GRAMMY MUSEUM® ANNOUNCES DETAILS FOR UPCOMING EXHIBIT MOTOWN: THE SOUND OF YOUNG AMERICA

The GRAMMY Museum® in Los Angeles, California will reopen its doors to the public on Fri, May 21 and has announced details for its new exhibit, Motown: The Sound Of Young America, presented by City National Bank. The exhibit will be the Museum's premier second floor exhibit through winter 2021.

Motown: The Sound Of Young America traces the evolution of the label, focusing on its major artists and musical achievements, and explores how the sound of Motown continues to influence some of pop music’s most important artists today.

In addition to stage outfits from many of Motown’s top performers, such as the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Miracles, and The Supremes, the exhibition also includes exclusive interviews with many Motown legends, letting visitors get deep inside the creative process perfected at Motown 60 years ago.

Visitors will also experience interactive displays, including an opportunity to perform The Supremes’ “Stop! In The Name Of Love” on stage and learn the Temptations’ signature dance moves.

“The music of Motown, especially in the 1960s, represents a high-water mark in American music,” said Bob Santelli, the exhibition’s curator and Founding Executive Director of the GRAMMY Museum.

“The long list of No. 1 hits, the incredible stable of stars, and the genius of Berry Gordy Jr., both as a businessman and nurturer of talent, made Motown one of the most successful and impactful record companies of all time.”

“We’re honored that the GRAMMY Museum is bringing this vital exhibit to Los Angeles. In the past 60 years, Motown has repeatedly proved itself as a galvanizing musical and cultural force, amplifying the voice of Young America. Providing a firsthand view of the development of artists like Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, NE-YO, Lil Baby and MIGOS will, I hope, spark the dreams of a new generation," said Ethiopia Habtemariam, Chairman/CEO of Motown Records and President of Urban Music/Co-Head of Creative at Universal Publishing Music Group.

A blend of gospel, blues and pop, Motown began in Detroit in the late 1950s and quickly became “The Sound of Young America,” crashing the American pop charts and challenging the Beatles-led British Invasion. The visionary of Motown, Berry Gordy Jr., a former prizefighter and songwriter who believed that talent could be found on nearly every Detroit street corner, brought the iconic sound into the mainstream, and it's a sound that continues to influence music and culture around the world. The exhibit was supported by Universal Music Group, Motown Records, and UMe and first premiered at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2019.

Exhibit highlights include: Berry Gordy's $800 loan contract (facsimile) used to start the Motown record label "Butterfly" gowns worn by The Supremes, Harmonica and keyboard played by Stevie Wonder, Ray Parker Jr.'s Gretsch guitar, Recording Academy Hall Of Fame Awards for the Miracles and full sets of outfits worn by the Jackson 5, the Four Tops, and The Temptations.

Members of the Jackson 5 for decades were frequent guests at Los Angeles Lakers basketball games. Years ago the family clan were often seen in West Hollywood on a local basketball court around their 1969-1973 recording sessions for Motown Records.

I had witnessed some of the mid-1960s Motown Revue live road shows in Los Angeles and Hollywood and danced on a couple of music TV shows when the Motown acts would be booked on the Sam Riddle-hosted 9th Street West on Melrose Avenue and Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Vine Street location.

My brother Kenny and I went to the KHJ Second Annual Appreciation Concert at the Hollywood Bowl on April 29, 1967, for the United Negro College Fund and the UCLA School of Music, headlined by the Supremes with Buffalo Springfield, the Seeds, Brenda Holloway, Johnny Rivers and the Fifth Dimension.

In 1966 I saw the Temptations on Shindig! at the ABC-TV studios on Prospect Avenue. They sang a live vocal on “My Girl,” mixed with a pre-recorded music track. They were clad in matching powder blue outfits in front of me. That was living color even though the series was broadcast in black and white.

“I’m on a lot of the Jackson 5 records cut in Hollywood: ‘I Want You Back,’ ‘ABC,’ ‘The Love You Save,’ specified guitarist Don Peake in a 2014 interview.

During a 1963 tour of England with the Everly Brothers with the Oldham-managed Rolling Stones as a support act, Peake gave guitar lessons to Keith Richard who later touted Don’s tips in an issue of New Musical Express. “I have picked up as many hints on guitar playing as I can from Don Peake, who is the Everly Brothers guitarist. He really is a fantastic guitarist, and the great thing about him is that he is always ready to show me a few tricks.”

