Led by the hits of The Supremes, Motown ruled the record charts in the 1960s
The Motown act most greatly affected by the departure of H-D-H was the one most responsible for the incredible rise of Motown during the 1960s. Like the Temptations, the Supremes were only minor players during the early Motortown Reviews. After being signed to Motown in 1961, the group’s first eight singles had produced only one Top 40 hit.
“When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes,” which reached # 23 on the Hot 100 in early 1964, was the Supremes’ first experience working with H-D-H in the studio. Despite the group’s spotty track record, Berry Gordy continued to have faith in the Supremes and his patience paid off in a big way in the summer of 1964.
The breakthrough came when the Supremes recorded a song, originally written by H-D-H for the Marvelettes, called “Where Did Our Love Go”. The Marvelettes wanted something more uptempo, so the song was offered to the Supremes in the summer of 1964. H-D-H made a key adjustment in the studio when they instructed Diana Ross to sing in a lower register, thereby bringing a hypnotic sexiness to her vocal that propelled “Where Did Our Love Go” to #1 on the Hot 100 for two weeks in August.
Incredibly, the Supremes followed it up with four more consecutive # 1 hits: “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me,” “Stop! In The Name Of Love,” and “Back In My Arms Again.” No other girl group had ever had more than two # 1 hits in their entire career. The only recording act that was charting more hits than the Supremes during 1964 and 1965 was the Beatles.
On December 27, 1964, the Supremes made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show performing their latest # 1 hit, “Come See About Me”. The girls wore simple dresses and matching bouffant hair-dos, and the audience fell in love with their infectious charm and appeal. It was the first of what would be sixteen appearances on the show, more than any other Motown artist by far.
Over the next several years their appearances would reveal a look and sound that was more sophisticated. The trio would go from cute girls to beautiful women, showing off sequined gowns, glamorous hairstyles, and impressive talent.
The Supremes became the enormous crossover success that Berry Gordy had always hoped for, and lead singer Diana Ross became Motown’s biggest star and a symbol of black femininity and stylishness. Al Abrams scored a major PR coup in 1965 when he got the Supremes on the cover of TV Magazine that was carried by the Detroit News, Washington D.C. Sunday Star, the New York Journal American, and the Houston Chronicle. It was the first time African American artists were pictured on the weekly magazine’s cover.
Because the Supremes were popular with white audiences as well as black ones, Gordy had the group cater to its middle American audience with performances at renowned supper clubs like the Copacabana in New York. Broadway and pop standards were incorporated into their repertoire along with their own hit songs. Motown released “The Supremes At The Copa” in 1965 to help broaden their appeal, and the group’s first live album reached # 11 on the Billboard Top 200.
By the summer of 1967, the Supremes had demonstrated that they were one of the most important artists in popular music. Working with H-D-H, they had recorded five more # 1 singles: “I Hear A Symphony,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “You Keep Me Hanging On,” “Love Is Here And Now You’re Gone,” and “The Happening.”
Some serious cracks had formed during that time, however, mostly involving Florence Ballard. Although she was not pleased that Berry Gordy had decided to change the group’s name to ‘Diana Ross and The Supremes’ in 1967, Ballard’s unhappiness dated back to their appearance at the Copa. Florence’s performance of the Barbra Streisand tune “People” was a show-stopping number in the Supremes’ set; but after a few performances, Berry Gordy ordered that Diana Ross should sing the song instead. From that point on, Ballard felt that Gordy was focusing on Ross and she became dissatisfied with her diminishing role in the group despite all of its success.
Ballard was also haunted by a tragic event that happened shortly before signing with Motown. At the age of sixteen, she had attended a sock hop in Detroit and accepted a ride home from a boy she knew, future Detroit Piston basketball player Reggie Harding. Harding drove her to a deserted street and raped her at knifepoint. Ballard kept the incident secret from all but Mary Wilson and Diana Ross, who were supportive but knew nothing about how to help their friend effectively deal with rape trauma syndrome.
As Ross became the focal point of the Supremes, Ballard began to suffer from depression and started to drink excessively, gaining weight until she could no longer comfortably wear many of her stage outfits. She also started not showing up for recording dates, or arriving at shows too inebriated to perform. Realizing that Ballard’s erratic behavior was negatively affecting his most important act, Berry Gordy started looking for a suitable replacement.
Shortly thereafter, Cindy Birdsong began traveling with the Supremes and studying their routines. She took over Ballard’s spot in the group in June of 1967 after Florence appeared on stage inebriated during a show at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Ballard’s release from Motown was made official in early 1968 when she received a one-time payment of just under $140,000 in royalties and earnings.
Florence Ballard signed a recording contract with ABC Records later in 1968. When neither of her first two singles charted, ABC declined to release the album she had recorded.
