Another Visit to the Cellar

FROM ‘62 TO ‘72, A CHOICE OF VINTAGE TRACKS

When he was president of Motown Records in the 1990s, the late Jheryl Busby mused to the Washington Post about launching a line of “Gordy collectibles,” imagined as gold compact discs in felt-lined cedar boxes, containing previously-unreleased material from the company’s vaults and selling for $200 each.

      Fortunately, a succession of more modestly-priced packages of unissued gold came to pass in later years, such as the Lost & Found series steered by Universal Music’s Harry Weinger in New York, and volumes of A Cellarful of Motown! curated by Paul Nixon in London. No expensive wooden containers were considered necessary for those.

      Next week, a fifth Cellarful set is due to become available in the U.K. – assuming no last-minute hitches – through Universal’s Caroline label. It’s a mere ten years since the fourth, and Nixon says he still can’t believe that it’s happening, especially as the 43-track, two-CD compilation was originally expected during Motown’s 60th anniversary celebrations, but was then sidelined.

Volume 5: years in the making

      “This particular volume seems to have been jinxed from day one,” comments Nixon. “It’s been four years in the making, if not more. The track listing has been jiggled about a little bit, but if you start fiddling with that, the whole thing starts again, with all the potential delays involved in sourcing different tracks.” The first Cellarful was issued in 2002, with later volumes in 2005, 2007 and 2010.

      Nixon reminds me that the original concept was to put unreleased, vintage Motown recordings into the marketplace to counter and foil the flow of bootlegs circulating in Britain, particularly on the Northern Soul scene. “I had started to pick up these bootleg tapes from a local record shop in Ipswich during the ’90s. I thought to myself, ‘This stuff is brilliant, why has it never been out?’ By then, I’d been introduced to Harry Weinger, and I said to him, ‘The heritage of your label is being exploited by these people, with acetates, burns, and this, that and the other. Why don’t we beat them at their own game, and make all this material available?’ ”

      To that end, tracks such as Chris Clark’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” Barbara McNair’s “Baby A Go-Go” and Patrice Holloway’s “The Touch Of Venus” were among those picked for the initial A Cellarful Of Motown! – a name devised by Nixon, and endorsed at the time by Weinger, who was A&R vice president for Universal Music’s catalogue arm, with Motown responsibility. The 40-track set made its debut in mid-2002 on both sides of the Atlantic, bearing “The Rarest Detroit Grooves” as its subtitle.

‘THANK YOU, ENGLAND’

      The Detroit Free Press was one American media outlet which hailed the contents, and explained to readers “the long-running English phenomenon known as Northern Soul, in which unsung, made-in-Detroit ’60s records are worshipped with a cult-like fervour.” The newspaper’s Terry Lawson added, “Every listening [of Cellarful] reveals another gem and makes you long even more for a thorough and definitive excavation to ensure that some of the greatest pop music in history will all be catalogued and preserved. Thank you, England.”

      Each of the four volumes to date is said to have sold more than 10,000 compact discs – that’s considered a satisfying result for such obscure Motown – and the first is now thought to be approaching 15,000 units (it was the only set given a U.S. release). “The second one also had some bootlegged stuff on it,” says Nixon, “but by the time we got to the third one, we’d mostly run out of that. We changed the premise – not completely, it was still previously-unreleased material – but not stuff that had been bootlegged before.”

Anita Knorl: too long unreleased? (photo: Ace Records)

      The passage of ten years since the fourth Cellarful has affected the fifth, inasmuch as Universal Music has, during that period, been excavating the 1960s for its Motown Unreleased digital-only titles (one of those, for 1966, was also released in physical form). Thus, there were far fewer unissued masters for Nixon to draw upon, while the Motown Girls and Motown Guys series of CDs from a fellow British label, Ace Records, also affected his repertoire choices.

      Eighteen tracks on the new Cellarful are already available on streaming services via Motown Unreleased, and three cuts exist on Baby I’ve Got It: More Motown Girls, an Ace compilation. Still, Nixon is optimistic about his latest volume’s prospects because a percentage of Motown collectors, especially those of a certain age, prefer to own physical formats. Also, it remains true that a sizeable number of the tracks have not been previously released at all.

      Ironically, Nixon has been affected by his own work elsewhere. The two Brenda Holloway delights on Cellarful 5, “Without Love You Lose A Good Feelin’ ” and “You Got A Little Of Everything,” are also on Spellbound, the 2017 assembly of her rare and unreleased Motown recordings, issued (under license from Universal Music) by David Nathan’s Soulmusic Records. “They were always going to be on Cellarful long before the Brenda album got put together,” Nixon recalls. “I thought, ‘Do I leave them off Cellarful to put them on Spellbound, or do I think another Cellarful might never happen?’ So we let them go on Spellbound, but we’ve got a slightly different stereo mix on Cellarful.”

