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the history of the Record Label Motown AARP magazine / December 2018-January 2019
By Touré
In the beginning, there was Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown records. A writer and producer of popular music that he hoped would one day reach all of young America. He was a man known for his impeccable ear and relentless drive.
So it's not surprising that the second act that Gordy signed to his label was teenage composer William "Smokey" Robinson and his singing group the Miracles.
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Like Gordy, Robinson was a prolific creator. He's now credited with over 4,000 songs and dozens of top-40 hits including "My Girl" for the Temptations, "My Guy" for Mary Wells, and "Ain't That Peculiar" for Marvin Gaye.
But Robinson went on to sing many of the timeless hits which he created (for example, "The Tracks of My Tears", "I Second That Emotion", and "The Tears of a Clown"). He also became a Motown vice-president, producer, and talent scout. The image of Motown to this day is tied up with image of Smokey Robinson. Both are associated with class and taste and the ability to cross over to white audiences without ever losing the love and admiration of black fans.
Robinson earned his place in the Rock&Roll Hall-of-Fame and the Songwriters Hall-of-Fame and has been honored by the Kennedy center. 2 years ago he received the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
These days his voice remains sweet and strong. He's still recording and performing. In February and March he'll be playing 4 shows at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas. At 78, he says that he's healthy and happy. When he's not singing, he's doing yoga, eating vegan, or playing golf.
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In October we invited music journalist Touré to interview the Motown legend. Robinson was eager to talk about his role in the label's history. But he was still mourning the August death of his friend Queen-of-Soul Aretha Franklin. They had known each other since she was 7 years old and he was 8.
So we'll start there ...
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How are you feeling now about the loss of Aretha?
I'm still in recovery mode because I love her and I'm going to miss our conversations and our getting together. But I know that spiritually she's in a better place. She was suffering at the end and I don't ever want to see her suffer. So now she's cool. And I'm cool 'cause she's cool.
You and Aretha grew up in Detroit along with lots of stars like Jackie Wilson, Martha Reeves, Diana Ross, and Mary Wells. The Detroit you grew up in was so musically fertile.
There were thousands-upon-thousands of talented people there. We used to have group battles on the street corners. There were groups that would out-sing me and the Miracles.
But other cities are loaded with good musicians. What was different about Detroit and your era?
Berry Gordy. I believe there are talented people in every city, every town, every township, every nook in the World. But Berry Gordy gave us an outlet.
What was unique about Berry?
He was a music man. When I met him, he was writing songs for Jackie Wilson and other people like that. And he was also a record producer. Back in those days -- especially if you were black -- nobody was paying you what you should be paid if they paid you at all. So Berry decided to start his own record company and gave us that outlet.
Some record execs succeed because they have the ears. And some because they can make the business work.
Most record companies back then were run by lawyers or guys who just wanted to go into the record business for a hobby or something else. But we had a music man at the helm. Somebody whose first love was music and producing records and writing songs. So that was a real asset for us.
Did he help you become a better songwriter?
Absolutely.
What did he teach you?
How to make my song be one idea. When I met Berry, the Miracles had gone to an audition with Jackie Wilson's managers. Berry was there that day to hand in some new songs. We sang 5 songs that I had written. Jackie Wilson's mangers didn't like us at all.
But after they had rejected us, Berry came out and said "I liked a couple your songs, man. Where did you get them from?" I had 100 songs in a loose-leaf notebook. But most of them were haphazard because my first verse had nothing to do with my second verse.
So he showed you how to make them more cohesive?
Absolutely. - 4 -
Do you have a normal method of writing like "I want to start with the rhythm and then get to the melody"?
No. There's none of that, babe. Not for a real songwriter, there's none of that. There's no "Let me start with this first every time" because you're then handicapping yourself.
When did you first think that "I'm a good singer"?
I never thought that. I'm not one of those people. I'm not an ego singer. I've never thought what you just said.
You've never thought that you were a good singer?
"No. I think that I feel songs. Whitney Houston was a great singer. Celine Dion is a great singer. Aretha Franklin was a great singer. I'm not in that category. I won't fool myself. But I feel what I sing. And I think that people can feel what I feel when I do.
When did you first think that you could be a professional singer?
When I was a professional singer.
You didn't realize that you were good enough until then?
