness? Love, people. X
Berry Gordy – Froze To The Bone In My Igloo Home.
bernie@happening-things.com 