In 1971, Ballard sued Motown for $8.7 million, claiming that Gordy and Ross had conspired to force her out of the group. After the judge ruled in favor of Motown, Ballard sank into poverty as much of her settlement money had been lost to a dishonest attorney. Sadly, Florence Ballard died unexpectedly in 1976 at the age of just 32 from coronary thrombosis.
Diana Ross and The Supreme’s next # 1 single, “Love Child”, was the first that did not involve H-D-H. Gordy convened a new team of writers, dubbed ‘the Clan’ to write a hit for Diana and the Supremes. Their song changed the group’s formula from songs about love to one where the woman is asking her boyfriend to not pressure her into sleeping with him for fear of producing a love child. To drive the point home, the Supremes performed the song on the 1968 season premiere of the Ed Sullivan Show in street wear rather than their usual glamorous gowns.
From 1968 to her leaving the group in 1970, Diana Ross and The Supremes was primarily a Ross solo project. Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong appeared on television performing the latest hits, but they were not on the actual recordings. Because constant touring, all of the trio’s singles from 1968 to 1970 featured lead vocals from Ross and backing vocals by singers other than Wilson and Birdsong.
Diana Ross left the group following the Supremes’ final # 1 hit, “Someday We’ll Be Together” in late 1969. Ross officially began her successful solo career in 1970. She was replaced as lead singer by Jean Terrell, but the Supremes had lost their star.
The Marvelettes, Motown’s first important girl group, had been completely overshadowed by the Supremes by 1966. Now reduced to a trio, they underwent a significant change that year when Wanda Young replaced Gladys Horton as the group’s lead singer.
Wanda had married Bobby Rogers of the Miracles, and Smokey Robinson started writing songs that were better suited to her singing style than Gladys Horton’s. The group had its first Top Ten hit in nearly four years with Robinson’s “Don’t Mess With Bill” in early 1966. The Marvelettes had another significant hit in 1967 with “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game”, again written and produced by Smokey Robinson with Wanda as the lead singer.
The group’s final hit was “My Baby Must Be A Magician” in early 1968. Smokey Robinson recruited Melvin Franklin of the Temptations to do the deep-voiced introduction on the song, and it reached # 17 on the Hot 100 in early 1968. By that time, Gladys Horton had left and the girl group era had started to fade. Internal problems within the remaining group members put the final nail in the coffin for the Marvelettes, and the group’s final charting record came out in late 1969.
Like the Marvelettes, Martha & The Vandellas had been stars on the Motortown Revues while the Supremes were still struggling to get a hit record. In the summer of 1964, Martha & The Vandellas released “Dancing in The Street”, the Motown anthem that became their biggest all-time hit when it reached # 2 on the Hot 100. Even though they were never able to chart a # 1 single, the group continued to do well with Top Ten hits like “Ready For Love” in 1966 and “Jimmy Mack” in early 1967.
Many Motown performers felt that Berry Gordy Jr. was lavishing too much attention on the Supremes and upon Diana Ross in particular. Martha Reeves felt that greater success for her group was being undermined by Gordy’s infatuation with Ross and, unlike other Motown artists, she was vocal about it. Reeves was furious that “Jimmy Mack” had been held back from release for two years because Gordy felt it sounded too much like the Supremes. She also clashed with Gordy over business and accounting matters regarding her group.
Perhaps to mollify Reeves, Gordy changed the name of the group to Martha Reeves & The Vandellas in late 1967. The group’s first release under their new name, “Honey Chile”, was also their last big hit, reaching # 11 on the Hot 100.
Mickey Stevenson and Holland-Dozier-Holland had written and produced some of Martha & The Vandellas biggest hits, but they had left Motown by 1968. As a result, the label was struggling to find good material for many of their acts, including Martha Reeves and The Vandellas. The group had also gone through a few personnel changes, and by the end of the decade Martha Reeves was the only original member left.
None of the group’s singles from 1968 onward reached the Top 40, and after Motown left Detroit for Los Angeles, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas played a farewell concert for their fans at Cobo Hall in Detroit and called it a day.
Both Little Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had been stars on the early Motortown Revues with the Marvelettes and Martha & The Vandellas but, unlike those girl groups, their careers continued to rise in the late 60s.
The ‘Little’ had been dropped from Stevie Wonder’s recordings in 1964, but as 1965 came to an end, he had not had a big hit single since “Fingertips Pt. 2” back in 1963. Young Stevie had been something of a mascot at Hitsville U.S.A., fooling people with his perfect imitation of Berry Gordy over the intercom, using his blindness to accidentally touch the butts and breasts of Motown’s females, and joking that he was going to take a car out for a ride.