I grew up with some guys who could sing me under the table. All I know is that we were fortunate and blessed enough to meet a man who gave us a chance to make records.
Okay. I want to talk about some of those records. "I Second That Emotion" is just an incredible performance. What's the feeling that "I Second That Emotion" is working with?
When you're musical, that stuff happens automatically. I do concerts every night and it's never the same. I've sung "Ooo Baby Baby" 500,000 times. But every night, it's brand-new because I don't know how I'm going to deliver it. Whatever comes out of me that night is what it is.
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What about "The Tears of a Clown"? I love that song.
Thank you. You can thank Stevie Wonder for that.
He wrote that?
I wrote the words. Stevie and Hank Cosby wrote the music. Stevie had recorded that tract. He couldn't think of a song to go with it so he gave it to me. I wanted to write something about the circus that would be touching to people.
When I was a child, I heard a story about the Italian clown Pagliacci. Everybody loved him and they cheered him. But when he went back to his dressing room, he cried because he didn't have that kind of love from a woman. So that's what "The Tears of a Clown" is about. It's a version of Pagliacci's life.
When you put it like that, the song could be a ballad.
The best version that I've ever heard of "The Tears of a Clown" is by a jazz singer who did it as a ballad. Her name is Nnenna Freelon. She had a violin crying in the background. It was beautiful because it's a sad song. My version is upbeat only because of the musical track that Stevie gave me. But in essence, it's a sad song.
You do make me want to cry "The Tracks of My Tears".
Well, thank you.
Tell me about that song.
"The Tracks of My Tears" originated with my guitarist Marv Tarplin and was cowritten with Pete Moore. Marv put his guitar riffs on tape and gave them to me to write lyrics. The first thing I came up with was "Take a good look at my face; See my smiling side of the place; Be the closest thing to trace; "that you're gone and I'm no." And I said "No, that's not it."
Then "It's easy to trace that I miss you so much." And I said "No, that's not it."
Then one day I was at my mirror shaving and I said "What if a person cried until their tears had actually left tracks in there face?" Then I was able to finish the song.
So it took you a while to find that part to finish the song?
Yeah, yeah. But I did that in a couple months. "Cruisin' " took 5 years. Marv had given me the music and I loved it. I used to go to sleep it by it, I loved it so much. So I kept working on it. Then one day I was driving down Sunset Boulevard and I had my car top down. I said "I'm just cruisin' down Sunset." And then I said "Cruisin! That's it! I turned my car around, man. I want that gold!
Tell me about young Michel Jackson. What was it like having him around?
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Young Michael Jackson was a man. He didn't have a childhood. From the time he was 8, they had him singing in the nightclubs. So when he got grown, he became a child because he could do it. He could finally play. He could do all those things that he didn't do as a child.
What was it like to work with Stevie Wonder?
His music covers every genre that you can thing of from gospel to jazz and everything in between. He's just an extremely talented person. And he's my brother. We always have a great time. We'd be working together and Stevie would come up to me and whisper in me ear. "Hey, Smoke. Man, I'ma whoop your ass." I mean, that's how we are with each other.
What about Marvin Gaye?
Marvin Gaye was my brother brother. We were together all the time. He recorded my favorite album of all time ("What's Going On"). He was one of the greatest singers ever. I used to tell him all the time "You Marvin-ized my song, man." Because he would do stuff vocally that I had never even dared to dream could be a part of the song.
You were a central figure in the most important label of the Century in terms of music and in terms of social impact. That does that mean to you?
That means everything to me, man. That's beyond out wildest dreams. Berry and I talk about it all the time. We never dared to dream that Motown would become what it has become.
The very first day of Motown, there were 5 people there. Berry Gordy sat us down and said "I'm going to start my own record company. We are not just going to make black music. We're going to make music for the World."
That was our plan. And we did it.
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by Gerri Hirshey
How could they ever have imagined what astonishments lay ahead for them. It was all so very unlikely.
No. Make that impossible.
On a cold October day in 1962, 45 Motown Records singers, musicians, and chaperones stood shivering with excitement and nerves. They crowded together inside Studio A, the converted garage of a bungalow-style house that 32-year-old Motown Berry Gordy had bought at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. His neighbors were respectable strivers Sykes Hernia Control Service and Phelps Funeral Parlor.
