Dance Master, Drill Sergeant

CHOLLY ATKINS CHOREOGRAPHED MOTOWN’S FINEST

Smokey Robinson has never forgotten how Ray Charles helped the Miracles to handle their first appearance at the Apollo.

      It was October 2, 1959, and the group had arrived from Detroit with chord sheets for “Bad Girl” and another song they were to perform on a bill topped by Charles, but without any arrangements for Reuben Phillips’ house band. Giving them grief, according to Robinson, was the theatre’s production manager, Honi Coles: “What the hell is this? The band can’t play this crap.” At which point, the gracious headliner stepped in and worked out the arrangements on the piano with Robinson.

      The Miracles were back at the Apollo 14 months later with the “Motor Town Special” show, this time musically equipped to the max, but also with sharp choreography under the direction of Charles Sylvan Atkinson – better known as Cholly Atkins, one-half of mid-century tap-dancing titans Atkins & Coles, with the very same Honi Coles of (later) Apollo employment.

In the basement: Cholly tutors the Tops

      And when the need arose in 1963 for Robinson’s group to figure out a dance routine for their latest hit, “Mickey’s Monkey,” who better than Atkins to assist? “That was basically the beginning of the robot when you start to think about it,” the self-styled “vocal choreographer” told Black Music magazine in 1977. “It was looser, but the gestures were basically the same. It had a pinpoint hesitation to it.”

      Atkins knew about pinpoint. He was the sharpest dance master of his era, recruited by Harvey Fuqua to join the staff of Motown Records in 1965. The two men had become acquainted ten years earlier, when Fuqua was a member of the Moonglows and Atkins was coaching such vocal groups, beginning with the Regals and the Cadillacs.

      What has sparked these WGB reflections on the art of Atkins? Well, a note in my diary of his imminent birthdate, September 30, in 1913; the welcome receipt of an email from a friend, Tom Vickers, who penned the above-mentioned Black Music article; and my belated discovery of an insightful profile of Atkins in the New York Times last year. Written by Brian Seibert, this was keyed to the late choreographer’s work with the Temptations, as depicted in the Broadway musical, Ain’t Too Proud.

      “Pops refined the Temptations,” Otis Williams told Seibert, using Atkins’ nickname. “What he did was dramatic but more economic, so we wouldn’t overly exert ourselves but could still get across.” He met the group in 1964 at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., “while I was there on another assignment,” recalled Atkins in his autobiography, Class Act, written with Jacqui Malone. “They had been on a bill with the Cadillacs, and they got blown away. So when they met me, Otis said, ‘Man, we been trying to run into you; we sure would like for you to do some stuff for us.’ ” The result was his choreography for the Temps’ first major pop hit, “The Way You Do The Things You Do.”

NEW YORK TO DETROIT

      He did this while freelancing, before accepting the full-time Motown post. “It was the right time for an artist development department to really thrive,” wrote Atkins, “so the deal sounded pretty good. I told [Berry] Gordy I would have to talk it over with my wife and get back to him, because he wanted me to move to Detroit.” This was the hard part: he had been living and working in New York for many years, and his wife Maye held a good job in the finance department of upscale department store, Macy’s. Still, Atkins accepted, beginning at Motown in March of ‘65.

      There, he was reunited with the Miracles, and spent considerable time on their routines and presentation. “Then, all of a sudden, the company felt that there was so much movement going on that it was distracting from Smokey,” Atkins told Tom Vickers in Black Music. “So they discontinued the choreography. They didn’t want the other guys to move around meaningfully, but just sway and be there to sing the background, then everybody would notice Smokey. But that didn’t really work. It didn’t sit too well with the guys even though they went along with the programme for a while.”

Atkins takes class with members of the Marvelettes and the Monitors, among others

      Atkins revisited that story 24 years later in Class Act, as well as other anecdotes from his six years at Motown. He devoted page after detailed page to his experience as its choreographer-director – essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the company’s artist development unit, and how performers gained a lifetime’s value from it. The polish and precision, the synchronicity and style, of the Temptations in concert or on television – evidenced by clips newly available from The Ed Sullivan Show – is testimony alone to what Atkins brought in.

      “The other thing that I was in charge of was all scheduling – vocal rehearsals, choreography sessions, and all meetings with the artists on their new material.” His department colleagues included bandleader/vocal coach/arranger Maurice King and rehearsal pianist Johnny Allen.