He was also a permanent fixture at Studio A where the Funk Brothers recorded, learning everything he could from them. But Stevie Wonder was growing up; his voice had changed, and Berry Gordy had begun thinking that Stevie’s career as a hitmaker might be over now that he was moving into adulthood.
Any doubts that Motown may have had about his career were removed with his recording of “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”, a # 1 R&B hit that also reached # 3 on the Hot 100 in early 1966. Wonder came up with the idea for a song that had a beat something like what Charlie Watts had played on the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”. He got them phrase ‘Uptight’ from one of the lines in James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”.
Producers Sylvia Moy and Hank Cosby helped Wonder write the lyrics that were about a poor kid who is uptight because his girlfriend is rich; but everything is alright because she loves him anyway. Because the lyrics weren’t in braille when they recorded it, Sylvia Moy whispered each line into Stevie’s ear a beat before he sang it.
That same year, Stevie Wonder became the first soul music artist to have a hit with a Bob Dylan song when his version of “Blowin’ In The Wind” peaked at # 9 on the Hot 100. The song helped establish Wonder as an artist who advocated nonviolent political change patterned after the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King.
The Top Ten singles continued with “A Place In The Sun” in late 1966 and the # 2 hit “I Was Made To Love Her” in 1967. That same year he co-wrote “The Tears Of A Clown” for an album by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.
Stevie continued his string of hit singles in 1968 with “For Once In My Life,” and “Shoo-Br-Doo-Be-Dop-De-Day” and in 1969 with “My Cherie Amour” and “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday.” As the decade came to an end, Stevie Wonder had developed into one of Motown’s most important recording artists. By 1970, at the age of 20, he would become his own producer and arranger in the recording studio, and he also began playing most of the instruments himself.
The Miracles stood out as Motown’s first important group. They were a consistent chart presence all during the 1960s, putting a total of 34 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100. The group’s success paved the way for all the future Motown stars, and they would serve as the prototype for all other Motown groups to follow.
In addition to being the chief songwriter and producer for the Miracles, Smokey Robinson wrote and produced hits for numerous Motown artists including Mary Wells, the Temptations, the Marvelettes, and Marvin Gaye. In recognition of Smokey’s importance, he was made a vice president of Motown in 1964. In addition, the group began being billed as Smokey Robinson & The Miracles as early as 1965 on their “Going To A Go-Go” album.
Despite all the hits during the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1970 that the group had its first # 1 single with “The Tears Of A Clown,” a song that Smokey co-wrote with Stevie Wonder. The song had been first recorded by Smokey and the Miracles in 1967 for an album. It was rereleased in 1970 in the United Kingdom as a single, and became a # 1 hit on the UK charts. Motown then followed suit in the United States, and it became a # 1 hit on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts. “The Tears Of A Clown” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.
Although he was overshadowed by the incredible success of the Supremes during the 1960s, Marvin Gaye was, in many ways, Motown’s most valuable artist. From late 1962 through 1969 Gaye charted 23 solo singles on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition, he also had 11 charting duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, and his favorite singing partner Tammi Terrell.
Gaye really hit his stride in 1965 when “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” “I’ll Be Doggone,” and “Ain’t That Peculiar” all reached the Top Ten on the Hot 100. He continued to record Top Ten smashes with “Your Precious Love” and “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You” as a solo artist, and also had two Top Ten duets with Tammi Terrellin 1968, “Ain’t Nothing But The Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need To Get By”.
His first # 1 hit was “I Heard it Through The Grapevine”. It spent 7 weeks at # 1 on the Hot 100 in late 1968. Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote the song and Whitfield produced it with Gaye back in 1967. Berry Gordy rejected the recording at that time, however, and released “Your Unchanging Love” as Gaye’s next single instead. It was only a minor hit only reaching # 33 on the Hot 100. Whitfield then re-recorded “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” with Gladys Knight & The Pips, and it became a # 2 hit in the fall of 1967.
Even though he had already had a hit with the song, Whitfield kept bugging Gordy about releasing Marvin’s version. When he finally did, it became Motown’s biggest-selling single of the 1960s. Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.
Marvin Gaye’s decade ended on a tragic note when his favorite singing partner, Tammi Terrell, collapsed in his arms on stage during a performance in 1967. Diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, she recorded one of their greatest duets, “You’re All I Need To Get By” at Hitsville after recovering from her first surgery.
Following more surgeries, Tammi was ordered by her doctors to retire from live performances in 1969. She passed away the following year at the age of just 24. “You’re All I Need To Get By” was played at her funeral, and Marvin Gaye delivered the final eulogy as the song was playing.
Gaye was deeply affected by her passing, and he would spend several months in seclusion after her death. When he was ready to return to work, Marvin would chart a new musical path for Motown in the 1970s.