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The great-grandson of a Georgia slave, Gordy had started his label in early 1959. The same year that Mattel's plastic dream girl Barbie minced onto the scene.
Gordy's troupe had mustered for the kickoff of the Motown Revue, the company's first extensive tour. A snapshot of the moment still hangs in the house on West Grand which now serves as the Motown Museum. They stand clutching bulging purses and boxy cameras; tucked into tight chicken slacks and mohair sweaters; freshly barbered, manicured, and beehived.
The Supremes (Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, and Diane [later Diana] Ross) had just graduated from high school. The trio were thrilled to be going but worried that they hadn't truly earned their seats on the bus. "Understand, we were favorites of Berry's. Little special girls," recalls Wilson who is now 74 and living in Los Angeles. "But unless you had a hit record, you were a nobody at Motown. Nearly everyone else on the bus already had a hit."
Those hit makers included Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, the Miracles, the Contours, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. They were joined by newly signed 12-year-old phenom Stevland Hardaway Judkins (rechristened a more showbiz-sounding Little Stevie Wonder).
Also aboard was 19-year-old Mary Wells who had been crowned the Queen-of-Motown. She was regal with her Cleopatra eyeliner yet sweetly vulnerable on vinyl. Wells had been a working girl since age 12 when she had helped her single mother scrub frigid stairwells to support them both.
"Until Motown, there were 3 big careers for a black girl in Detroit," Wells told me years later. "Babies, the factories, or day work. Period."
Gordy's artists (all African-American) were the sons and daughters of former sharecroppers, autoworkers, clerks, housekeepers, and church deacons. At the time, Detroit had the 4th largest black population in the Nation and it produced 50 percent of the World's automobiles. The odds of escaping the factories or minimum wage work for any young person of color were dismal. But soon after Motown's first hits blared from radios in the city's schoolyards and housing projects, legions of young hopefuls besieged the hip alluring enterprise on West Grand.
Those who made the cut were ambitious, pliant, and eager to please. They'd do anything. Sing background on demos at 3:00 AM; hand clap; sweep floors; file session notes. Temptations' lead singer David Ruffin helped Gordy's father build the studio. In the Artists and Repertoire department, Martha Reeves was secretary and muse to 17 staff songwriters and producers.
Gordy's hit factory ran 24/7. Overall he paid poorly. But he plumped staff morale with bowling nights, picnics, poker, and touch football games. A pot of chili bubbled in near perpetuity in the kitchen. The Hitsville troupe were a family of sorts. Boisterous, competitive, and tight.
Most of those dragging their luggage to the leased Motortown bus and 5 cars that chilly day had never even left the stare. In a phone interview from her home in Detroit, Reeves (now 77) laughed at their utter naivete as they climbed aboard.
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"The bus was a broken-down Trailways with no toilet," she remembers. "We had to lean on the window or on each other to try and sleep." During the tour which lasted from October though December, Reeves says that the performers slept in hotels only 2 nights per week at the most.
That grueling tour and the many that followed were part of Gordy's audacious plan for integration (and domination) of the Top-100 pop chart. He announced his ambition on the building's façade -- Hitsville U.S.A. The lettering was painted in bold "Motown blue". The same saturated hue on their now-iconic record labels.
But how could his crew break through the stubborn segregation of a music industry that confined black 45s to "rhythm & blues" charts? In 1960, only 4 singles by African-American artists reached the higher altitudes of the pop (i.e., white) Top-100.
"Crossover at that time meant that white people would buy your records," recalls Smokey Robinson who was present at the label's inception. "Berry's concept in starting Motown was to make music with a funky beat and great stories that would cross over."
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Gordy's hybrid product was a mélange of pop, R&B, and even a touch of Vegas shot with gospel harmonies and rhythms. In short, polygot American. He began releasing records on 3 company labels: Tamla, Gordy, and Motown.
Some striking demographics helped underwrite buyers of gamble. Teenagers -- those imp8ulsive hormonal buyers of 99-cent singles -- were fast becoming the largest population group in the U.S. They controlled billions of dollars a year in disposable cash. Would white kids spend their money on records by black artists?
Gordy got his answer in 1961 when the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" hit No. 1 on the pop chart. It appeared that kids didn't c are who was making the music if it was compelling and danceable enough. Given the almost limitless potential of the teen fan base, a tour introducing Motowners to live audiences on the East coast and in the Deep South would be Berry Gordy's moon shot.
