Fame on the Road
ACCOMPANYING AN INVASION, GUIDING STEVIE
In a few months, the 60th anniversary of the historic Tamla Motown tour of the U.K. will come around.
Where does the time go?
In that respect, it was frightening enough to remember the roadshow’s 50th and 40th anniversaries. Fortunately, the latter came with an opportunity to celebrate by way of The Motown Invasion, a two-part 2005 documentary on BBC Radio 2 which featured first-hand interviews with tour participants such as the Supremes’ Mary Wilson and the Miracles’ Pete Moore, and with local supporters such as radio’s Tony Hall and television’s Vicki Wickham. The programme was created and produced for the BBC by Paul Sexton, and presented on-air by yours truly.
Fame at last: Georgie’s first Top 10 album
Another interviewee was British musician Georgie Fame, who (with his band, the Blue Flames) was drafted as a guest star when it became apparent to the tour’s promoters, Arthur Howes and Harold Davidson, that pre-sales were not up to expectations. Fame was still basking in the glow of his first U.K. hit, the chart-topping “Yeh Yeh,” in January 1965. “My ego said, ‘Wow, this is great to be involved with these cats musically,’ ” he recalled to Sexton, “but the real reason was that they weren’t selling enough tickets on their own.
“We played the big old theatres, the Gaumonts and the Odeons. We did two shows a night, and the first shows were almost empty. It was incredible that they needed a compatible British band. [The tour] was an amazing experience. That rhythm section was a perfect replica of what was going on in the studios in Detroit. I’d never heard anything like it. We all stood in the wings all the time, every night.”
To some Motown purists, of course, Fame’s presence was unwelcome. “Is it TOO much to ask that for once, British promoters could let people who want to see good ORIGINAL American artists see them in peace instead of inflicting such banal trash as British groups on them, too?” Those were the words of Tamla Motown Appreciation Society member Dave Wood, writing in the club’s newsletter, Hitsville USA, one month before the tour began in March ’65.
“All the artists were briefed as to who was going to be on the show with us,” Pete Moore said in The Motown Invasion, “and at that time we discovered that Georgie was going to be on the show. That’s when I met him, and I was so impressed. Man, this guy blew me away. I had never seen nothing like that. America didn’t have no white guys that hip. The music that he did, not only was it hip, it was exceptional. The musicality, if you will, of what he was doing was impeccable.” Moore added, “He was doing a tune, man, an old jazz standard that he used to open his show with that just wiped me out: ‘Moody’s Mood.’ ”
Fame confirmed as much. “It was a great family, we all got on like a house on fire. The bus trips were amazing. I’ve got a couple of photographs of me and the Supremes sitting at Darlington station, waiting for a train. [But] most of the trips were done by bus. There was quite a crap school in the bus. So they used the aisle of the bus for throwing the craps.”
‘The first shows were almost empty’
The Briton was familiar with Motown, of course, and he had cut a version of “Shop Around” for his 1964 debut album, Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo, recorded live at the London club of that name. His next, Fame At Last, included his version of Marvin Gaye’s “Pride And Joy.”
On the ‘65 tour, Fame closed the show’s first half, following the Earl Van Dyke Six and Martha & the Vandellas. Stevie Wonder was situated in the second half. “Stevie never stopped playing,” Fame told Sexton. “He would play harmonica in the bus. We’d go to the next place, we’d get off the bus, he’d start playing the piano while everyone was setting up. We’d do a sound check, and he’d have to stop.
“When they started to bring the audience in, Clarence [Paul] would pick him up off the piano and say, ‘Man, the people are coming in, you’ve got to go back to your dressing room.’ He’d stop and take the harmonica, carry on playing the harmonica all the way up the stairs to the dressing room and keep on playing ’til he had to come back down again. He played 24 hours a day when he wasn’t sleeping.”
Fame also recalled hearing the strains of Aretha Franklin, “coming down from the Supremes’ dressing room.” He went on, “Florence [Ballard] was listening to Aretha’s first album, and her version of ‘Over The Rainbow.’ It was being played on their little Dansette [record player]. It was my first listening to Aretha. I had to go ask, ‘Who’s that?’ It was a very educational tour, all in all. I went up on stage for a finale every night.”