BACKROOM BELIEVERS

      As with the previous four, the fifth edition will include recording session annotations provided by Keith Hughes of Don’t Forget The Motor City, whose detailed research work has been such an essential part of Motown catalogue adventures – most notably, The Complete Motown Singles – for Universal Music and Ace Records. Among other backroom believers who have helped Nixon’s project are John Lester, Chris Jenner and Daryl Easlea, as well as Universal Music’s Weinger and Andy Skurow. (Those who diligently mined the Motown vaults in the past include Amy Herot, George Solomon and Cary Mansfield.)

      Among the exclusives on Cellarful 5 are two tracks by Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, including a Sylvia Moy composition, “I Love The Way He Loves Me,” cut in 1970 with producer Hank Cosby. “This was yet another track featured on fan-made [bootleg] tapes in the ’90s,” says Nixon, who notes that it didn’t make the group’s Natural Resources album.

      He also singles out the Temptations’ “I Gotta Find A Way (To Get You Back),” best known as a Dennis Edwards-fronted track on 1969’s Cloud Nine album. The song was initially cut by the group in 1966, with Eddie Kendricks handling the lead, and that version – for the first time anywhere – is now on Cellarful 5. The second Temps title on the CD package is their solo take on Smokey Robinson’s “Then,” featuring lead vocals by Paul Williams, also recorded in ’66.

Volume 1: first time in the cellar

      That same year offers still another unissued gem, “It’s All Over,” originally created by Holland/Dozier/Holland and earmarked for the Isley Brothers, but to which they never added vocals. Nixon thinks it will become popular with the Northern Soul fraternity, not least because it’s a quintessential piece of H/D/H alchemy with the Funk Brothers: fuel-injected with James Jamerson’s rumbling bass, electrified by sharp rhythm guitarwork (including Eddie “Chank” Willis, for certain), and scintillated by string riffs.

      Any Motown project aiming to attract Northern Soul constituents must contain something by Frank Wilson. On Cellarful 5, it’s a midtempo number called “A Toast To The Lady,” recorded in California in late 1963; this was issued as a single the following autumn, under the name of Eddie Wilson, on VeeJay Records’ subsidiary label, Tollie. “Frank was known for offering stuff to lots of record companies,” says Nixon, adding that Motown had the track in its vault, with paperwork attributing it to Wilson. “It’s quite cool, and because it’s Frank Wilson, it had to be the opener for this Cellarful.”

      Cool or not, “A Toast To The Lady” unquestionably comes from 1963, with a humdrum instrumental track and an undistinguished vocal – the sort of ordinary R&B (if even that) which Motown was beginning to forever banish with the dynamism of “Heat Wave,” “Can I Get A Witness” and “You Lost The Sweetest Boy.” Fortunately, Wilson stepped up his game thereafter.

      The earliest track on the Nixonian package is Anita Knorl’s “Don’t Be Too Long,” written and produced by Berry Gordy, and recorded at Hitsville in November 1962. This Washington-born, Detroit-raised, part-time singer (she was also a switchboard operator and bookkeeper) laid down four sides for Motown in 1961-63, but none was released then. Later, she began performing at Detroit’s Playboy club, and also appeared on Soupy Sales’ local TV show. “Don’t Be Too Long” owes something to Mary Wells’ ballads with Smokey; Chris Clark later recorded the song.

’IT MEANS SO MUCH’

      Clark herself is represented by “I Don’t Want You Anymore,” from a 1965 New York session. It prompted an email to Nixon from the singer: “Thank you for including me in your latest compilation,” she wrote. “As well as others you’ve done the same on, it means so much to me, it really does.”

      A Cellarful Of Motown! Volume 5 offers its share of no-hit artists, including Connie Haines, Tommy Good, Terry Johnson, Oma Page and the Dalton Boys, as well as various B-listers and a smidgeon of superstars. Nixon wanted Stevie Wonder’s unissued recording of “Walk Down That Road,” co-written by Ron Miller, but that was unavailable, so he settled for Billy Eckstine’s take. “Every now and then, Billy did a track that you think, ‘That’s not Billy Eckstine!’ I found out that Stevie also did it, and thought that, as much as I liked Billy, we should get Stevie on the set. When we couldn’t, I was forced into having the one I liked better!”

      Scores of Motown singers, groups and musicians have glistened on one Cellarful or another over the past 18 years, Brenda Holloway being the most-represented (“I love her so,” admits Nixon), with a total of ten tracks across five editions. She is followed by the Contours (eight) and the Marvelettes (seven). Like Chris Clark, some are grateful that they’re not forgotten. When Paul Nixon played for Kim Weston tracks that he had selected for a U.K.-initiated anthology, including selections from Cellarful, he remembers that tears filled her eyes. “She said, ‘These are songs I loved doing, and the label never put them out. I never thought I’d hear them again.’ ”

      Who needs felt lining to feel that type of emotion?

Music notes: the full track listing of A Cellarful Of Motown! Volume 5 appears here on the Motown Forum feed of SoulfulDetroit.com. The recordings span 1962-72, with ten tracks from both 1965 and ’66. Holland/Dozier/Holland is the writing/producing team with the most tracks (eight). You can listen to all of the previous Cellarful albums on streaming services – here is Volume 1 – and the latest is likely to be available there from its September 18 release date.