And what a ride it turned out to be. What colossal long-playing reverb. It's still hard to cruise a supermarket aisle or settle into brewpub trivia night without hearing the Motown sound pumping out of speakers. "I've got sunshine, On a cloudy day ...... " "Ain't no mountain high, Ain't no valley low ...... "
Within a year of that first tour, Gordy's company (which began with an $800 loan from his family's credit fund) would post $4.5 million in revenue and launch a galaxy of singles into the Top-100 pop chart. Motown's appeal quickly spanned the Atlantic as the Supremes and The Beetles traded spots at No. 1. During its most successful years from 1962 to 1971, Motown and its subsidiary labels racked up a stunning 180 No. 1 hits worldwide. Gordy liked to boast that 70 percent of his record sales were to white buyers.
Motown's impact on popular culture is not simply calculated. The Supremes did advertisements for those American staples Coke and white bread. The cuddly Jackson Five became a Saturday cartoon. Spotify still lists the Temptations' "My Girl" as a top wedding song.
Motown has lit up television and movie screens from the ominous chords of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through The Grapevine" opening The Big Chill to Broadway-musical and movie productions of Dreamgirls (the hit retooling of a Supremes-like saga). Over a third of Americans tuned in to the 1983 TV anniversary special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, and Forever.
Yearly, 80,000 visitors pass through the museum on West Grand. And the museum is planning to expand. Ford Motor Co. and its UAW-Ford union have donated $6 million for a proposed $50 million expansion on adjacent land donated by Berry Gordy.
As for the label itself, Gordy sold it to MCA and Boston Ventures in 1988 for $61 million. He fretted that he had set his price too low. And that proved true. Polygram bought it for near 5 times that ($301 million) in 1993. Today, the label is modest in size, part of the giant Universal Music Group. Reimagined as "The New Definition of Soul", its artists include the protean Grammy-winning Erkyah Badu and a rowdy posse of hip-hop acts Lil Yachty, Lil Baby, and social media star-turned-rapper Cuban Doll.
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How did Gordy achieve his audacious crossover dream? He declined to be interviewed for this story. But he has often credited his business model to his short tenure as an $86.40-a-week worker on a Lincoln-Mercury assembly line. He hated the work. But the plant's precision and efficiency left a lasting impression.
"Every day I'd watch how a bare metal frame rolling down the line would become a spanking brand-new car," he has said. "What a great idea! Maybe I could do the same with my music. Create a place where a kid off the street could walk in one door an unknown ... go through a process ... and come out a star."
At Motown he built himself a Ford-t9ough quality control process that scrutinized every release. The music was heavy on studio-stamped style and far lighter inspirit than the unvarnished soul of Aretha Franklin (who recorded her biggest hits on Atlantic records) and the Memphis vamps of Otis Redding and other Stax/Volt stars. Motown's repetitive hooks burrowed into teen brains. And its thumping backbeat was something even the most rhythm-challenged kids could dance to. A stable of staff songwriters kept the hits coming.
Motown's equipment and facilities were basic and often improvised. Studio A (also known as the Snakepit) had walls so flimsy that a sentinel was stationed outside the nearby bathroom lest the roar of a flush ruin a take. Gordy confessed: "We would try anything to get a unique percussion sound. 2 blocks of wood slapped together. Anything. I might see a producer dragging in bike chains or getting a whole group of people stomping on the floor."
That make-it-do attitude extended to the performers. Gordy did sign a few polished established groups including Gladys Knight & the Pips. But mostly he mined and refined a lot of raw talent. Many of his singers were gospel-trained in Detroit's African-American churches.
The masterful studio musicians known as the Funk Brothers were assembled by Artists and Repertoire director Mickey Stevenson who combed the seediest bars and clubs in town for the best session men. Just as essential to the Motown sound were the Andantes, a sublime trio of back singers (read their unsung story below).
Motown's public face (i.e., its artists) got dance and voice training as well as mandatory style and comportment lessons in Motown's fabled Artist Development department run by Miss Maxine Powell. Wardrobe, grooming, diction -- Miss Powell had it all covered. Her coaching did help prepare the Supremes who grew up in Detroit's Brewster-Douglass projects to meet England's "queen mum" and navigate the format etiquette of Japan.
