Post by Motorcity on Oct 25, 2008 19:31:11 GMT -5
Regarding to Motown I found two interesting quotes by drum legend Earl Palmer. The quotes are taken from his biography "Backbeat". As it seems he's not too much in awe of Barry Gordon.
He also talks about the records that Motown already recorded in Los Angeles in the mid-sixties. This challenges the myth, that Motown only started recording there in the late sixties, but before that recorded exclusively in Detroit:
Motown was a cold-blooded operation. Berry Gordy was a nervous little guy, always in a hurry. You know how some people don't turn their head to look at things, just shift their eyes sideways? That's him. We never really had a conversation, me and Gordy, he didn't talk to no side musicians.
Motown had two white sisters called the Lewis Sisters. Nice friendly white girls. In fact, I had a little fling with one. We were recording them two, three times a week, and as far as I know, they never made one record for Motown. What was going on was Motown recorded these things and sent the tracks back to Detroit, where they put the real vocal on it. Rather than transport their artists out here, they used us, and saved money on travel and overtime.
See, at that time, if you doing a session with vocals, the vocalist had to be there. Say you did a session with Diana Ross: you could not bring the musicians in and do tracks for her to sing over later. Other companies were willing to abide by that but Motown wanted to cheat. I don't know whose idea the scheme was; I assume it was the two guys that led those sessions, Frank Wilson and HaI Davis. It saved Motown money for a while, but as soon as the union found out, Motown had to pay up. But they couldn't possibly have reimbursed us all the money they'd saved.
Source: Tony Scherman, "Backbeat - Earl Palmer's Story". Da Capo Press, 2000. Page 136
He also talks about the records that Motown already recorded in Los Angeles in the mid-sixties. This challenges the myth, that Motown only started recording there in the late sixties, but before that recorded exclusively in Detroit:
Motown was a cold-blooded operation. Berry Gordy was a nervous little guy, always in a hurry. You know how some people don't turn their head to look at things, just shift their eyes sideways? That's him. We never really had a conversation, me and Gordy, he didn't talk to no side musicians.
Motown had two white sisters called the Lewis Sisters. Nice friendly white girls. In fact, I had a little fling with one. We were recording them two, three times a week, and as far as I know, they never made one record for Motown. What was going on was Motown recorded these things and sent the tracks back to Detroit, where they put the real vocal on it. Rather than transport their artists out here, they used us, and saved money on travel and overtime.
See, at that time, if you doing a session with vocals, the vocalist had to be there. Say you did a session with Diana Ross: you could not bring the musicians in and do tracks for her to sing over later. Other companies were willing to abide by that but Motown wanted to cheat. I don't know whose idea the scheme was; I assume it was the two guys that led those sessions, Frank Wilson and HaI Davis. It saved Motown money for a while, but as soon as the union found out, Motown had to pay up. But they couldn't possibly have reimbursed us all the money they'd saved.
Source: Tony Scherman, "Backbeat - Earl Palmer's Story". Da Capo Press, 2000. Page 136