“I was in a core session group that, in a sense, replaced the Funk Brothers, who did the Motown sessions in Detroit. We didn’t want to replace them, but Berry Gordy moved out here.

“Benjamin Barrett was a very powerful contractor. He worked with Gene Page a lot, and that’s how he knew me, ’cause Gene always used me on Phil Spector dates. Benjamin called me on the telephone. ‘Hey Don, Motown is moving to Los Angeles. I’m forming a staff band and want you to be one of the guitarists in the orchestra.’

“I went into the room, and there was David T. Walker playing guitar, Louie Shelton on guitar, and drummer Gene Pellow. Some of the records have Paul Humphrey. He wasn’t like Hal Blaine or Earl Palmer. He was very understated. He was chill. The pianist was Joe Sample, and the bass player was Wilton Felder, sax player for the Crusaders, but he played the bass for Motown.

“Ben Barrett told me to go over to the mom-and-pop studio on Ventura and Colfax—Freddie Perren’s studio. These were different sessions than with Spector and Brian Wilson. Freddie had us in a compact core group. It wasn’t the five guitars, two pianos, two drummers, two bassists. This was more like Detroit combos, where the bass was featured. It was a whole different kind of music.

“Playing with the Jackson 5 was just exciting. I had played with the Everly Brothers from 1962 to 1964, so I was into the harmony thing.”

“I have picked up as many hints on guitar playing as I can from Don Peake, who is the Everly Brothers guitarist,” Keith Richards once proudly proclaimed in a 1963 issue of New Musical Express. “He really is a fantastic guitarist, and the great thing about him is that he is always ready to show me a few tricks.”

“I made all those Monkees records, like ‘Mary, Mary.’ I did the chart. I played on some, and arranged some. So, I was on Monkees, Jackson 5, and then the Partridge Family,” summarized Peake.

“The kids were all there. I watched them do their vocals. Michael was magic. All of us looked at Michael and said, ‘Oh my God. This guy is amazing.’ We knew, like with ‘ABC,’ we were making a great record. Sometimes you can just tell.

“When I played on the Righteous Brothers’ ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,’ everybody in the room knew it was going to be monster. I played on so many songs by the Jackson 5, including a wonderful record, ‘Maybe Tomorrow,’ which has an electric sitar. That’s me on the Danelectro.

“We started recording down on Romaine Street, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, near La Brea. The Motown studio, the Sunset Room. We also worked at the Crystal studio. It was a big room. The Motown studio was a little smaller. We did some Supremes records there with producer Frank Wilson.

“Then Marvin Gaye walked in. On his session for ‘Let’s Get It On,’ it was me and Arthur Wright on guitars. I do the lead intro lick. I hit an open G string and I made a mistake and you can hear it on the record.

“Freddie Perrin was very methodical. He was much more specific, like with arranger Jack Nitzsche on ‘River Deep, Mountain High,’ and ‘I Got You Babe’ with arranger Harold Battiste. They were written out but with Freddie, he was a wonderful string arranger and a genius.”

In November of 1974 for Melody Maker I interviewed Bobby Rogers, a member of the famed Miracles, and a Tamla Motown fixture since their inception in 1958, when he joined up with his sister Claudette, Ronnie White, Pete Moore, and William Smokey Robinson. Bobby and I were in a Hollywood recording studio one evening and had a chat about Motown, Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones and Marvin Gaye.

"I really loved touring with the English groups, back in 1963 and 1964. We used to tour with the Rolling Stones and people like Georgie Fame. During the breaks from touring, a lot of the groups would ask questions about certain songs on our albums.

“I remember when we filmed The TAMI Show (perhaps rock's finest celluloid treatment with James Brown, Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, Supremes, Miracles). Mick Jagger would ask me about what I'd thought of the album James Brown Live At The Apollo, which was his favourite LP. One time on a tour he mentioned that he'd like to record a Marvin Gaye song for the next Stones album. A month later, 'Hitch Hike' was being played all over Detroit radio," reflected Rogers.

Bobby took pride in looking back at the time when the groups traveled by bus, and singers like Tommy Roe would have to buy food for them in restaurants where they wouldn't be served in the South.