On tour in American, the Motown artists faced a different sort of culture clash. One hot day in New Orleans, Mary Wells drew stares as she leaned into a drinking fountain and giddily assumed she had been recognized. Until she looked up and saw the 'Whites Only' sign.
"In Detroit, we didn't encounter a lot of segregation," Mary Wilson says. "As we started touring, we started understanding what out parents had been telling us about the South. We found out that there were places that we couldn't go."
She recalled the day when their bus pulled into the "Heart of the South" motel in South Carolina. It had a pool! Hot, dusty, and weary, the travelers dove in.
"And all these other people in the pool started jumping out," Wilson says. "All of them were white." - 12 -
Local deejays had been spinning Motown records all week and at that tense moment one of the songs was playing on a poolside radio. "When the white motel guests realized that the black swimmers were the ones that they had been listening to, "they came back in the pool," Wilson says. "The rest of the day we partied."
There were other incremental victories. Police stopped trying to enforce the rope lines that divided black and white audience members. Everyone danced together.
But after their tour bus was shot at in Birmingham, Alabama, Martha Reeves understood the fear and fury caused by a busload of African-American youths. "We were mistaken a lot for Freedom Riders trying to make a movement."
In July 1967, Reeves was onstage in Detroit singing the smash "Dancing in the Street" when she was called to the wings and asked to send the audience home to check on their families. The Motor City was burning. A police raid had triggered one of the bloodiest race riots in American history. It killed 43 and damaged over 2,000 buildings.
Hitsville escaped the flames. But almost immediately, Reeves recalls, Motowners felt some misplaced blame. During a subsequent British tour, a reporter accused Reeves of being a militant lead. "They said that my song 'Dancing in the Street' was a call to riot. My Lord! It was a party song!"
More-and-more, old racial tensions and the churn of the growing civil rights movement were impossible to dance past. Motown artists who had sung their share of lovestruck pop tunes would turn their attention to real biting commentary on social justice with releases like Edwin Starr's "War', Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On", and Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City".
Meanwhile as Detroit was trying to recover, Gordy moved his main operation to a larger safer building downtown. His artists hated it. Worse, some were close to hitless without the magic of the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team who had departed the label in 1968 amid a flurry of lawsuits and countersuits over royalties. "From 1970 on, Berry wasn't really interested in the record business" observed his long longtime marketing man and consigliere Barney Ales.
In 1972, Gordy moved the company to Hollywood setting up shop on Sunset Boulevard. He moved some of his blended family (he's been married and divorced 3 times and has 8 children) into a home in the Hollywood Hills. Down the street, there was a smaller rental home for Diana Ross. Their long affair (the stuff of Dreamgirls) was an open secret. Gordy was also candid about his desire to become a television and movie mogul with his protégé draped in furs and acclaim. Miss Ross would star in Lady Sings the Blues and the (regrettable) Gordy-directed melodrama Mahogany.
Back in Detroit, between 200-and-300 Motown employees had lost their jobs. Some like the Contours' Joe Billingslea went back to the factory floors. Others like the Four Tops found new recording deals. But something precious had been lost.
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Now 82 and the sole surviving original member of the Tops, Duke Fakir said those still in Detroit were bereft. "Motown was more than a brick & mortar. It was a huge part of our social life. We spent as much time there as we did at home."
In Los Angeles, those adorable Jacksons helped carry the torch and the bottom line. In 1970, "I'll Be There' sold over 3 million copies. As disco, funk, and "adult contemporary" took hold, Motown signed that platformed-booted superfreak Rick James and the Commodore (a former student band fronted by Lionel Richie).
But there was a steady stream of artist defections. Even Diana Ross left the label in 1981.
"I always knew I'd have to leave," Michael Jackson told me in 1982 as he was about to release his monster hit Thriller (his second solo album on the Epic label). He explained that even as a child, he knew that the Motown studio system was too confining for his singular vision.
Nonetheless, MJ said he was grateful for the home-schooling in Studio A. He studied the producers with a silent obsession. "I was like a hawk preying in the night," he said. "I'd watch everything."
