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Post by Emerald City on Apr 6, 2005 20:21:58 GMT -5
01 April 2005
It is the 40th anniversary of the Motown invasion of Britain. Adam White was there, and saw it happen. He remembers a disaster that quickly turned to triumph.
Forty years ago, The Supremes - and about two dozen of their fellow Motown performers and musicians -toured Britain for the first time, playing and singing their hearts out, while striving valiantly not to be dispirited by a low audience turnout, the inclement weather and the differences in food (and toilet paper) that came with the territory.
The Tamla-Motown Revue of 1965 marked the only time that Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder - three of the four pillars of Motown - toured the UK together. They saw the insides of ABC, Odeon and Gaumont theatres up and down the country. I caught them at the Colston Hall on Tuesday 23 March, at the first of two shows in my home city.
A ticket for the 6.45pm performance cost £4. To see Ross, Robinson and Wonder on one bill today would cost rather more and, of course, is never likely to happen. The fourth act on that tour, Martha Reeves, has been the most accessible in the years since. She has made a decent living from Britain's perpetual love affair with the sound of Motown and, in 2003, even toured with a mobile jukebox show, Dancing in the Streets. Some of the towns would have been same ones she saw in 1965, although one hopes the food was better.
For my part, I can never forget Martha and her Vandellas bouncing on stage that March night, wearing brilliant white dresses and giving another dimension to the song that had earlier ignited my infatuation with Motown: "Heat Wave". When they sang "Dancing in the Street", summer arrived in spring.
Delving today into the history of that tour has been illuminating, if sometimes at odds with other published accounts. Reeves's autobiography, for example, mentions "huge crowds". Jack Ashford, one of the backing musicians, writes in his book about "sellout" audiences. At least Mary Wilson of the Supremes doesn't mislead in her Dreamgirl tell-all, and it's just as well: in an NME interview published right after the tour ended, she acknowledged that it was a flop.
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Post by Emerald City on Apr 6, 2005 20:28:12 GMT -5
Those few of us in the Colston Hall knew as much - but did not care. The small crowd played well to the snobbery of we serious Motown fans, the ones who had been into the music for several years before the tour crossed the Atlantic. This was "our" music, these were "our" artists, and the fact that the majority of British concert-goers didn't recognise the uniqueness of this sound, didn't realise that they were missing a major event, only reinforced our innate sense of superiority.
Sometimes, there were sound reasons for this attitude, such as the appalling local cover versions of Motown originals - among them, "Do You Love Me"(Brian Poole and the Tremeloes), "Where Did Our Love Go" (Peter Jay and Jaywalkers) and "Baby I Need Your Loving" (The Fourmost). The last of these, released by EMI, was so offensive that the boss of Motown, Berry Gordy, complained, not least because the British record company was also Motown's licensee.
Of course, empty seats in theatres throughout England, Scotland and Wales were not what the artists wanted. "It's always - I won't say the word 'scary' - but disheartening when you go out there and you see the house is half-full," says Mary Wilson today. "It hurts, but once you're on stage, even though you're kind of aware that the audience is not there and you wonder why, I don't recall anyone doing less than their best, ever. You perform as well for five as you do for 500. That's what I remember."
What I remember about The Supremes from 23 March, 1965, was the group in black dresses, belting out "Baby Love" and "Stop! In The Name Of Love", the latter with its iconic police-constable choreography - suggested to the trio by The Temptations' Paul Williams, while the Revue was camped at the Cumberland Hotel in London, before the tour began.
What I didn't know were some of the artists' more uncomfortable experiences. "The hamburgers were definitely not the hamburgers we were accustomed to," says Wilson. "And all Americans love lots of ice, and we could never find ice. We could not stand hot beer, so there were cultural differences that were often in our discussions." And there were other things. "The toilet tissue was extremely hard," the ex-Supreme laughs. "We could not figure out why. It was what we used to call wax paper here in America."
