The Young Ones — Adam White

FATHER AND SON SERVE MUSIC AND BUSINESS

Bettye LaVette was excited. After a long career in music, she was going to record her first album for Motown Records. She was teaming up with a producer recognised for fine work with Alicia Bridges, Dionne Warwick and Melissa Manchester, and making song choices herself, including a remake of a favourite (“Tell Me A Lie”) that she’d cut before, but was never released.

Then, as LaVette has said on other occasions, the sugar turned to shit. After all the recording was done, she received a proof of the album’s front-cover artwork: no photo of her on it, front or back. Moreover, the sleeve had already been printed and shipped, without her approval. The singer complained to the senior Motown executive responsible, whose faith in LaVette had got her signed in the first place.

There was, he said, nothing which could be done. After more than seven years at the company, he was out – replaced by Berry Gordy’s second wife, Raynoma Singleton. He was deeply apologetic to LaVette, but helpless.

Welcome to the world of that ejected executive, Lee Young, Sr., whose pre-Motown legacy in music included playing drums for Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie, helping to shape a vibrant jazz scene in Los Angeles, and serving nine years as Nat “King” Cole’s musical director. During the early 1960s, Young moved into the business side of music, operating his own label, Melic, and recording the likes of Nellie Lutcher and Damita Jo.

In 1964, he joined VeeJay Records, where he became acquainted with future Motown president Jay Lasker. After VeeJay, the pair worked together at Dunhill Records, with Young handling A&R administration. “It was really a learning experience for me to be his assistant,” Young told Steven Isoardi of the University of California, Los Angeles oral history programme in 1991, “because he was really, really sharp in the business.”

Berry Gordy evidently recognised those same qualities, hiring Lasker in late 1980 to run what was by then a financially-bleeding record company. He was briefed for the Motown post by two Lee Youngs – senior and junior. At that point, the elder had served seven years at the firm and was running its creative division, while his attorney son operated in business affairs, having joined in 1976. Lasker knew Jr. almost as well as Sr., because both had worked for him at ABC Records. (There, the father was said to have discovered Rufus and Steely Dan; the son, as the firm’s general counsel, drafted the paperwork to sign such talent.)

“They came to my house and we went over the basic artist roster,” Lasker later recalled of that first session with the Youngs. Soon enough, Motown’s troubles became clear. “After you got past the big guns, there was very little meat on the bones of the creative division,” he continued. Acts such as Switch, Billy Preston, the Stone City Band, Ozone and Lovesmith did not inspire his confidence. Furthermore, Diana Ross was on the verge of leaving, and Marvin Gaye wanted out, too.

But other artists believed in Lee Young, Sr., because his many years as a musician had sealed in him the artist’s perspective. “Stevie Wonder would never come in the building before I got there,” Young told Isoardi. “Never. He said he didn’t have anyone to play his music to. When I was made head of the creative department, he came in. He’d try all of his songs on me. He would bring all of his equipment in.” When Lasker re-signed Wonder in 1982, Young Sr. was integral to the process.

“In the record business, there’s so much money to be made there’s enough to pay [the artists] the right amount of money,” said Young. “You don’t have to stiff them.”

In Gaye’s case, it wasn’t about money: he just had to leave. “We had this piecemeal album of In Our Lifetime,” Lasker remembered. The elder Young had “managed to get some of the tapes from London and Belgium, where Marvin was torturedly putting down some new things. He listened to it carefully and said it wasn’t really great, but he could make it a little better by filling in some of the parts himself. Being a musician, he called upon certain arrangers. What they did was add some paint to a rough sketch of a not-too-good picture.” When released by Motown in 1981, the album “hastened the deal with CBS,” according to Lasker, “as Marvin was really bitter that we had taken his work and edited it and sweetened it and, in his words, ‘killed it.’ ”

The job at Motown of Nat Cole’s onetime musical director wasn’t only about salvage. In 1979, Young set up a jazz division, signing acts such as Dr. Strut and Flight. He produced their sessions, too, just as he did with influential pianist Ahmad Jamal, whose album, Night Song, came out in 1980.

Under Lasker, the record company helped to stem losses with a series of midprice catalogue releases, among other initiatives, but it was clear that the current artist roster wasn’t delivering. In early 1982, Berry Gordy voiced his dissatisfaction – and Young Sr. was out.

***Music group monarch: Lee Young, Jr.***

Young Jr. was not. He had already shrewdly handled the signing of Rick James in 1978, and his subsequent re-signing. Plus, he became the conduit through which Motown acquired The Big Chill movie soundtrack. The label had originally licensed just a handful of oldies to Columbia Pictures, but Young was then approached about releasing the complete soundtrack. “Why they named it The Big Chill I don’t know,” he told Lasker, “but it’s a very interesting picture, and I think we should definitely pick up the soundtrack, because we can get it for practically nothing.” The resulting album went six times platinum, and spent more than three years on the charts.

Three years later, Lee Young, Jr. was in the room when the first, discreet meetings about Motown’s sale to MCA took place. He was also involved in negotiating with Stevie Wonder’s lawyer, Johanan Vigoda, because any such deal could not include the superstar’s recording contract without his permission. But Gordy cancelled the MCA transaction in 1986, and appeared to want to revitalise his business. He fired Lasker and appointed Young Jr. as president of the music group.

An investment plan of $38 million for artist development and promotion was announced – and yet within 12 months, Gordy had resumed talks with MCA and sold the record operation. After completion, Young transferred to The Gordy Company, but left soon afterwards.

In later years, the attorney showed up in any number of Motown memoirs, including those of Rick James, Mary Wilson and, predictably, the Motown founder himself. Less predictable, perhaps, was Young’s choice of client during the ’90s and beyond: pioneering rapper Ice Cube.

Since Lee Young, Sr. played drums behind Fats Waller, the sound of young America has changed radically. Were he alive today, Waller might not recognise the style or aesthetic of Ice Cube, but he would be the first to acknowledge such innovation in music – and the talent of the backroom believers, senior and junior, who helped to champion it.

Sometimes, the sugar doesn’t turn to shit.

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