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Like many showbiz dynasties, Motown has also seen its share of tragic deaths. Temptation Paul Williams fatally shot himself 2 blocks from Hitsville. The Supremes' Florence Ballard endured a heartrending spiral into depression and alcoholism and died of a heart attack at 32. Mary Wells lost her voice and her life to throat cancer at 49.
A grieving Marvin Gaye could not perform for 4 years after his duet partner (the stunning Tammi Turrell) collapsed in his arms onstage and died following brain surgery in 1970. Beset with drug problems, Gaye was shot to death by his father in 1984. Complications from substance abuse killed Temptation David Ruffin and Michael Jackson. They were all mourned like family by their labelmates.
Among the survivors of Motown's first generation, the road still beckons for some. Martha Reeves performs with two of her sisters acting as latter-day Vandellas. Duke Fakir and his Tops tour 35 weeks-a-year.
Otis Williams (the last original Temptation) is still on the road with "my guys". There have been 22 replacements ... so far. Yes, audiences still insist on the Tempts' razor-sharp choreography. But sorry, folks. No more spins and splits. Williams is 77 and admits that some nights he's bone-tired. "And yet here I stay. All we ever wanted to was just sing and make the girls happy."
It did start out simple as did Mr. Ford's basic Model T. In America, the product that Gordy and his artists delivered was revolutionary in terms of black entrepreneurship and crossover clout. That loud insistent backbeat was also heard worldwide. It prefigured today's "global music" while delivering lifelong memories to millions.
Gordy's stark-making machinery was primitive compared with today's algorithm-driven merchandising. But in Motown's frenzied boom years, Hitsville stamped out some remarkably durable goods. Solid state, still danceable and alluring, those blue-labeled 45s can claim the same honorific conferred on those other Detroit dream machines of yore: American classics.
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By Touré
What? Who? Can she sing?
Marlene Barrow and Jackie Hicks sounded downright skeptical. It was the summer of 1961. The young women (then 19 and 21 years old, respectively) were at the Motown recording studio on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit.
Tall and slender Barrow and bubbly and full-figured Hicks had grown up singing in the choir of the Hartford Baptist Church. They had been to the Motown studio before and had laid down some backup vocals at the fledgling label as two-thirds of a trio. But then the high soprano in their group had quit suddenly and Barrow and Hicks weren't too interested in working without her.
Thinking of a young soprano in the studio's choral ensemble, a studio staffer made a suggestion. "We've got a girl in here who can sing."
Barrow and Hicks had the same question. "Can she sing?"
"Oh yeah," came the reply. "She can sing."
More than 50 years later, no one remembers which song that the three worked on that day. But the new girl -- Louvain Demps, a reserved catholic woman of 23 -- still remembers how it went.
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"We just seemed to click right away," she says.
"First time," Hicks adds. "First song, perfect blend."
That's how Louvain Demps joined the Andantes which would become perhaps the most important singing group you've probably never heard of. The trio sang background on more than 20,000 Motown songs and upward of 90 percent of the company's output before its 1972 move to Los Angeles. Theirs are the voices you can hear responding to Mary Wells in her 1964 hit "My Guy" ("What you say? Tell me more..."). They testified on Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine".
And significantly, they provided the oohs and ahs and baby-babies, the depth and sweetness on countless tracks where their separate voices can't even be picked out except maybe by the women themselves. To this day, Hicks says that she hears herself on the radio every single day.
The Andantes' perfect blend was critical to the Motown sound. It was part of the secret seasoning that listeners could hear only on that label. These women (unsung in so many ways) were a key reason that so many people loved Motown music. And yet most Motown fans still don't know the Andantes' story.
Today, Hicks (79) and Demps (80) have returned to their old workplace walking around the popular museum built on the site of the famed Hitsville U.S.A. building. They remind me that their friend Marlene Barrow (the beloved peacemaker in the trio whose married name was Barrow-Tate) died in 2015 at age 733. So the group is now incomplete.
The Andantes' alto Hicks is wearing a green pantsuit with matching socks set off by pink sneakers. On first meeting, she seems serious. But that's only because she hasn't yet revealed the side of herself that marked her as the group's prankster. It is an identity that she still seems to take pride in.
Demps recalls that during one recording session long ago, she was having a minor issue with her part and Hicks was holding what she thought was an empty water cup.
