While Jackie Wilson was recovering in a New York from his gunshot wounds in February of 1961, The Miracles’ recording of “Shop Around” was in the midst of an eight-week run as the # 1 song on Billboard’s R&B chart.
“Shop Around” helped establish Motown in the music business, but the fledgling company needed to produce more big hits to keep the momentum going. During Motown’s early years, Berry Gordy released songs in a number of different genres in his quest to release what he called “commercial records”, those that would get radio play and be purchased by the public.
As a result, several early releases followed trends that were currently popular including doo wop by the Satintones’ “Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart,” answer songs like Debbie Dean’s “Don’t Let Him Shop Around” (the first white female artist to record for Motown), and novelty songs like “Please Mr. Kennedy,” by Mickey Wood that tried to copy the success of “Mr. Custer” by Larry Verne.
After the next two singles by The Miracles failed to crack the Top 40, Berry Gordy got the next big hits he needed from some seemingly unlikely sources. Gordy, in these early days would often attend teen dances and talent shows at places like the St. Stephen’s AME Church in Detroit to promote his records and scout for new talent. It was at one of these sock hops that he was approached by 16-year-old Mary Wells who told him that she had written a song for Jackie Wilson.
She didn’t know that Gordy was no longer associated with Wilson’s career, and he kept on walking. Mary stayed right with him while attempting to hand him her song that she had written on a sheet of paper. Finally, Gordy stopped and said, “I don’t want to read it. I want to hear it”; and Mary proceeded to sing “Bye Bye Baby” a cappella in the hallway.
Gordy was impressed, and he invited her to the Motown offices. Accompanied by her mother, Mary Wells signed a recording contract with Motown shortly after her 17th birthday. She became only the second woman signed to the label, and she made an immediate impact.
“Bye Bye Baby” was produced by Berry Gordy and recorded at United Sound Systems in Detroit. It reached # 8 on the Billboard R&B chart and crossed over to # 45 on the Hot 100 in 1961. Her second single, “I Don’t Want To Take A Chance”, also did well, reaching # 9 on the R&B chart, and cracking the Top 40 when it reached # 33 on the Hot 100.
Wells’ early singles were belted out singing style reminiscent of black 50’s singers like LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown. When her third single failed to chart, however, Smokey Robinson began writing and producing her singles. He changed her sound away from the harder R&B stylings of her first records and brought out the vulnerability in her voice with the songs she recorded with him.
Starting with “The One Who Really Loves You”, Robinson combined a calypso beat with Mary’s new gentle, soulful singing to produce her first of three consecutive # 1 R&B hits in 1962. Her follow-up singles, “You Beat Me To The Punch” and “Two Lovers” used the same approach, and both reached the Top Ten on the Hot 100.
She was also the first artist to have her records feature the now famous Motown blue and silver label. The hits continued with four more Top 40 hits in 1963; and her success firmly established Mary Wells as the ‘First Lady of Motown’.
Motown’s first # 1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100, however, came from a girl group called The Marvelettes from Inkster, Michigan, located 17 miles west of Detroit. During the 1920’s and 30’s, a large number of black workers employed in Henry Ford’s Dearborn factories settled in Inkster. It was closer to their work than Detroit and blacks, at this time, were not allowed to live in Dearborn itself because of the city’s discriminatory racial policies.
The driving force behind the formation of the Marvelettes was Gladys Horton. Gladys had been orphaned at the age of nine months, and she had spent her young life living in a succession of foster homes without ever being adopted by any of the families that cared for her. Gladys first sang in her church choir before joining the glee club at Inkster High School.
Always on the lookout for new talent and anxious to publicize his young label, Gordy sponsored talent contests in local high schools with auditions at Motown for the winners. Gordy had been impressed by the incredible success of Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, and the adolescent sound that they pioneered was still popular and continued to inspire a host of young male and female groups that emulated it.
Gladys Horton and her girlfriends in the glee club put together a group for the talent contest and jokingly called their group the Casinyets– a contraction of Can’t Sing Yet!! They didn’t win the competition, but they impressed a couple of the Inkster teachers. The teachers prevailed upon the school principal to allow the girls to audition for the Motown representatives.