"Man, those early tours were a trip. Endless hours of bus rides and all these skinny English dudes asking us about the Tamla Motown sound. I never realized how important or influential we were on groups like the Beatles and Stones. He said his name was George and he was in a group named the Beatles. We used to party with all the groups, and have become good friends. You know, music travels in sort of a cycle. The early days were beautiful. We dug all the people we played with. Back in 1965 my favourite song was 'Get Off My Cloud.’

“The Miracles have always to this point been a singles-orientated group. Smokey was writing for the group and everybody else. Smokey never really had the opportunity to do a concept thing. The best thing that ever happened to music has got to be the What's Goin On album by Marvin Gaye. Marvin was listening to everything that was around. Beatles, Stones, Pop, Jazz, etc.

“You know that Sgt. Pepper LP? It was always on Marvin's turntable. Marvin took some time off and really looked at what was happening. Society has changed. A long time ago black people were smoking dope and if they got caught they would go to jail. Now, white people are doing it and they bring the penalty down. Also, we had some racial hassles years ago in the South, and it's getting better now."

Bassist Bob Babbitt came from Pittsburgh, and moved to Detroit and became part of Stevie Wonder’s touring group. He stepped in to the Motown studio world when bassist James Jamerson could not simply keep up with the overwhelming amount of work being produced by the ever-expanding facility. He had a run 1967-1972, and omnipresent on “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” “Mercy Mercy Me,” and “War.” After Motown left Detroit, Babbitt settled in Nashville, where he remains a much-in-demand studio player.

“Sometimes the song sections would have arrangements of A, B and C. ‘Go to letter A, then back to C. Then fade on B.’ They started switiching around so much everybody got confused. So they had the arranger with big cue cards and he’d be running around. We then knew where to go. What section to go. I wasn’t there at the beginning of Motown. When they only had a few tracks to work with, everybody had to be in the room.

“That’s why you see older photos of Stevie and Jamerson next to each other ‘cause they only had a few tracks. They grew and got more tracks, they didn’t necessarily need the singers there. I never saw a singer in there! So, the musicians didn’t have anything to feed off of, so there’s a good possibility that a lot of stuff that came out of the musicians, maybe that’s how they found some of their melodies and some of their phrasings. Jamerson told me one thing: ‘If there’s no feel, then there’s no deal.’

“It’s easier to do it now because you have the electronic equipment. So one guy can experiment. Back then, we didn’t have the tracks.

“We knew the time was coming when it went to L.A. As time was starting to go by we started to lose key people. All of a sudden now there’s a producer who lives out in L.A. An arranger in L. A. I went to the east coast.”

I mentioned to Babbitt that traditionally, the bass was a support instrument, but pioneers like Jamerson made it a lead pace instrument. And many of the Motown song productions had the bass prominent in the song mix. Like his own lead kick off on “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.”

“It was a style that for Jamerson, that was the way he played. Why would you say to him, after 10 or 15 hit records, and later me, ‘I don’t want you to do that now. Play simpler.’ I’ve been in a lot of sessions where the producer asks you to play it real simple ‘cause they don’t think you can play on a ballad. But that was his style and that’s what that music was a lot about. And it challenged me.

“There were some locked in lines on the What’s Goin’ On album. Sometimes the arranger, or Marvin would have an idea, on a certain section, where someone was gonna play certain lines in unison. So, you’d see that line definitely laid out on the paper. And then you might come to another section and see only chords. Or a lot of times you would see the first two bars to give you an idea what the groove is like. And they would say similar throughout the song. And then we’d have guys who wrote down every note and wanted us to accentuate. Some of the people wanted it like that. I never used a pick except someone a couple of times when the producer asked me.

“I didn’t realize the impact of Motown until I moved out of Detroit. When I hit the East Coast that’s all people could talk about, they wanted to know everything about it.”

In 2004, I met up with the legendary percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Jack Ashford after the Funk Brothers played a gig at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.

Did he ever believe that a third of a century after he worked with Marvin Gaye on the What’s Goin’ On album other singers would and could do these Gaye-birthed tunes?

