The White Nightingales

VALIANT, VERSATILE – AND DETERMINED

The thought came to mind almost immediately after posting last week’s WGB about Charlene. Who were the first white women signed to Motown Records?

During its early years, there were five. Three of them happened to bear first names beginning with the letter C. Merely one is mentioned in Berry Gordy’s autobiography. “Over the years Chris and I became close,” he recalled. “Very close.” Chris Clark, that is.

Her story is among the better-known on the distaff side of Motown. The others, less so. One sang with big bands in the 1940s, including a collection of musicians whose leader teamed her with Frank Sinatra. One was on the bill of the 1959 rock & roll tour headlined by Buddy Holly, when he chose transport by ’plane instead of bus. Still another was voted America’s “Miss Teen” at the age of 14 in 1960.

And two of the above were regularly – and wrongly – identified in the press as the first white singer to join the Motown roster.

Berry Gordy’s attraction to such talent was evident before then. “America’s girl next door” (as he described her) was Doris Day during the 1950s, and it was with her in mind that Gordy wrote one of his earliest songs, “You Are You,” and sent off the sheet music in hopes she might record it. He received no reply.

Another blondie played an early role in Gordy’s advance. Inspired by 1957’s chart-topping “Tammy” by Debbie Reynolds, he sought to bestow that name on his new record label. When he discovered that another music firm had already taken it, Tamla was born.

But the first white singer to sign on at 2648 West Grand was Debbie Dean, born in Kentucky as Reba Penny Smith and already with considerable showbusiness experience. That started, one might say, when she won the title of “Miss Plug Horse Derby” at a state fair in Lexington in 1948. Focusing on singing and with the help of a Chicago DJ and concert promoter, Penny Smith went on to record rock & roll for several labels in the ’50s, and probably first met Gordy when he and Roquel (Billy) Davis were songwriting partners with Chess Records connections. Two of their copyrights, “Share Your Love” and “Gimme What You Got,” were coupled into an Argo single release by so-called Penny & the Eko’s in 1958.

It was in the following year that Smith joined the legendary roadshow featuring Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. After their fatal ‘plane crash, the tour continued with Smith and others. She renewed her acquaintance with Gordy in 1960, who personally produced her Motown debut, “Don’t Let Him Shop Around,” with the Miracles singing background. Bannered as by Debbie Dean, the single made a brief, pop-chart appearance in February ’61. However, neither of her two subsequent Motown 45s did so, including “Everybody’s Talking About My Baby,” also written and produced by Gordy, so if he had hoped she would provide crossover fuel for the firm’s pop aspirations, the outcome was disappointment.

DEAN TIMES TWO

Yet Dean enjoyed a second act at Hitsville after settling in Los Angeles and meeting fellow musician Dean Lussier, otherwise known as Deke Richards. They teamed up as writers, and she introduced him to Gordy circa 1966. Their Jobete output included songs for Diana Ross & the Supremes, the Temptations, Edwin Starr and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, including the last-named act’s controversial “I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playin’,” which Richards himself recalled in an extensive post on the Soulful Detroit Forum. He also produced Dean’s one last Motown release as a singer, “Why Am I Lovin’ You,” released on V.I.P. in 1968.

Dean was 33 when Gordy signed her. By contrast, the next white female singer brought into West Grand was half that age: Conny Van Dyke. Virginia-born but raised in Oak Park, Michigan, she was that Miss Teen of 1960, who also modelled and sang. A Motown audition yielded a deal, and a handful of tracks were recorded during August and September 1962 with Smokey Robinson, Mickey Stevenson and Clarence Paul. Robinson wrote and produced the topside of Van Dyke’s one and only 45 for the firm, “Oh Freddy,” released the following March (with her name spelled as Connie).

***Conny Van Dyke: a hazardous bus journey***

Van Dyke also toured with a number of Motown acts. “I was singing with groups like the Supremes as my backup,” she told the Detroit Free Press in 1975, “with Martha & the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye. We’d go somewhere like Lima, Ohio, on the bus to do a show and they’d get sight of this little white girl and her momma travelling with a group of black entertainers, and they’d throw rocks at the bus.

“I understood, being born in the South, what the feelings there were, but I had never been taught to accept or deal with those feelings. My association with Motown ended after only a year. There was no trouble between Motown and me. The trouble was with other people who couldn’t accept what we were doing. We made beautiful music together but that didn’t matter to the people who threw rocks at the bus.”

