Post by Forever Motown on May 27, 2005 14:21:03 GMT -5
By Chris Morris
Thu May 26, 8:50 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Motown Records won't celebrate its 50th anniversary until 2009, but its Universal Music Group parent is getting the party started early.
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Hip-O Select, Universal's Web-only collectors' imprint (http://www.hip-oselect.com), kicked off the fiesta Jan. 14 with "The Complete Motown Singles, Volume 1: 1959-1961."
The six-CD package, priced at $119.98 in an edition of 5,000 copies, contains the A and B sides of every 45 released by Berry Gordy Jr.'s legendary soul label family during the first three years of its existence. Like each Motown singles compilation, it comes packaged with a vinyl 45 rpm single -- in this case, Gordy's first hit, Barrett Strong's 1959 Tamla release "Money (That's What I Want)."
A second four-CD set devoted to the Detroit company's 1962 output came out May 13 in an 8,000-copy edition, priced at $79.98. The project continues in the fall with a five-CD set devoted to the 45s of '63.
"So little of what is in these first three packages had made it to the CD era, or even to the LP era," Hip-O Select senior director Thane Tierney says. "It offers an unparalleled insight into probably the only label in history where, if you say the name of the label, it sets off a sound in your head."
When the project is completed in 2008 with a package covering the label's output for 1972 (the year the label moved from Detroit to Los Angeles), it will comprise 12 volumes totaling 64 or 65 CDs. To mark Motown's 50th, a complete set will be issued in 2009 -- hopefully in a scale replica of the old Hitsville USA building. "We're going to pull out all the stops," Tierney says.
Produced by Universal Music Enterprises vp A&R Harry Weinger, the compilations of early singles tell -- as writer Craig Werner puts it in his notes for Volume 1 -- "the story of an independent record company grappling with the day-to-day challenge of economic survival." The Motown one hears on those first sides is not yet "the Sound of Young America."
Starting his label with an $800 loan, Gordy threw everything against the entrepreneurial wall to see whether it would stick. The evidence shows it took quite a while for his stable of young Detroit talent -- the Miracles, the Temptations, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and (then-Little) Stevie Wonder -- to find their distinctive voices. He ran imprints devoted to gospel and jazz and issued instrumentals, answer records and even white pop by such singers as Debbie Dean and the Valadiers.
Gordy "wanted to have a piece of every variety of music that was on the charts," Tierney notes. "With the exception of classical, he took a shot at every genre available."
Hip-O Select also is releasing smaller projects from the Motown vaults. Marvin Gaye's previously unissued live album "At the Copa" was out in April, the Four Tops' "Lost Without You" just hit the Web site, and this summer will see a four-CD box of the rare "Motortown Revue" live albums.
An up-to-date Motown package hit stores Tuesday: the Weinger-produced "Motown Remixed," in which such contemporary mixers as DJ Jazzy Jeff, Mocean Worker, Easy Mo Bee and King Britt work their juju on the label's catalog.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Thu May 26, 8:50 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Motown Records won't celebrate its 50th anniversary until 2009, but its Universal Music Group parent is getting the party started early.
ADVERTISEMENT
Hip-O Select, Universal's Web-only collectors' imprint (http://www.hip-oselect.com), kicked off the fiesta Jan. 14 with "The Complete Motown Singles, Volume 1: 1959-1961."
The six-CD package, priced at $119.98 in an edition of 5,000 copies, contains the A and B sides of every 45 released by Berry Gordy Jr.'s legendary soul label family during the first three years of its existence. Like each Motown singles compilation, it comes packaged with a vinyl 45 rpm single -- in this case, Gordy's first hit, Barrett Strong's 1959 Tamla release "Money (That's What I Want)."
A second four-CD set devoted to the Detroit company's 1962 output came out May 13 in an 8,000-copy edition, priced at $79.98. The project continues in the fall with a five-CD set devoted to the 45s of '63.
"So little of what is in these first three packages had made it to the CD era, or even to the LP era," Hip-O Select senior director Thane Tierney says. "It offers an unparalleled insight into probably the only label in history where, if you say the name of the label, it sets off a sound in your head."
When the project is completed in 2008 with a package covering the label's output for 1972 (the year the label moved from Detroit to Los Angeles), it will comprise 12 volumes totaling 64 or 65 CDs. To mark Motown's 50th, a complete set will be issued in 2009 -- hopefully in a scale replica of the old Hitsville USA building. "We're going to pull out all the stops," Tierney says.
Produced by Universal Music Enterprises vp A&R Harry Weinger, the compilations of early singles tell -- as writer Craig Werner puts it in his notes for Volume 1 -- "the story of an independent record company grappling with the day-to-day challenge of economic survival." The Motown one hears on those first sides is not yet "the Sound of Young America."
Starting his label with an $800 loan, Gordy threw everything against the entrepreneurial wall to see whether it would stick. The evidence shows it took quite a while for his stable of young Detroit talent -- the Miracles, the Temptations, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and (then-Little) Stevie Wonder -- to find their distinctive voices. He ran imprints devoted to gospel and jazz and issued instrumentals, answer records and even white pop by such singers as Debbie Dean and the Valadiers.
Gordy "wanted to have a piece of every variety of music that was on the charts," Tierney notes. "With the exception of classical, he took a shot at every genre available."
Hip-O Select also is releasing smaller projects from the Motown vaults. Marvin Gaye's previously unissued live album "At the Copa" was out in April, the Four Tops' "Lost Without You" just hit the Web site, and this summer will see a four-CD box of the rare "Motortown Revue" live albums.
An up-to-date Motown package hit stores Tuesday: the Weinger-produced "Motown Remixed," in which such contemporary mixers as DJ Jazzy Jeff, Mocean Worker, Easy Mo Bee and King Britt work their juju on the label's catalog.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
