A Miner’s Gold — Adam White

RAYNARD RECALIBRATES FROM CHICAGO TO DETROIT

Playing chess, planning his moves and – of course – placing a bet. Berry Gordy excelled at all of those. “I was a chess fanatic,” he once told me. Even so, he lost $1,000 to Barney Ales over a game in London. Figured he could outplay his sales chief. Wrong. “I was very upset,” he admitted.

Then there was Chess Records, which helped Gordy to win his young firm’s first national hit by distributing Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want).” Smart move.

Chess had other connections to Motown, mostly in its early years. Soon enough, they were rivals on the pop charts, as the Chicago team pumped out hits like Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me,” Little Milton’s “We’re Gonna Make It,” the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s “The ‘In’ Crowd,” Billy Stewart’s “Sitting In The Park” and Jackie Ross’ “Selfish One” in the mid ’60s.

***Chess set: Billy Davis and Fontella Bass***

The maestro involved with all those (and more) was the then-chief of Chess A&R, Billy Davis, previously the co-writer, with Gordy, of Jackie Wilson’s career-shaping solo sides, and the co-owner, with Gwen Gordy, of Anna Records. Work on a Billy Stewart retrospective put me in touch with Davis more than 30 years ago, when he recalled his success with Wilson and his experiences with others who went on to prosper at Motown, including Johnny Bristol, David Ruffin and Lamont Dozier.

Another Chicago music man was Raynard Miner, co-author of the above-mentioned “Rescue Me” and “We’re Gonna Make It,” and of Wilson’s platinum-plated “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher.” After Billy Davis left Chess in 1968 to join New York advertising agency McCann Erickson, Miner moved to Motown. Late last year, Raynard spoke to me about those days.

“The way I got there was because Martha Reeves was performing in Chicago at the Whisky A-Go-Go on Rush Street. My brother brought her to the table and told her who I was and so on. I said that I wanted to be at Motown, and she replied, ‘Yeah, well, just keep going.’ I said, ‘I guess it’s crowded there,’ and she said, ‘Well, remember that it’s at the top, so there’s plenty of room.’

“The next thing I know, I’m at my grandmother’s house, laying on the couch, and I get a phone call from Ralph Seltzer.” The Motown official made it plain: the company wanted him. “I said, ‘OK, cool, I’m ready for it.’” When Miner travelled to Detroit, “I had all my gold records and stuff with me. Ralph said, ‘Raynard, put them away, we don’t need to see them.’

AFTER THE BACKSTABBING, POSITIVITY

“That was the introduction. Then I was looking for a collaborator, and I think Ralph or somebody – maybe Hank Cosby – had told Janie Bradford about me. So she came up to me, saying she’d heard I was looking for someone to work with. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘here I am.’”

Miner was ready for such positivity. His final days at Chess were clouded by the company’s sale in late ’68 to GRT, and by the machinations of those looking to succeed Billy Davis. “Other people had been trying to take over his spot, stabbing him in the back.” Still, Miner had learned a lot there. “When I signed to Chess, I was a teenager.”

***Raynard Miner, raising the bar higher***

Robert Pruter’s authoritative Chicago Soul confirms as much, noting that the vocal group to which Miner (who was blind from age 11) belonged, the Lovettes, was contracted to Chess in late 1962, when he was 16. “A Girl’s Impression” was one of his first songs for the act, released when they were rebranded as the Gems. Another track, “I Can’t Help Myself,” was more impressive, as was “Happy New Love,” featuring Minnie Riperton on lead. Miner gradually worked his way into the Chess backroom team, firstly as a go-fer for the musicians (“I had to go get their lunch”) and then as a staff writer.

At Motown, Miner sparkled with Bradford. “I can’t even put into words the things that she helped me with,” he says. “She had a great sense of humour, and mentally, we were able to create, relax, laugh and have freedom of choice in how we wanted to write. Like if I came up with the title and the melody, she came up with the lyric, and we’d marry both.”

Their work together included “We Will” and “Full Speed Ahead” for Martha & the Vandellas (the latter song credited under Bradford’s married name, Finney), “Sunshine Days” and “The Truth’s Outside My Door” for the Marvelettes, and “Which Way Is The Sky” and “My Past Just Crossed My Future” for the Four Tops. Miner produced those sessions, too.