Yet once they were on the coach, the young performers (Stevie Wonder was 14; the band's bassist, Tony Newton, was 18) bonded with the Brits on board. When not on stage, Pete Moore of the Miracles quenched his thirst with the compere, Tony Marsh. "He took me to all the famous pubs through England," recalls Moore. "I got drunk quite a bit before it was over, but it was such an experience, I think about that even today." The one-time Miracle also remembers when the bus was stopped en route to Birmingham, by three men toting rifles. "We didn't know what to think," he says. It was one of Marsh's pranks.
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Post by Emerald City on Apr 6, 2005 20:31:57 GMT -5
The compere may not have been aware that, in America, at least one Motown Revue had been fired upon in the South. And Gordy and his travelling stars would not have known that one of their UK venues was named after Bristolian merchant, civic benefactor, and slave-trader Edward Colston, an officer in the Royal African Company in the 17th century. Bristol, of course, was one of Britain's main staging posts for the slave trade.
Back in London, television's Vicki Wickham was one of Tamla Motown's most effective evangelists, working for Ready Steady Go! and booking many of the Detroit acts on that influential music show. When the 1965 caravan arrived, Wickham recorded a dynamic one-hour special, The Sound of Motown, featuring all the touring acts(plus The Temptations), hosted by Dusty Springfield, another Motown zealot. Like Ready Steady Go!, it was produced by Associated Rediffusion, a company run by "ex-Navy people," who, says Wickham, "almost rang a bell for tea. It was so conservative that how we got something like the Motown special by them, I will never truly know."
Wickham understands that the tour was premature for Britain. "People were really at that stage into hit records, and if you didn't have a current hit record..." The Supremes had had two of those, but releases by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder and the Miracles had not troubled the Top 20. "Looking at the tour now," concludes Wickham, "we should have all known that it would fail. It was too ambitious."
Yet the groundwork had been laid and, soon enough, Motown's relentless output of brilliant pop records brought its popularity in line with its ambition. In 1965, the company collected just one UK Top 20 hit. By the end of 1966, its artists had logged eight, including an apt title by the Supremes: "You Can't Hurry Love." In its own time, the invasion succeeded.
It continues to this day. In fact, the sound and spirit of Motown may have been absorbed into the British cultural bloodstream more fully than we realise - and perhaps more completely than in its country of origin. In the run-up to the last general election, Labour Party officials were said to have asked the music research firm The Sound Lounge for a campaign theme with a Motown feel.
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Post by Emerald City on Apr 6, 2005 20:34:45 GMT -5
The songwriter Lamont Dozier, a powerful source of Berry Gordy's business in the 1960s, has made London a second home, to work with the likes of Helen Terry, Mick Hucknall, Alison Moyet and Joss Stone. Meanwhile, the UK Performing Rights Society logs show Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' "Third Finger, Left Hand," one of Dozier's early copyrights, penned with his colleagues Eddie and Brian Holland, to be one of the most-aired wedding-anniversary and hen-night staples. (And you can buy a ringtone.)
Recent records by the likes of Emma Bunton and - for goodness sake - the Doves have been hailed for paying homage to the classic Motown sound. And, when the silver-haired survivors of Gordy's original studio band, The Funk Brothers, played at the Royal Festival Hall a year ago, half the sell-out crowd seemed to be under 25.
But perhaps the ultimate measure of this country's unique devotion to Motown was apparent last April, when EMI quietly became the sole owner of Gordy's treasure-chest of songs, Jobete Music.
"Only the Beatles' catalogue... is considered more valuable," noted one commentator. He might also have pointed out a conjunction: one of the first attention grabbing covers of a Motown song was by The Beatles: "You Really Got a Hold On Me."
Adam White's two-part documentary 'The Motown Invasion' begins on BBC Radio 2 on Tuesday at 8.30pm. An exhibition of photographs to mark the 40th anniversary of the Tamla-Motown Revue runs from Wednesday to 4 June at Redferns Music Picture Gallery, London W10 (020-7792 9914). 'Hitsville UK' is out on Monday on Motown/Universal.