“No. We never thought of that. Remember, we cut so many hits, we didn’t put that much on the future of the individual songs because the fact that we knew we were hot, we knew the feel was great, and we had great writers, singers and producers. We had so much help in to doing all of this that everybody had their role to play and we broke it down. Man, these people who wrote those lyrics…”

Jack further commented about those Gaye What’s Goin’ On sessions. Ashford laughs when recalling a room to the side of the studio that had originally been designed to give the horns separation.

“ I had my percussion stuff set up in there with Jack Brokensha, and for some reason, all the guys who smoked weed used to do it in that room. Jack and I didn’t smoke, but there was so much weed going on you couldn’t look across the room! Marvin chain-smoked reefer. They came into the percussion room where Jack Brokensha and Marvin came in with a joint and Jack and I looked at each other since none of us smoked and we were getting a contact high ‘cause the only air in there was marijuana! Man, this is weird, but it was all good. We were in the percussion area and everyone was lightin up!”

Did he ever have a philosophy or a specific technique he applied when doing vibes and percussion on those Snakepit recording sessions back in Detroit. Many listeners, record collectors and I are so thankful the tambourine(s) were mixed high on those tracks.

“My process…Well, number one and this is the one that I’ve used ever since I first started doing these things. OK. I personally don’t think about what I’m getting ready to play. I really don’t. On sessions the first thing I would listen to is what Jamerson was doing and what the drummers were doing. Because it was important that I locked into them and what Eddie Bongo was doing. It was important not to get in the way because I could do what I wanted to do. There’s plenty of room to move around rhythmically with a tambourine.

“The whole thing with a tambourine period is to control the cymbals. This is the sticking point for everybody because when they slap it the cymbals are going for themselves. And if you don’t control them then you’re in the way! So my approach is to control the cymbals and make them do what I want them to do. Because they’re gonna get heard and if you make them do what you want them to do now you’re adding and enhancing what’s being laid down by everyone else. But even with that there are a lot of things that I do that is ‘Jack Ashford’ and then not anyone else.

“So therefore it’s difficult to put that program into a keyboard or something. I did a date for Ray Parker once and he said, “Boy they got everybody in this keyboard Jack but you!” I said, ‘They pay me enough money I’ll try and climb in!’

Ashford asked me about my favorite Motown singer,

“David Ruffin,” I replied. “I always felt, especially in the early days he was really singing for his supper, the grasp in his voice and I could hear the urgency, the desperation and loss he sang about.”

“Yeah. Yeah. He was hungry! He wanted that fame…

“If something is given to you and you have a victory it is a lot different than when you got that victory you fought for. You have to have that arrogance to maintain and keep it! You show me a passive prizefighter and I’ll show you a guy on the canvas! Ruffin wanted it. Like Muhammad Ali, who would go in against all odds and say ‘I’m kickin your ass!”

In February of 1976, I interviewed the late David Ruffin in Hollywood for a Melody Maker profile

“The Temptations were individuals who happened to sing together,” he disclosed. “I never regretted any of the songs we did and even the choreography on stage has been widely copied. I liked the dancin’ part of that group. Then you couldn’t just stand there and sing. The audience was moving and you just reflected what was goin’ on. If anything, I’d like my association with the Temptations to be remembered as that we gave something. We helped young artists get in a position.”

Ruffin then praised the likes of Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart, delighting in the tale of coming on stage in Detroit at Cobo Hall and singing ‘I’m Losing You” with Stewart. But there was one moment when Ruffin broke character in our chat. He ran down his solo hit single “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)”

“A lot of people said it was a mental thing and that I could never make it without the group,” he mildly boasted at that time.

But Ruffin simultaneously remembered, even during our conversation about the chart success of “My Girl,” only ten years earlier, he and the Temptations were subjected to unfair housing conditions during tours and many incidents that at times were shocking.

“We went through a few mindbenders. Some cats had to buy us food ‘cos restaurants wouldn’t serve us, mostly in the south. Things are much better today but I can think of the times when I was driving independently of the group in my Cadillac and the police didn’t like black people with money or any fame, made me get out of town. They wouldn’t even let me stay overnight. I was visiting my mother once time. Parked the car outside and the cop said, ‘you can’t park it here.’ I knew why he didn’t allow me to stay with Mama. Yet the musicians and later on all kinds of kids went to our shows. We would rap and sing on the bus ride between concerts and it was a lot of fun,” David recalled.

“He was a raw singer,” drummer Uriel Jones observed about Ruffin. “There weren’t too many people who could top him. David led a very full life, no doubt about that.”