"I told her 'I'm going to throw this water in your face if you don't get the song right'," says Hicks picking up the story. "She just looked at me. So I said 'Boop!' ", she says as she pantomimes thrusting a cup forward. "There was water in the cup. It was running down her face. I was shocked!"
Demps laughs, adding: "And I was wet."
"Yeah, you were," Hicks responds. "Hey, one of these days I hope you forget that story."
"That's not likely. Demps is the historian of the group. The one who remembers who said what to him and most everything that happened to them in Studio A.
She speaks in a high breathy voice (Demps is the first soprano, after all) and has a sweet delicate manner. She seems to end every sentence with a big smile no matter what she's saying. That's true even when she's talking about the loss of their lifelong friend the second soprano Barrow-Tate.
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"Marlene was a jewel," Demps says. "Jackie was funn7y and I was real quiet. Marlene was the one who would always patch things up. The one that would say 'Don't worry about it. It's going to be okay.' I really loved her."
When Motown stars and songwriters try to describe the musical debt that they owe to the Andantes, they get downright religious. "They could sing together like angels," says Martha Reeves, lead singer of Marth & the Vandellas.
Ivy Jo Hunter wrote songs for Marvin Gaye, the Spinners, and Gladys Knight & the Pips. She says "It was a heavenly gift that they had. It's something that you really can't manufacture." Motown's first A&R man Mickey Stevenson describes their talent as a "gift that's given by God".
Their reference to Divinity is no coincidence. In the classic sound of the African-American church, the interplay between a lead singer and the rest of the choir (i.e., the call and response) creates a powerful structure that has tremendous emotional resonance. Motown's arrangers built on that structure which originated in West Africa and is found in many genres of African-American music.
Unlike in the white pop recordings of the same era, background vocalists at Motown didn't just harmonize on a song's choruses. They created a back-and-forth with the whole melody that deepened the listening experience. Berry Gordy may have sought to present a safe apolitical version of his performers to appeal to a crossover audience. But he couldn't take the Church out of their voices.
The Andantes sand on "Baby, I Need Your Loving" by the Four Tops; "Love Child" by Diana Ross and the Supremes; "For Once In My Life" by Stevie Wonder; and countless other classics. "They were on every song," Stevenson says. "All the ones that were hits."
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In fact, the group was so critical to Motown's sound that if they weren't available, Stevenson would stop the session. "If one of them wasn't feeling well, we would hold that tune until she felt better. I couldn't have done it without them."
Like the label's house band known as the Funk Brothers -- whose distinctive grooves were always heard but never credited on early Motown records), the Andantes provided anonymous support for the label's biggest stars.
For years, the 3 young women practically lived at the studio. They were called up to record something new almost every day. "They gave us a cozy office upstairs where we would stay overnight if we had to," recalls Demps. Eventually they were paid upward of $10-hour. It was considered good money.
"We were family," Smokey Robinson says. "We were kids growing up there together. And the Andantes were part of that family.
Robinson used the women on many on the thousands of songs he wrote and produced including "My Guy" for Mary Wells and "My Girl" for the Temptations.
"The Andantes were three of the greatest singers ever in Life," he emphasizes. "Any one of them could have been a lead singer or solo artist."
The writer-producer Lamont Dozier used their voices to "fill in the lead singer's parts and give the harmony more substance. If I had some very intricate background parts and the harmonies didn't have the sound that I wanted, I would tell the famous singers 'It's okay. We'll fix it in the mix.' "
"They would take a break and I'd have the Andantes come in the back door," he notes, laughing. "We liked to call them the cleanup girls. They could always come in and fix whatever we couldn't fix with the big acts."
Both Hicks and Demps say that despite the hard work and lack of public recognition, Motown was a loving atmosphere where almost everyone treated them with great respect. Did they sense any resentment from stars such as Diana Ross about being added to their tracks?
"Sometimes there were a little ill feelings," Hicks allows. "But hey, it was what it was. It wasn't our choice."
Producers loved the Andantes because they created their own arrangements on the spot. No easy thing.
"They could walk in that studio and lay that stuff down in 5-or-10 minutes," Stevenson says. "If you had anybody else, it would take you a few hours."
Demps wanted the Andantes to have their shot as featured recording artists. But it never seemed to come. Whenever the young women asked Motown staff about it, Barrow once recalled, they would be told to have patience.