Another Caucasian under contract during this time was Bunny Paul, in whom Berry Gordy took sufficient interest to produce her lone 45 for his firm, “I’m Hooked,” released in May 1963. The Detroit-born singer had recorded in a variety of contemporary styles during the ’50s, including covers of tunes by the Drifters and the Clovers. Health problems stalled her career in the new decade, and it did not recover after the Hitsville turn.

Savannah-born Connie Haines was in a different league. She had sung with big bands led by Harry James and Tommy Dorsey (who teamed her up with Sinatra) during the 1940s and ’50s, and had recorded extensively by the time Motown’s founder saw her perform at the Roostertail in late 1964. “Berry Gordy Jr. caught my show in Detroit,” Haines told a journalist years later, “and sent two songwriters to me. One was Smokey Robinson, the other was Ron Miller. I had to learn 14 songs Smokey Robinson wrote in a couple of days.”

Among the latter was “What’s Easy For Two Is Hard For One,” cut by Haines in September 1965, and issued as a single the following March. More engaging was her take on Robinson’s underrated “Mr. Pride And Mr. Gloom,” although this wasn’t made commercially available until 2015.

‘RELIGIOSO CHIRPERS’ SIGN ON

Another notable moment of Haines at Hitsville was her July ’65 recording of “For Once In My Life,” thought to be one of the very first versions of the song – and certainly the first cut at Motown. “They sent it out to all the distributors,” she claimed in a later interview, “and the distributors didn’t know what to do with this ‘legitimate’ singer. They didn’t know how to market it, so they pulled it back.”

Perhaps just as intriguing was the Motown PR announcement in mid-1966 that it had signed Jane Russell, Beryl Davis and…Connie Haines. “Threesome, known for their religioso chirping,” reported Variety, “has been inactive [for the] past few years and is now prepping first elpee for the Detroit-based waxery.” Indeed, Haines had been part of what was known as the Hollywood Christian Group, founded in 1949, and had sung and recorded gospel material in an act known as the Four Girls (with Rhonda Fleming). Still, nothing by Russell/Davis/Haines was ever released by Motown – and but for the fact of that publicity in July, it might have been considered an April Fool’s joke.

Between them, Debbie Dean, Conny Van Dyke, Bunny Paul and Connie Haines recorded two-dozen sides for Detroit’s most famous record company. Chris Clark alone cut three times that amount – albeit that only one track, “Love’s Gone Bad,” had any kind of mid-chart placement. As noted, CC’s story has been told many times, authoritatively in music publications such as In The Basement and by writers such as Bill Dahl, insightfully in general media outlets such as SF Gate and the Los Angeles Times. (Clark also provided me with invaluable, off-the-record intel for Motown: The Sound of Young America.)

“Motown certainly tried, but they just didn’t know what to do with me,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2009. “I was just a kid – I didn’t have a persona locked in – and I was a tomboy, walking around barefoot, wearing leather fringe outfits to the floor. But they were always trying to get me to glam up. I think they spent more money to photograph me than to record me!”

That the company couldn’t make Clark a star may seem curious to those aware of her closeness to Gordy, of that romantic relationship with the boss. But her behind-the-scenes (and Oscar-nominated) role in the scripting of Lady Sings The Blues validated her talent, while the calibre of the material which she did record at Hitsville has sustained her reputation to this day.

Motown’s first five white women, then, were versatile, valiant – and determined. When music proved not to be a fulfilling career path for Conny Van Dyke, she segued into acting. So did Debbie Dean, while continuing to write songs; later, she authored a 1976 book, New Names For The Age Of Aquarius. Connie Haines continued to perform in concert well into her seventies, as Chris Clark has done, particularly in Britain.

Others followed in their footsteps, ranging from Kiki Dee to Kathe Green, from Chantal Benoist (a/k/a Jennifer) to Su Shifrin, and not forgetting the unlikely presence of Irene Ryan, one of the longtime stars of television’s The Beverly Hillbillies who went on to Broadway success in the Motown-backed musical, Pippin.

But towering above them all, metaphorically and commercially, was the late Teena Marie, whose Top 10 R&B singles during the 1980s included “I Need Your Lovin’” and “Square Biz,” while her Irons In The Fire and It Must Be Magic were Top 10 R&B albums.

Evidently, Motown had come a long way from the days of Miss Plug Horse Derby.

Music notes: this latest WGB playlist features the five women cited above, with two tracks apiece from their Motown tenure. They include Connie Haines’ version of a number usually associated with Liz Lands (“Midnight Johnny”) as well as her curtain-raising take of “For Once In My Life.” From Chris Clark, there’s her first Motown 45, and her rendering of Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” – a song currently in the news via Bruce Springsteen.

West Grand Blog is taking a short break. See you on the other side, with luck.