I knew and interviewed the late Mary Wilson of the Supremes on several occasions. She reinforced the magic contained in the grooves in the first decade of the Motown sound.

“In the earlier days we actually recorded with the musicians, do the vocals a couple of times. For years we recorded right there with the musicians. The magic for me was lost after we became really famous because then the tracks were laid down and we would come in and do it without seeing the musicians. The magic was when we recorded with the musicians. That was the beauty,” she allowed.

“Now, everyone is asking me about the musicians. From my perspective we always knew and felt that. The public now can appreciate them as individuals. We always appreciated them that way. We as artists had to look out for ourselves, and we had our PR pushing us. The musicians didn’t have PR companies pushing them then. See the difference? Thank God now they can get their final due which they totally deserve. I want to be really clear about this: No one really intentionally didn’t talk about the guys. It wasn’t that, it’s just the way the business was. The artists out front.”

Why are the songs of Motown so durable?

“That’s one of those questions like asking about love,” she smiled. “But, I think all of the things we are recognizing now, the Motown label, the Funk Brothers, musicians, Berry Gordy, here we are 40, 50 years later and people are still re-recording those songs. Berry Gordy was an innovator, and he knew talent when he saw it. He only accepted the best. He allowed people to create on their own. He allowed the producers to really inspire each other. There’s no real answer to your question other than I know when I was recording those songs, it was the people, it was the music…Who knows. Any bass player out there listened to Motown records to learn how James Jamerson played. Any new female group coming up will definitely try and take something from The Supremes. It was like we were the model for music. The Motown sound was the model. And the music is universal.

“I have to give credit to Berry for putting us with Holland, Dozier and Holland,” stressed Wilson. “Because previously, we were the ‘No Hit’ Supremes for a long time. Berry said, ‘I can see that you are really serious, so I’m gonna put you with my top writing team H-D-H.’

“So it was their music, their direction, I was active behind the group, behind the scenes, people don’t know that, on TV Diane would jump out in front, and that wasn’t really the way we ran it. Which is fine. When they brought us ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ I told Eddie, all three of us said, ‘I don’t like that record.’ I went to Eddie, ‘We need a hit here.’ ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘trust me. You girls are gonna have a hit.’ That changed my life.”

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 19 books, including Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972 and a study on Neil Young, Heart of Gold.

Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and brother Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. For October 2021 they are writing and assembling a multi-narrative book on Jimi Hendrix for the same publisher.

Otherworld Cottage Industries had just published Harvey Kubernik’s 500-page book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters, featuring his interviews with D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, Murray Lerner, Morgan Neville, Henry Diltz, Graham Nash, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, Mary Wilson, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Andrew Loog Oldham, John Ridley, Curtis Hanson, Dick Clark, Travis Pike, Allan Arkush, and David Leaf, among others.

This century Harvey wrote the liner note booklets to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special and The Ramones’ End of the Century. Kubernik and Andrew Loog Oldham wrote the liner essays to The Essential Carole King.

In 2020 Harvey served as Consultant on Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time documentary directed by Alison Ellwood which debuted in May 2020 on the EPIX/MGM television channel and subsequently seen worldwide.

Kubernik was interviewed last decade by director/producer Neil Norman for his GNP Crescendo documentary, The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard. Jan Savage and Daryl Hooper original members of the Seeds participated along with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, Iggy Pop, Kim Fowley, Jim Salzer, the Bangles, photographer Ed Caraeff, Mark Weitz of the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Johnny Echols of Love. Miss Pamela Des Barres served as narrator.

This decade Harvey was filmed for the currently in-production documentary about former Hollywood landmark Gold Star Recording Studio and co-owner/engineer Stan Ross produced and directed by Brad Ross and Jonathan Rosenberg. Brian Wilson, Herb Alpert, Buffalo Springfield’s Richie Furay, Darlene Love, Mike Curb, Chris Montez, Bill Medley, Don Randi, Hal Blaine, Who record producer Shel Talmy, Disney songwriter Richard Sherman, Don Peake, Love’s Johnny Echols, Gloria Jones, Slim Jim Phantom, Paul Body, Bill Inglot, Carol Kaye, Melanie Vannem, Marky Ramone, David Kessel and Steven Van Zandt have been lensed).