The girls auditioned with Robert Bateman and Brian Holland at Motown in April of 1961 by singing some of the girl group hits of the day. Told to come back with some original material, group member Georgia Dobbins contacted a friend who was a songwriter, and he gave her a blues number he had written called “Please Mr. Postman”. Dobbins completely restructured the song into an upbeat pop song and convinced Gladys Horton to sing lead on it.
Georgia Dobbins dropped out of the group to care for her ailing mother before the girls went back to Motown, however, and she was replaced by Wanda Young. Motown loved “Please Mr. Postman”, and it was recorded in Studio A at Hitsville under the new name that Motown gave them, The Marvelettes.
Released on Motown’s Tamla label, “Please Mr. Postman” became Motown’s first # 1 song on the Hot 100 in the fall of 1961. It was an even bigger R&B hit, spending 7 weeks in the # 1 spot while most of the Marvelettes were still in high school. The girls performed at Detroit-area record hops and teenage dance parties with radio deejays while attending classes five days a week.
Motown quickly assembled the “Please Mr. Postman” album to take advantage of the hit single. The cover did not include a photo of The Marvelettes, but instead featured a cartoon rendering of a mailbox. Motown designed many of its early album covers without artist photos because Berry Gordy Jr. believed that most record stores at that time would not prominently display albums that featured pictures of black singers.
In the meantime, Motown was setting up the label’s first national theater tour featuring Marv Johnson, The Miracles, Barrett Strong, Mary Wells, and other early Motown artists. These early tours, called Motor Town Revues, were performed in venues along the Chitlin’ Circuit. This was a series of theaters throughout the eastern, southern, and Midwest regions that were accepting of black musical artists and entertainers during the era of racial segregation.
After “Please Mr. Postman” became a smash hit, many in the audience of the Motor Town Revues came expecting to see the Marvelettes perform their # 1 hit, and they would begin chanting their name when they did not appear. The chanting became so persistent at the shows that it caused Berry Gordy Jr. to send for the Marvelettes to join the tour as soon as possible. The girls were allowed to leave school with the understanding that they were to be tutored while on tour.
Since they were minors and Gladys Horton was an orphaned ward of the court, Esther Gordy (Berry’s sister) became their legal guardian. Esther Gordy accompanied them on tour, but Motown did not provide the promised tutor for the girls.
The Marvelettes released their second single, “Twistin’ Postman” in early 1962. The new single tried to cash in on both the girl’s previous hit and the current twist dance sensation, but it only reached # 34 on the Hot 100.
The group’s third single, “Playboy”, was conceived by Gladys Horton at her home in Inkster. But when the record was released in the spring of 1962, Motown did not list Horton’s name as one of the songwriters. “Playboy” was a big hit, peaking at # 7 on the Hot 100 and # 4 on Billboard’s R&B chart. Like so many young performers, Gladys Horton didn’t understand the value of a songwriting credit on a hit song and no one at Motown was looking after her interests.
Their follow-up, “Beechwood 4-5789” was written’ by Marvin Gaye especially for The Marvelettes. It was also a sizable hit with the single, reaching # 17 on the Hot 100 and # 7 on the R&B chart. The Marvelettes were Motown’s first important girl group but they would soon be overshadowed by the company’s growing roster of female stars.
The group was reduced to a quartet when Juanita Cowart decided to leave the Marvelettes. She didn’t like the touring conditions, in which black artists were often not allowed to stay in some of the bigger name hotels and were forced to stay in guest houses.
Then there was the intolerable racism in the Deep South where performers had to endure threats, or perform in auditoriums where the color barrier was enforced with a rope that divided the dance floor. In addition, it was difficult to travel on long trips to shows in crowded buses or station wagons where there was little room to sleep, enjoy some privacy, or move about. Life on the road was challenging for black artists in the early 1960s.
Marvin Gaye had joined Motown shortly before the Marvelettes, and he had played drums on the “Please Mr. Postman” recording session. He was born in Washington D.C. in 1939, the son of a minister. By the age of three, Marvin was singing in his father’s small church and soon after started learning to play the piano by ear. Marvin’s relationship with his father was very complex and unhappy. In fact, his first forays into nonreligious singing and playing drums during junior high were in defiance of his father who did not approve of any music that did not praise God.