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Maybe due to their persistence, the Andantes did record one single at Motown under their own name. The 1964 jump tune "(Like A) Nightmare". But they were never sent through Motown's storied artist-development program to craft a stage presence. And then the single received no promotion, it quickly vanished from view.
Why didn't Motown founder Berry Gordy ever try to make stars of the Andantes? Was it because as young mothers by then, both Barrow and Demps would have had difficulty going out on tour? Perhaps.
But according to journalist Adam White (author of Motown: The Sound of Young America), there was also a business case to be made for keeping the Andantes under wraps.
"Berry Gordy was very protective of what he had," White says. "He didn't want the names of the musicians to be out there so that they could get offers that might tempt them to leave."
Jacqueline Hicks hadn't planned to be a professional singer. Neither had Marlene Barrow. In fact, as teens they avoided working with a bandleader who wanted to record with them. They even hid in the closet when he came to Hicks' home.
"He asked my mother 'Where are Jacqueline and Marlene?" Hicks remembers. "She said 'In the closet hiding from you.' He took it as a joke. So we opened the door and started laughing and came out. As wee were going to the car, I said 'Mama, why would you tell on us?' She said 'How much money are you making in that closet?' "
By contrast, Demps had always aspired to perform professionally. Raised in the Catholic church, she was familiar with formal liturgical music. Her parents had always thought that she should sing opera.
Instead, Demps pursued pop. And though she proud to be part of the Andantes, she wanted to perform under her own name also.
"I'm not saying that I wanted to be a star," Demps explains. "But I wanted more. I just wanted more."
Early in19072, rumors were flying that the label was planning a move to Los Angeles.
"We had heard in the air," Barrow recounted in the 2007 book Motown from the Background. "We would ask them repeatedly if it were true. They would always deny it."
But when she and Hicks went to pick up their mid-January paychecks, there weren't any checks there for them. The two called Demps in the middle of the night in a panic.
The following day, Demps went down to Motown to find out whether the label was indeed leaving. When she was told that it was, she was outraged. She demanded that checks be cut for all three Andantes. She had the head of the label's quality control department drive her to the bank to make sure that hers cashed.
"That's how we found out," Demps says. "I guess if they hadn't owed us money, they might not have said a word.
Barrow and Hicks took the loss in stride. "They were trying to go into the movie thing," Hicks says of Berry Gordy's motivation. "They were going in a different direction. - 20 -
Hicks eventually landed a job at the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. Barrow found employment with the Michigan Department of Labor.
But Demps took it much harder. She was a divorced mother of 2 young boys. And she feared (rightfully) that her dreams of stardom were ending.
For me, it was devastating," she says. "I just couldn't adjust. Our songs would come on the radio and I'd cry."
She left her hometown, moved to Atlanta, and found work at a Georgia state center for children with intellectual disabilities. "I loved working with the children," she points out.
She was able to identify some nondisabled children at the center who had been caught up in the system and helped to get them out.
"That softened my heart and kind of pulled me out of the dumps. There's a little passage in the Bible that says '...and when he came to himself ...' You know, when I came to myself, that's when I realized that I've wasted time being depressed when I should have been happy"
Eventually, Demps began to sing again doing commercial jobs as well as performing in church.
In the early 1990s, the Andantes reunited in Detroit to sing for Motorcity Records. It was an effort by a British producer to market the city's Motown-era acts. The company quickly failed.
But not before the Andantes (who turned into a 4-person group with the addition of their fellow Motown alumna Pat Lewis) recorded an album's worth of songs under their own names. Those sessions were the group's final foray into the studio together.
In recent years, the Andantes have begun to receive the notice that many feel they ought to have had all along. Reissued Motown records now bear the Andantes name if the women sang on them. After being paid a flat hourly fee during their recording years, the women are now receiving some residuals for their work.
And in 2013 while Barrow-Tate was still living, all 3 Andantes were able to visit an exhibit at the Motown Museum that celebrated the Supremes, the Vandellas, the Marvelettes, and (right alongside them) the Andantes.
While she appreciates the belated recognition, Hicks says she would have been just as happy remaining in the background.
"I've always been proud of myself and thankful to the Lord to have allowed me to do that," she notes. "I don't care how high anybody goes. It does not lower me any lower. Because I know what I did."
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