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Post by Emerald City on Feb 20, 2005 10:30:34 GMT -5
The ultimate photographic history of TAMLA MOTOWN is essential viewing this spring!
April 6th - June 4th 2005
Private view 5th April 2005
Redferns Music Picture Gallery is pleased to announce a one-off MOTOWN exhibition in association with Motown UK/ Universal Music Catalogue Marketing, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the MOTOWN Package Tour which helped launch the label's identity in Britain. HITSVILLE UK is a classic collection featuring rare and previously unseen pictures of MOTOWN music icons such as Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Little Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas and The Supremes, to name a few.
This is a photographic narrative of the most inspiring MOTOWN artists and captures the true essence of the world famous Detroit sound. The images chronicle the rise of MOTOWN in the US and its massive influence on the UK music scene: featuring key images from the legendary UK television programmes Thank Your Lucky Stars and Ready Steady Go. The special relationship between MOTOWN and its fans in the UK is fervent to this day and the exhibition celebrates this unique alliance.
Universal Music, the proud owners of the MOTOWN catalogue have declared the first Monday of each month to be 'MOTOWN Monday', when new MOTOWN releases featuring rare and unreleased tracks will be made available - recent titles include anthologies by Chris Clark and Brenda Holloway. A special CD to commemorate the exhibition, entitled HITSVILLE UK will be released on 4th April 2005.
Each photograph in the exhibition has been individually selected by Redferns from thousands of images in the Redferns Music Picture Library and Michael Ochs Archives featuring American photographer Don Paulsen, who was granted intimate backstage access to many of the artists featured. The exhibition will run from 6th April - 4th June 2005.
HITSVILLE UK - MOTOWN in Britain: An Exhibition of the History of MOTOWN takes place at Redferns Music Picture Gallery, 3 Bramley Road, W10 6SZ, Latimer Road Tube Station and turn left. Open Monday to Friday 10am-6pm and Saturday 12-5:00pm
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Post by Emerald City on Feb 20, 2005 10:32:24 GMT -5
Fantastic! You know Motown is still very much alive in the UK :sunshine:
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Post by Emerald City on Mar 21, 2005 18:00:49 GMT -5
Are you ready for a brand new beat?
Richard Williams on the day Motown hit the UK
Friday March 18, 2005
The Guardian
Forty years ago tomorrow, on March 19 1965, the Tamla-Motown Revue touched down in London, bringing the Supremes, the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations and Martha and the Vandellas to British audiences for the first time. Starting at the Astoria, Finsbury Park, the tour proceeded to 20 other venues in 21 days, including the Wigan ABC, Newcastle City Hall and the Odeon, Glasgow. Two performances a night were scheduled, although ticket sales outside London were so poor that Georgie Fame was added to the bill in an attempt to broaden the show's appeal. One eyewitness remembers an audience at the ABC in Chester numbering no more than 200.
It might seem amazing now to think that such classics as Martha's Heatwave and Dancing in the Street, the Marvelettes' Please Mr Postman and the Temptations' My Girl barely registered on the British charts, despite the enthusiastic patronage of such high-profile fans as the Beatles and Dusty Springfield. At that stage the Motown sound was virtually an underground music in the UK, appreciated by a hard core of collectors.
Mary Wells' My Guy had been the Detroit-based label's first UK top 10 hit in May 1964, followed that autumn by the Supremes' Where Did Our Love Go and Baby Love, which gave Motown its first UK number one. This was considered sufficient encouragement to launch the label under its own name, and the tour was arranged to help promote the first batch of releases, including the Supremes' Stop! In the Name of Love, which reached the top 10 thanks in no small part to the dramatic choreography of the group's performance on Ready Steady Go.
Choreography was a big part of the presentation, which enfolded Motown's artists in a collective identity. The label's ambitious founder, Berry Gordy Jr, consciously adapted the production-line techniques of Detroit's automobile factories to the making of pop records, but such was the talent of his singers, musicians and songwriters that the music retained the energy bred into its bones by the shared heritage of gospel music. There was a formula, but it seldom got in the way of spontaneity.
Ultimately, the Sound of Young America, Gordy's favourite slogan, spread around the globe. Martha Reeves' cry - "Calling out around the world/ Are you ready for a brand new beat?" - found its answer. Diana Ross became an international superstar. Smokey Robinson, author of My Girl and The Tracks of My Tears, was described by none other than Bob Dylan as "America's greatest living poet". Marvin Gaye, who started out impersonating Nat King Cole, made records that articulated the anger and anguish of black America during the Vietnam era.
It didn't last, of course. When Gordy's dreams took the company to Hollywood, the brutal severing of its roots prefaced a slow decline. Now the Sound of Young America is in corporate ownership and the little studio where it all began, known as Hitsville USA, is a museum. The records, however, still sound as though they were made yesterday.
Taken From British Newspaper/Website The Gaurdian
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