      The first group Atkins tutored once he was in-house? It was actually the Marvelettes, as recalled by member Katherine Anderson Schaffner in Marc Taylor’s book, The Original Marvelettes. “Cholly was very nice. He could be comical at times, but when it came time to rehearse and it was time to learn what you needed to know for the particular song that you were doing, he would very much be about the business. He could be strict.”

      Soon enough, drill sergeant Atkins was directing Martha & the Vandellas, the Velvelettes, the Spinners, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes and, once again, the Miracles and the Temptations. Stevie Wonder was “Singer Boy,” he explained. “When you’re working with him, it’s hard to believe that he can’t see, because his whole approach is just like a person that has eyesight. You can say, ‘Stevie, your right hand should go up, and when it’s halfway there, turn your thumb around so that your palm is facing front.’ And he would do it exactly like you said it, just from hearing it.”

DISCIPLINE AND DEDICATION

      One of the more endearing images of Atkins during this time shows him in the basement of the Apollo, choreographing the Four Tops – or trying to. “They were wonderful singers, but all they wanted to do was that little side-to-side bend” (otherwise known as the windshield wiper). “But the Tops were from an older generation and I guess they figured they already had their identity when they came to Motown.”

      If Atkins and the Tops weren’t close, the opposite was true with Gladys Knight & the Pips – perhaps no surprise, since he had coached them religiously years before either he or the group arrived at Hitsville. “They had the ability to showcase the very best that I had to offer. And from my point of view, when they stepped out on that stage, they were representing Cholly Atkins.”

Atkins advises Mary Wells

      Knight has confirmed his importance. “Pops was more than a dance coach for us,” she wrote in Between Each Line of Pain and Glory, “he taught us a far greater level of discipline and dedication to our art.” Atkins’ wife Maye played her part, too. “She’d tell me straight up if a dress made me look too heavy, or if my pronunciation was off, or if our diction needed to be cleaned up.”

      Speaking to Tom Vickers, Atkins made clear that he saw the progression of popular dance as a recurring pattern with very little unique movement. “In the early days, dance routines came out of various shows like your Cotton Club shows, big nightclub production numbers. It’s basically the same now. There’s only so many positions that you can put your body in.” But no limit to what performers may choose to wear on stage: for years, Vickers was in the employ of George Clinton during the heyday of Parliament/Funkadelic, when their leader’s showtime outfit might be nothing more than a giant diaper.

      “They may not be into dance steps per se,” Atkins responded to a question about this evolution, “but there’s always room for improvement of any body motion as far as physical drama is concerned. So there will always be that kind of dancing, regardless of what the trend might be.”

      Motown’s dance master left the company as it made the transfer to Los Angeles, during which the artist development department was shuttered. He was also uncomfortable with another aspect of the period, admitting that Motown’s appeal to him in 1965 was its black ownership as well as its inspirational advancement in a white-controlled music industry. “When they eventually moved to California, it seemed like half the personnel was white. To see it change over…and not be completely controlled by blacks was very disturbing to me.”

WHISKEY IN THE MORNING

      Such directness would have been no revelation to anyone who worked with Atkins. He was equally candid in Class Act about his alcoholism, and how it nearly destroyed him (“I would knock on the neighbours’ door at six in the morning, asking for whiskey”), although he believed it was never obvious to those he was teaching. When under treatment, his employer’s support was unwavering: “Motown paid all the medical bills and my salary never stopped.” In the event, he beat the addiction, and lived for another 35 years, to the substantial age of 89.

      Atkins continued to coach the Temptations and Gladys Knight & the Pips in his post-Motown years, as well as a myriad of other performers, including the O’Jays, Graham Central Station and Tavares. He won a Tony Award in 1989 for choreographing a Broadway song-and-dance smash, Black And Blue, and was honoured with a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship four years later.

      As the New York Times article noted, Cholly Atkins is not a character depicted in Ain’t Too Proud, but his contribution and commitment is apparent in virtually every step taken on stage, yesterday and today, by the stars of West Grand Boulevard.

Video notes: there’s footage of Cholly Atkins with the Temptations, “teaching” the group to the track of “Lady Soul,” from their 1986 Motown album, To Be Continued. Earlier this year, Otis Williams spoke briefly about Atkins (and Maurice King) on social media, part of his #OtisAtHome reminiscences. For vintage Coles & Atkins, there’s this clip, capturing their performance of “Swing Is Really The Thing.”