Tour manager Malcolm Cook had another view. In his 2011 memoir, Cook’s Tours, he wrote, “Georgie Fame wasn’t really at home with the razzmatazz and showbizzy feel of the tour, and initially objected to going on stage with all the other artists for the finale – that is, until I asked him to do me a favour and let Stevie hang onto his coat-tails to be guided onto the stage. Georgie happily complied: it was one musician showing respect to another.”
COMING DOWN A MOUNTAIN?
In his set for the show, Fame performed a mix of his own material (“Yeh Yeh,” “In The Meantime”) and the work of others, including Ray Charles (“Move It On Over”), James Moody (the above-mentioned “Moody’s Mood For Love”) and Rufus Thomas (“The Dog”). Members of the Blue Flames peddled a couple of solos, too.
Given his jazz leanings, it was perhaps inevitable that Fame would connect with the musicians in Earl Van Dyke’s crew, particularly the vibes player. “I struck up a good, friendly relationship with Jack Ashford,” he said, a claim later validated by his inclusion of the American musician’s composition, “It’s For Love The Petals Fall,” in his 1966 album, Sound Venture, with the Harry South Big Band.
On the road in Britain, from left: Earl Van Dyke, Robert White, Jack Ashford, Bob Cousar
Ashford himself reminisced about Fame in his 2003 autobiography, Motown: The View From The Bottom – although he appeared to confuse his 1964 stint playing behind Kim Weston in the U.K. (on a package headlined by Gerry & the Pacemakers and Gene Pitney) with that of the following year’s Tamla trek.
After appearing at Manchester on March 30, 1965, “Georgie Fame invited me to ride back to London with him. I was bubbling with a bit of exuberance, so I readily agreed. Georgie was driving a fabulous brand new Jaguar sedan.” (Ashford may also have mismatched the dates: the Motown revue played Leeds the following night, March 31; it seems unlikely that he and Fame would detour to London between them.)
“I knew this was a scenic highway,” wrote Ashford, “so naturally I grabbed my camera to snap some more pictures. (The tourist/musician was well at work.) The drive going to London was without incident and we enjoyed exchanging some of our personal music encounters.”
On what Ashford called the return journey to Manchester, there was some drama. “As we were coming down a mountain” – between London and Manchester? – “Georgie lost control of the car and we slammed into a safety wall. ‘Oh my God, did I come to England to die?’ These were my first thoughts. It only took a few seconds but it seemed to be an endless moment before the car came to a complete stop.” Both musicians turned out to be safe, the Jaguar having been built well, and the safety wall “so solid that it didn’t give way to the crash.”
Some while after the 1965 tour, according to Fame, he was at London’s Lansdowne Studios, working on his next album, Sweet Things. “And Stevie Wonder was in England and came to the studio while we were recording. He had a tune, ‘Speedin’ Around A Slow Bend,’ an instrumental, and we were going to put it down. I think there’s a rough take of it somewhere.”
If “Speedin’…” didn’t make Sweet Things, three other Motown songs did: “My Girl,” “Music Talk” (as co-written and cut by Wonder) and “Sweet Thing” (as cut by the Spinners). The result was the first Top 10 album of Fame’s career, and an affirmation of his adventure on the road with Motown’s finest.
Still, where does the time go?
West Grand Blog is taking a Halloween break. Enjoy the pumpkins.
Music notes: for a taste of the type of material which Georgie Fame performed on the Tamla Motown tour, here’s a modest WGB playlist. It opens with bandleader Mongo Santamaria’s original instrumental of “Yeh Yeh,” followed by tracks from James Moody and Rufus Thomas. (Ray Charles’ recording of “Move It On Over” doesn’t appear to be on streaming services.) Stevie Wonder’s “Speedin’ Around A Slow Bend” seems to have been released in 1963 under an alternate title, “Monkey Talk” (it was written by Clarence Paul).