Detroit had a number of other small record labels during the 1960’s that unsuccessfully tried to compete with the rising power of Motown. Some produced a hit or two before either going out of business or being purchased by Berry Gordy Jr.
The Harvey and Tri-Phi labels were owned by Harvey Fuqua and his wife Gwen Gordy. The labels were in operation from 1961 to 1963. The Spinners had a Top 40 hit in the summer of 1961 with “That’s What Girls Are Made For” on Tri-Phi.
Shorty Long also recorded for Tri-Phi while Jr. Walker & The All Stars recorded their first singles on the Harvey label. All three artists, along with Harvey Fuqua joined the Motown organization after the Berry Gordy purchased the labels.
Fortune Records was too small of an operation to ever threaten Motown, but the label had its biggest hit in early 1962 when 18-year-old Nathaniel Mayer reached # 22 on the Hot 100 with “Village of Love”.
Mayer was born in Detroit in 1944 and started hanging around Fortune when he was just twelve-years-old. He recorded his first Fortune single, a doo wop ballad titled “My Last Dance With You” in 1961.
It was his second single, “Village Of Love”, that became a Detroit classic. Recorded with backing vocalists called ‘The Fabulous Twilights’ on the record label, the song became Fortune’s lone Top 40 hit after it was leased to United Artists for national distribution. Mayer then joined several theater tours across North America with other hitmakers of the day, and in 1962 he became the only Fortune artist to ever appear on American Bandstand.
Mayer was a dynamic stage performer with dance moves that labeled him as Detroit’s answer to James Brown. He was never able to score the all-important follow-up hit, however, and he dropped out of the music business in the 1970’s.
He began hitting the bottle during the decades that followed although he remained a cult figure in Detroit during those years. Mayer was eventually rediscovered in 2002, and he started playing shows again. This led to some TV appearances on PBS oldies programs and the recording his first album in over 40 years.
The “I Want To Be Held” album was released in 2004 and its follow-up, “Why Don’t You Give it To Me” in 2007. Both releases received glowing reviews, but Mayer’s amazing comeback was cut short in 2008 by a series of strokes that led to his death.
Robert West was an important influence and also a rival of Berry Gordy during his years in the music business. Born in Alabama in 1912, West moved to Detroit in 1935. In 1955, he began managing and producing The Falcons, a mixed-race singing group containing his nephew, Eddie Floyd. (The Falcons were one of the first mixed-raced vocal groups)
In 1959, West founded the Flick label. By that time the Falcons line-up had changed. Joe Stubbs and Mack Rice had replaced the white members of the group. When the new Falcons’ single, “You’re So Fine”, emerged as a local smash on Flick, West licensed the master to the United Artists subsidiary UnArt. During the summer of 1959, “You’re So Fine” became a # 2 R&B hit and also crossed over to the Hot 100 where it peaked at # 17.
Unfortunately, West could not come up with a follow-up hit for the group, and after four consecutive non-charting singles, the Falcons underwent another important lineup change when lead singer Joe Stubbs left to pursue a solo career.
His replacement was Wilson Pickett, who had been born in Alabama in 1941, but moved to Detroit in 1955 to live with his father. Pickett joined the Violinaires gospel group shortly after arriving in Detroit, and he developed his forceful and passionate style of singing during his four years with the popular gospel-harmony group.
Shortly after Pickett joined the Falcons, Robert West retired the Flick label and started a new one called Lu Pine. One of the first recordings on Lu Pine was a 1960 single by The Primettes. This was a year before they signed with Motown. When the label wanted them to change their name, Florence Ballard came up with ‘The Supremes.’
Robert West signed a contract with Atlantic Records to distribute selected Lu Pine singles for national distribution, but the only hit under this agreement was Betty LaVette’s “My Man – He’s A Lovin’ Man”. It was placed with Atlantic Records in late 1962 where it peaked at # 7 on the Billboard R&B chart in early 1963.
Later in the year, “I Found A Love” by The Falcons became Lu Pine’s biggest hit. It featured the lead vocal of Wilson Pickett, and it was distributed nationally by United Artists. The song was a # 6 R&B hit and also reached # 75 on the Hot 100 in 1963, but the Falcons broke up later in the year.
