What's in a Name?
THE (DETROIT) SPINNERS AND THE (LIVERPOOL) SPINNERS
In a year bejewelled with Motown magnificence, “I’ll Always Love You” was a diamond.
“It’s the very definition of a Golden Age,” agreed Steve Devereux, author of the essential Motown Junkies website, “when even the supposed second-string acts can turn in a record as amazing as this at any time, without warning.”
What also made 1965 exciting was that it wasn’t yet entirely clear who were becoming Motown’s kings and queens. Sure, the Supremes were firmly on their way to a coronation – the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles and the Four Tops were well-positioned, too – but what would the future hold, who else would come through?
Detroit’s Spinners outside the Motown Museum, May 19 (photo: Todd McInturf, Detroit News)
A piece of music as fine as “I’ll Always Love You” ought to have put the Spinners in line for a knighthood, at least, and incentivised the company’s courtiers to work with them at pace. That it didn’t happen is now just one more Motown footnote – and yet the record has another curious aspect, one which elevated its value at the time, and which came to mind again when the group visited the Motown Museum last month.
There, the backdrop for their pose in front of Hitsville U.S.A. was a large reproduction of the cover of the British release of the quintet’s first album (as pictured alongside) when they had to be the Detroit Spinners.
So let’s flash back to August 17, 1965, when U.K. national newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported, “The British folk group, the Spinners, has been given an undertaking by EMI, the British recording company, that it will not release, distribute or broadcast records by an American group of the same name unless the name is changed to avoid confusion between the two groups.”
Just 13 days earlier, Motown Records’ attorney, George Schiffer, had sent EMI a telegram: “We are agreeable,” he said, “to the name ‘Detroit Spinners’ for the Motown group.”
Shortly afterwards, U.K. record retailers received a notice from EMI’s London HQ, referencing Tamla Motown singles TMG 514 and TMG 523. “If you have the above two records in stock, will you please return such stock to the Wholesaler and/or EMI Depot from where you obtained them for full credit. Both records will be available again within seven days labelled as ‘The Detroit Spinners.’ ”
The singles in question? “Sweet Thing” and “I’ll Always Love You.”
The potential confusion over the two groups’ identity was very real, according to Mick Groves, a founder member of the British folk quartet. “I remember it well,” he told me last week, “although much of [the matter] was handled by our PR people at the time, like Les Perrin. He was the daddy of the PR business in those days.” The Liverpool Spinners were consistently popular on the U.K. club and concert circuit, and often appeared on radio and TV, while the American quintet was essentially unknown outside North America.
One of the first pressings of TMG 523, released on July 30, 1965
When the British group’s management was obliged to take legal action, EMI agreed to add ‘Detroit’ to the name of the Motown act for U.K. releases. (Its effect elsewhere varied: in France, the group was also known as the Detroit Spinners, but in Germany and the Netherlands, just as the Spinners.) “I understood it was decided that it would be the Detroit Spinners in Europe,” says Groves, “and we would be the Liverpool Spinners in America – which didn’t do us any harm at all.” He also remembers U.S. TV personality Barbara Walters visiting their hometown and having the group filmed for NBC’s popular The Today Show.
EMI’s withdrawal and renaming of the Spinners’ first two Tamla Motown singles soon increased the value of copies already in circulation. At the Clifton Record Shop in Bristol where I worked, we auctioned a copy of the first pressing of “I’ll Always Love You” for our Motown mail-order customers. According to our newsletter of the time, it was bought by “Mr. Measures of Plymouth” – although I don’t remember how much he paid. (The announcement of the winner also included a profile of the Spinners, with much of the information provided by “Mr. Gordon Cleary” of Mansfield – wherever he may be today.)
Since that summer of ’65, the original British single’s value has grown exponentially, helped by the track’s subsequent popularity on the Northern Soul circuit. Last year, a copy was sold via Omega Auctions for £220 (approximately $280), while rarenorthernsoul.com is currently offering one for £500 ($630-plus).
In their homeland, the Spinners’ “I’ll Always Love You” went Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Top 10 on the R&B charts. Their well-chronicled time at Motown saw them tour with Stevie Wonder, Martha & the Vandellas, the Four Tops, the Miracles, the Contours and many others. Naturally, the group worked with the artist development team under Harvey Fuqua – not least because it was Fuqua who brought them into the company when he sold his Tri-Phi/Harvey labels to Berry Gordy in 1962.
“Whenever the Temps got last-minute bookings and had to leave,” recalled choreographer Cholly Atkins in his autobiography, Class Act, “the Spinners would come into Artist Development and ask if they could use those rehearsal slots. They were managed by Harvey and naturally, he’d say, ‘Yeah, let’s take the Spinners and spend two or three hours with them.’ So they were stopping shows even when they didn’t have a hit record, because we worked out a lot of good production things.”
Liverpool’s Spinners, with Mick Groves at first left
The Spinners’ affection for Hitsville was apparent last month when they took part in the Motown Museum’s annual Founder’s Day, in recognition of Esther Gordy Edwards. The group donated four uniforms from the earliest days of their career, and gave a surprise live performance of 1961’s “That’s What Girls Are Made For” and 1970’s “It’s A Shame.” The last surviving original member, Henry Fambrough, was present, as was G.C. Cameron, who joined circa 1968.
There’s another all-important event coming up for the Spinners: on November 3 in New York, they’ll be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – long overdue, and after three previous nominations. “It feels great,” Fambrough recently told Billboard’s Gary Graff, “it really does. I just wish all the other guys were here to see it. It really is a great honour.”
For his part, Mick Groves of the (Liverpool) Spinners has an affectionate anecdote about the (Detroit) Spinners. “My mother was a cleaner for a well-known Jewish tailor called David Rosenfield,” he says, “and he did our band’s first set of travelling outfits. One day, he and his wife were in Florida and checking out of one of the five-star hotels there when David saw a sign by the ballroom which advertised, ‘Tonight, the Spinners.’ He said to his wife, ‘We should stay another night and see them.’ She replied, ‘Don’t be silly, just leave them a note.’ So David did. I have no idea what they made of it.”
Imagine the puzzlement of Fambrough and his fellow Spinners at the time. Still, if he kept the note among their stash of career memorabilia, maybe it, too, can be donated to the Motown Museum. No hard feelings about your Liverpool peers, right, Henry?
Music notes: the Spinners’ years at Motown may have brought them few hits, but they recorded prodigiously, as Keith Hughes’ liner notes of Ace Records’ 2012 compilation, Truly Yours, made clear, in detail. That was joined in 2018 by another Ace (Kent) set, While The City Sleeps, containing 25 tracks in total, with 13 previously-unavailable. The latter album is to be found on streaming services, as is The Original Spinners, the quintet’s first LP for Motown. The group’s post-Motown work is easily available, too, and in August, there’ll be a new 43-track, 2CD anthology from Real Gone Music/Second Disc: The Complete Atlantic Singles: The Thom Bell Productions 1972-1979. And should you, perchance, be curious about the other Spinners, check out Lord Of The Dance, a 2022 digital assembly of their popular work.
Brand notes: for reasons perhaps lost to time, the Spinners’ “It’s A Shame” was released in the U.K. in 1970 with the group renamed as the Motown Spinners. It was their one and only hit in Britain, bumping along the bottom of the Top 20 during December that year.