After being discharged from the Air Force, Marvin sang in two doo-wop groups, the first was called The Marquees. He then became a member of Harvey & The Moonglows and sang on the group’s hit recording of “Ten Commandments Of Love” in late 1958.
Marvin sang lead on the group’s final 45, “Mama Loocie” in 1959. Marvin co-wrote the song using the original spelling of his last name – Gay. Group leader Harvey Fuqua believed that Marvin could be a successful solo artist. After Fuqua decided to disband the Moonglows to pursue some new musical opportunities in Detroit, he took Gaye with him.
Fuqua signed Marvin to his Tri-Phi label but later agreed to sell Gaye’s contract to the Tamla label in 1961, after Berry Gordy Jr. expressed interest in him. Harvey Fuqua was going with Gwen Gordy, and Marvin started dating her sister Anna soon after. Marvin and Anna married in 1963. He was 24 and she was 41.
Marvin Gaye added an ‘e’ to his last name, and initially pursued a career at Motown as a performer of jazz music and standards. He had no desire to be an R&B singer at this point. His first singles and an album of standards called “The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye” failed to sell, however; and his only early success at Motown was co-writing “Beechwood 4-5789” for The Marvelettes.
Gaye’s own recording career didn’t take off until he released his 4th single, “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow,” in the fall of 1962. The song featured the first Motown performance of Martha & The Vandellas, as uncredited background vocalists, and it marked Marvin Gaye’s first appearances on the Hot 100 and on Billboard’s R&B chart.
His follow-up single, “Hitchhike”, started a string of Top 40 hits in 1962 and 63 that included “Pride and Joy”, “Can I Get A Witness”, and “You’re A Wonderful One”. Marvin was now Motown’s top male solo star and a headliner on the Motor Town Revues, but the best was yet to come.
Martha Reeves was born in Alabama in 1941 and her family moved to Detroit when she was just 11 months old. Although shy as a child, Martha was encouraged to sing first by her mother and later by her music teachers in both elementary school and high school. In high school she joined a quartet called the Del-Phis and the girls recorded a single on the small Check-Mate label.
Mickey Stevenson, the head of Motown’s A & R department hired Martha as his receptionist after seeing her win a talent contest at the 20 Grand night club in Detroit. Martha’s job was to set up Motown recording sessions. When the Andantes, Motown’s regular backing singers, were unavailable for a Marvin Gaye session, Martha called her former Del-Phis to come to Studio A to sing.
Their stellar singing on Gaye’s “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow” convinced Gordy to sign the girls and change their name. With Reeves as the lead singer, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard became Martha & The Vandellas. Martha came up with the Vandellas name by combining ‘Van’ from Van Dyke, a street near where she lived, with ‘della’ from the name of one of her favorite singers, Della Reese.
Martha & The Vandellas’ second single, “Come And Get These Memories”, was one of the first compositions by the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland. The record became the girls’ first Top 40 hit in the spring of 1963.
The group’s true breakthrough, however, came with the song H-D-H provided as their follow-up single, “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave”. Produced with gospel-like fervor, it contains Martha Reeves’ greatest vocal performance and “Heat Wave” is often credited as being one of the first songs to exemplify the style of music that would soon be called “the Motown sound”.
The single became a # 1 R&B hit during the summer of 1963 and also reached # 4 on the Hot 100. The success of “Heat Wave” led to Martha & The Vandellas becoming the first Motown group to receive a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.
The Marvelettes were experiencing a major sales slump during 1963; and when Martha & The Vandellas charted another Top Ten hit with “Quicksand” in the fall. The trio assumed the title of Motown’s top girl group and became star attractions on the early Motortown Revues.
In the summer of 1964 Martha & The Vandellas released “Dancing in The Street”, the Motown anthem that became their biggest all-time hit. Over the years, the song has become the Motown anthem, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
The Contours joined Motown in 1961 with a little help from Jackie Wilson. Inspired by acrobatic, dance-crazy 1950s R&B groups like The Midnighters, they formed a group in Detroit, and were passed over by a couple of small record labels before they auditioned for Berry Gordy Jr.