By 1964, the Lu Pine label had folded, Motown was on the rise, and it looked as though Robert West’s music career was coming to an end. He was thrown a lifeline, however when he was approached by Mary Wells and her ex-husband, Herman Griffin, who were in the process of disaffirming her contract with Motown.
Wells felt that she could get a better deal by signing with another record label, especially after topping the charts with her biggest all-time hit, “My Guy” and enjoying a two-sided hit duet with Marvin Gaye a month later. Wells and Griffin felt that West, because of his contacts with New York labels like United Artists and Atlantic, could help Wells get a better recording contract than she had with Motown.
West saw Mary Wells as an opportunity to make some money and also a chance to stick it to Gordy, who was about to lose his biggest female star to another record company. During a trip to New York to negotiate with record labels, however, West and Griffin got into an argument following a bout of heavy drinking.
The dispute was over whether Wells should sign with 20th Century Fox Records or Atlantic Records. West had been given some money by Atlantic to have him help persuade Wells to sign with the label, but she and Griffin favored 20th Century Fox because they were offering film roles as well.
The dispute with Griffin got so heated that West pulled his gun. Griffin lunged at West, pushed his hand back, and the gun discharged with the bullet entering West’s skull just above his left eye. West was taken to the Roosevelt Hospital where he survived, but he was blinded in his left eye for the rest of his life. Griffin was originally charged with assault and brought before a Manhattan Grand Jury but was eventually cleared of the charge by the jurors on the grounds of self-defense.
After recovering from the gunshot wound, Robert West moved to Las Vegas and worked at various jobs. He quit the music business but would occasionally send out material from his musical career via post office box until his death from natural causes in 1983.
Mary Wells’ career after 1964 would never come close to what she had achieved at Motown. She would chart just one more Top 40 hit during the 1960s. Sadly, she died of lung cancer in 1992 at the age of just 49. Mary’s recording of “My Guy” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
Following the breakup of the Falcons, several of the group members went on to successful solo careers in the music business. Mack Rice was born in Mississippi but moved to Detroit with his family in 1950. In 1965 he wrote a song called “Mustang Sally” in reference to Ford’s new Mustang sports car. He recorded the song as Sir Mack Rice on the Blue Rock label, and it reached # 15 on the Billboard R&B chart.
The Young Rascals covered “Mustang Sally” the following year and released it as the B-side of their # 1 hit, “Good Lovin’”. But “Mustang Sally” is best known for Wilson Pickett’s cover version that was released in late 1966. Pickett’s recording reached # 23 on the Hot 100 and Pickett’s version of “Mustang Sally” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.
Mack Rice would go on to sign with Stax Records as a solo artist but his greatest success came as a songwriter. Rice wrote “Respect Yourself” for the Staple Singers and his compositions would be recorded by a wide variety of artists over the years including Ike & Tina Turner, Albert King, Etta James, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Blues Brothers. Mack Rice passed away in Detroit in 2018 at the age of 82 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
Robert West’s nephew, Eddie Floyd, would also find success at Stax Records in Memphis. Floyd was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1937 but grew up and started singing in Detroit. Following the Falcons break up, Floyd signed with Stax Records as a songwriter.
After writing a song for Carla Thomas, Floyd began teaming with guitarist Steve Cropper to compose songs for Wilson Pickett who had signed with Atlantic Records. The pair would pen two hits for Pickett in 1966, “634-5789 (Soulsville USA)” and “Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)”.
Floyd and Cropper also came up a song for Otis Redding in 1966 called “Knock On Wood”. They wrote the song in a motel in Memphis during a thunderstorm which inspired the lyrics “It’s like thunder, lightning. The way you love me is frightening”. When Redding didn’t immediately record it, Floyd released his version of the song on Stax Records in late summer of 1966. “Knock On Wood” would become Eddie Floyd’s first big solo hit, reaching # 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and spending 17 weeks on the Hot 100.
The song has been covered by hundreds of artists over the years from David Bowie to Count Basie. A year later, Otis Redding recorded it as a duet with Carla Thomas and also had a Top 40 hit. Another famous cover of “Knock On Wood” was the disco version released by Ami Stewart in 1979 that became a # 1 hit on the Hot 100.
Eddie Floyd would chart 16 more R&B hits through 1970, including his biggest single – a cover of the Sam Cooke song “Bring it On Home To Me”. Floyd has remained active in music over the years, and in August 2020, he released his autobiography titled Knock! Knock! Knock! On Wood.