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Post by Diamond Girl on May 19, 2005 13:44:41 GMT -5
Motown Revue Dancing in the Streets to Play West End by Broadway.com Staff
The Motown revue Dancing in the Streets, which was been touring around the U.K., will hit the West End this summer. The tuner is scheduled to begin performances at the Cambridge Theatre on July 7 in preparation for a July 19 opening. Dancing in the Streets aims to recreate the energy, style and music of the starts of the Motown stable. Songs in the show include "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," "Baby Love," "My Girl," "Dancing in the Street," "Shop Around," "I'll Be There," "Signed Sealed Delivered I'm Yours," "Where Did Our Love Go," "What's Going On," "The Way You Do The Things You Do," "Please Mr. Postman," "My Guy," "Reach Out I'll Be There," "ABC," "Stop In the Name of Love," "Heat Wave," "You're All I Need to Get By," "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," "You Can't Hurry Love," "Tears of a Clown" and "Tracks of My Tears." Dancing in the Streets is directed by Keith Strachan and choreographed by Carole Todd.
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Post by Motown Honey on May 19, 2005 13:47:51 GMT -5
I just live in the wrong country
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Post by Diamond Girl on Aug 1, 2005 11:37:42 GMT -5
Dominic Cavendish reviews Dancing in the Streets at Cambridge Theatre
"You can hear these songs blaring out of shopping malls all over the world," says our host for the evening, Ray Shell, playing a kindly janitor who seemingly has the power to recreate the sights and sounds of Motown right before our eyes, in between bouts of sweeping the floor.
His remark is clearly meant as a boast, but it does raise this question: if you're only ever one twizzle of the radio dial - or a shopping trip - away from songs such as Tears of a Clown, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? and Three Times a Lady, why would you want to pay good money to hear them all over again in a theatrical tribute show?
There's no answer to this, beyond the fact that there's something in human nature that needs to reach out to things tried, tested and true. There's something deep within that's prepared to collude in the illusion that, for one night, the stars of one of the most successful labels in the history of modern music - Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder among them - are back on stage, unwithered by age. And within us lies the urge - embarrassing when acted on alone, forgiveable when conducted en masse - to shift from passive appreciation to active participation, or, as Shell puts it, "to shake your booty".
Watching a bacchanalian frenzy seize the audience at the Cambridge Theatre during a climactic medley that included, at long last, the track that gives the evening its title - Dancing in the Street by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - my long-lingering cynicism was finally banished. Yes, this show, which plunders the Motown archive for hit after hit, can't hurt the bank balances of its producers, but there's a simple generosity about it that makes it far more than a shrewd cash-in.
Having been around the country before this West End run - coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the first visit to the UK of the Tamla Motown Revue - the 13-strong company, supported by on-stage musicians, form a well-oiled machine. They gyrate, finger-click and turn on their heels in perfect synchrony, bringing an aura of silken assurance to dance moves so fussily precise they risk courting ridicule nowadays; the Supremes' strange hand-flapping manoeuvres could easily make the performers look like penguins, but here the immaculately coiffed Siam Hurlock, Paula Kay and Jacqui Zvimba never look less than perfect princesses, dressed to the nines in sequins and furs.
Above all, the company sing not just with hark-at-us virtuosity but with unbridled soulfulness. They remind you why these songs are timeless, catching the melancholy and heartache that run through the most up-tempo, infectiously jaunty numbers. The stand-out act of impersonation has to be Nathaniel Morrison's uncanny recreation of Stevie Wonder, sunglasses, seal-cub head movements, spasmodic jerks and all. But this is a true ensemble effort that, uniting young and old, black and white in the aisles, makes you not only grateful for the music but proud to be part of the free-living, fun-loving West.
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Post by Motown Honey on Aug 2, 2005 14:51:39 GMT -5
:rockonbaby:
What a great review, makes me what to experience it in person :cheer:
But :LMAO: @ Treat Her Like A Lady, great song, but it really does not belong on anything titled Dancing in the Streets :stop:
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Kay
Star
*~*Floever A Star*~*
Posts: 1,326
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Post by Kay on Aug 3, 2005 18:32:22 GMT -5
Thank you ((Jazzy)) I recently read a review in one of our papers about the show and they were interviewing the young lady playing Diana. I was not impressed. It's 2005 and you would think they know the difference between songs recorded by The Supremes and songs recorded by Diana Ross & The Supremes Not to mention some of these people still don't realize that Florence and Mary actually had names! :suspect:
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