Gordy initially felt that the Contours needed more polish and turned them down, but they had an ace up their sleeve in the person of group member Hubert Johnson who was a cousin of Jackie Wilson. Johnson prevailed upon his famous relative to call Berry Gordy and put in a good word for them. The strategy worked, and Gordy changed his mind as the result of Wilson’s call.
After their first two releases failed to chart, Gordy wrote a song for the group called “Do You Love Me”. Released on Motown’s new Gordy subsidiary label, the song had a fake fade near the end of the song. It was an interesting gimmick but it became the bane of unsuspecting deejays across the country. Nevertheless, “Do You Love Me” was one of the biggest hits of the summer, reaching # 3 on the Hot 100 and # 1 on the R&B chart.
The Contours became popular attractions on the Motor Town Revue not only because of their big hit but also because of their high energy stage gymnastics that included flips and splits during their performances. The group’s colorful off-stage escapades were also well-known at Motown. They resulted in a word of warning from Berry Gordy to the female members on the Motor Town Revue bus: “Stay away from The Contours. They are a bunch of hoodlums and they will ruin you.”
Despite their big hit, the Contour’s style of R&B was not a great fit at Motown, and the group would never again duplicate the success of “Do You Love Me”. The group went through a great number of members over the years, including Dennis Edwards who went on to great success in The Temptations after he replaced David Ruffin.
Twenty-six years after it was first recorded, “Do You Love Me” became a big hit all over again when it was used in the film Dirty Dancing. The song reached # 11 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1988.
In just four years, Berry Gordy Jr. had established itself as one of most successful independent record companies, similar in importance to Vee-Jay in Chicago, a company that was also black-owned. (Stars – Four Seasons, Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler, Dee Clark). Despite their chart successes, however, neither company was a household name in 1963.
Stevie Wonder was born Steveland Judkins in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950. His blindness at birth was caused by a condition that caused the blood vessels to detach from the retina. After his mother remarried, his last name was changed to Morris, and Stevie moved with his family to Detroit. Fascinated by music at an early age, Stevie began playing harmonica at the age of five and started piano lessons at six.
He developed his singing skills by performing gospel music in a church choir and his appreciation of R&B music by listening to the recordings of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke on his transistor radio. After learning to play the drums and writing his first song at the age of ten, Stevie became something of a local sensation.
Much like Frankie Lymon before him, he had an uncanny ability to sound like a seasoned professional at a very young age. This brought him to the attention of Ronnie White of the Miracles, who recommended Stevie to Brian Holland at Motown. Holland was impressed enough to set up an audition for Stevie with Berry Gordy Jr.
Gordy signed Stevie to the Tamla label in 1962, and he gave him the stage name, ‘Little Stevie Wonder’ that called attention to both his youth and his musical skills.
Although his first three singles failed to chart, Little Stevie was a popular act on the Motor Town Revue where he was featured playing harmonica, drums, organ, and piano, as well as singing. Motown publicity made much of his blindness, and he was presented as a child prodigy in the Ray Charles mold.
Stevie scored a surprise hit in 1963 with “Fingertips Pt. 2.” The single was unusual for the time in that it was recorded live in concert, but “Fingertips Pt. 2” spent three weeks at # 1 on the Hot 100. The album it was taken from, “Little Stevie Wonder/The 12-Year-Old Genius”, also reached # 1 on the Billboard Albums Chart that summer, making him the youngest artist to achieve that feat.
The song was recorded the year before, on June 1, 1962, during a Motor Town Revue performance at the Regal Theater in Chicago. “Fingertips” only contained a few stanzas of improvised lyrics and was essentially intended as an instrumental to showcase Stevie’s talent on the bongos and harmonica.
Because the performance was six minutes long, the “Fingertips” single was issued in two parts. It was the final song in Stevie’s set and as he was leaving the stage, the band went into its exit music and the emcee exhorts the crowd to “give him a hand”. Stevie changes his mind, however, and comes back to sing the “goodbye” encore, taking the band by surprise.
“Fingertips Pt. 2” was the first live recording to reach # 1, and it was the one that made little Stevie Wonder a national sensation. In May of 1964, at the age of 13, Little Stevie Wonder became the first Motown artist to appear of The Ed Sullivan Show where he performed “Fingertips”.