The most successful of the former Falcons, however, was Wilson Pickett. His first charting single of his solo career was a song he wrote called “If You Need Me”. Released on Lloyd Price’s Double-L label, it was outperformed on both the R&B and Pop charts by Solomon Burke’s cover version on Atlantic Records.
By 1965, Pickett was signed to Atlantic, and label executive Jerry Wexler took him to the Stax studio in Memphis to record with Booker T & The MGs. Guitarist Steve Cropper had listened to some of Pickett’s early recordings before the session, and he noticed that he had sung the phrase “in the midnight hour” at the end of several of them. When they sat down to write together, Cropper suggested using the phrase to compose a song.
In the studio, Jerry Wexler demonstrated a new dance that the kids were doing up north called the Jerk, and it inspired the delayed backbeat that was used on their new song “In The Midnight Hour”. That delayed backbeat would come to define many of the future hit records on the Stax label. “In The Midnight Hour” would also become Pickett’s first # 1 hit on the R&B charts in 1965, and it kicked off an incredible string of hits for the next 10 years.
In 1966, Pickett began recording at the Fame studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The studio also had close ties to Atlantic Records, and he made some of his biggest hits there. Later in the year, when he performed at an Atlantic Records party in New York City, Pickett’s backing band included a then-unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix would become a star in his own right the following year, but it was the only time the two music legends ever appeared on stage together.
“In The Midnight Hour” was also a popular song to cover by the many Michigan garage bands that formed in the wake of the British Invasion. A young Motor City band called The Wanted had a # 1 hit on radio station WKNR’s survey with their rocking cover of “In The Midnight Hour” in 1967. It sold enough copies on Detroit Sound Records to reach # 118 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under chart – quite an accomplishment for a garage band on a small label.
Pickett would go on to score # 1 R&B hits with “634-5789” in 1965, “Land Of 1,000 Dances” in 1966, “Funky Broadway” in 1967, and “Don’t Knock My Love” in 1971. He also had big hits with covers of songs that might seem odd for a soul belter like Wilson Pickett. These included covers of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar”, and Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not To Come”.
When the hits stopped coming in the 1980’s, Pickett had earned the distinction of being one of the top soul singers of all time. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, the same year he was the invisible figure and role model in the award-winning soul music film, The Commitments. Pickett also appeared in the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000. Sadly, Wilson Pickett passed away from a heart attack in early 2006.
After Aretha Franklin’s contract with Columbia Records expired in late 1966, she chose to sign with Atlantic Records. Because of his success with Wilson Pickett, Jerry Wexler brought Aretha to the Fame studios in Muscle Shoals to record her first Atlantic single.
Only one song was recorded at the session because of an altercation between Aretha’s husband and one of the studio musicians. The song was “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” which quickly became her first # 1 R&B hit and her first Top Ten single on the Hot 100 when it was released in early 1967.
One week later, Aretha recorded a cover of “Respect”, a song written and first recorded by Otis Redding back in 1965. Her version of the song, however, changed it from a plea of a desperate man into a declaration from a strong, confident woman.
With backing vocals from her sisters Erma and Carolyn and featuring the sax of King Curtis, Aretha’s interpretation became a landmark recording and an anthem for the feminist movement. “Respect” was her first # 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1967, and it earned her two Grammy Awards.
Aretha and her producer Jerry Wexler established a great rapport in the studio, and she made some of her greatest recordings with him. These included not only “I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You”, and “Respect”, but also “A Natural Woman”, and “Chain Of Fools”, all of which have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Her hit “A Natural Woman” was written by the team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin. The song came about almost by accident when Jerry Wexler saw Carole King as he was driving down the street in New York. Wexler had been mulling over the Biblical concept of the natural man at the time, and he shouted out to King that he needed a natural woman song for Aretha Franklin. King and Goffin wrote the song that very night and even awarded Wexler a writing credit for giving them the idea.
Franklin also issued four consecutive Top Ten albums produced by Wexler during 1967 and 1968, firmly establishing her as the ‘Queen of Soul’. In addition, she recorded some soulful covers for both albums and singles during the late 1960’s and early 70’s. These included “96 Tears” by ? and The Mysterians, The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby”, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, Ben E. King’s “Don’t Play That Song” and “The Weight” by the Band, featuring Duane Allman on slide guitar.