“Berry believed in letting producers and writers feel free to create,” says Miner. “Whatever it took for that to happen. I had an office, arrangers I could go to, people like Willie Shorter and Paul Riser. He made it very possible for people to spread their wings.” One assignment saw him sought out by Robert Gordy to write a song for the Stylists, protégés of Pete Moore of the Miracles. “I was going to give it to the Four Tops, but [Gordy] wanted me to give it to them.” In the event, the Stylists’ version of “The Jackpot” stayed in the Motown vaults until the 2019 arrival of the Motown Unreleased 1969 digital collection.

VOTES IN FAVOUR, AND THEN…

Miner says his favourite composition with Bradford was “My Past Just Crossed My Future,” recorded by the Tops in early 1969. “I had stayed up two days and two nights – with Librium, I guess – remixing that with engineer Ken Sands before the Quality Control meeting that Friday.” The room voted strongly in favour, he remembers. “It blew their minds, and I’ll never forget that on Tuesday the following week, Janie told me, ‘Raynard, Raynard, guess what? They just started putting labels on ‘My Past…’ Then some politics jumped in, and I don’t really know what happened after that.

“It was supposed to be released as a single, but Iris Gordy, who was Johnny Bristol’s wife – Berry’s niece – had a song called ‘What Is A Man,’ and that went out instead, and did a nosedive. I’m not criticising, but mine just got pushed onto the album.” (That was Four Tops Now!)

During another Quality Control meeting, Miner recalls a misstep when he was asked about “Opportunity Knock (For Me)” by the Four Tops, co-written by Smokey Robinson. “So everybody was voting on it, and Berry asked me, ‘Raynard, what do you feel about it?’ I said, ‘It’s not in the pocket. I like it, but I don’t see it being a hit.’ I was just being honest. Well, young and dumb – you know the rest of the story. Smokey wouldn’t talk to me for at least two months after that.”

Despite such incidents – and the fact that for Miner, hit songs at Motown proved harder to win than at Chess – he voices few regrets. For one thing, his salary was $1,000 a week, a far cry from previous earnings. “I was getting paid very well. Now maybe that was money in advance, or money to make me feel relaxed, or money for whatever, but I was getting a cheque for two grand every other week. That was cool. I think I was the only blind man in the middle of the hall, trying to count his own money! I was proud of being at Motown, period. And I was proud of working with Janie, who’s a great lyric writer.”

James Dean was another of Miner’s collaborators at West Grand, with whom he wrote “Don’t Take Away My Rose Colored Glasses” for Jimmy Ruffin. “James was fantastic, too. He was Eddie Holland’s cousin, and when I left Motown, he brought me over to Holland/Dozier/Holland at Hot Wax and Invictus. I did songs over there for the Flaming Ember (“I’m Not My Brother’s Keeper”), the Honey Cone, Chairmen of the Board, things like that.”

Nonetheless, living in Detroit was an adjustment for this native of the Windy City. “Chicago was much different,” Miner says. “Much faster. Chicago was like the training ground for New York.” And New York was where Miner spent time after leaving the Hollands and teaming up again with Billy Davis. What’s more, creating commercials for McCann Erickson paid better. “I worked with Billy on one with James Brown – that was a trip. And it was the first time I ever made 30 grand.”

For Miner, advertising still generated payback. Songs such as “Rescue Me” and “(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” continue to be featured in commercials worldwide. “I make more money on those today than I did when they were out there as hit records,” he says. Coincidentally, his days at Chess and Motown are connected again: both his catalogues are under the present-day administration of global music publisher Sony/ATV. And you can bet that they bring in more than Berry Gordy paid Barney Ales for that one chess game, decades ago.

Music notes: there’s now a Spotify playlist (thanks, Jon) of Miner’s Chess and Motown work, tagged West Grand Blog: A Miner’s Gold. With luck, you’ll find it here. The tracks also include Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” and a remake of that song by Michael McDonald which the writer himself likes, plus the recently-excavated version of “Rescue Me” by Blinky. The playlist closes with Joy Lovejoy’s “In Orbit,” a song which Miner thinks could suit Bruno Mars, a contemporary star. Are you on the case, Sony/ATV?