A Moonglow Rising
HARVEY FUQUA: MAKING MUSIC, SHAPING CAREERS FOREVER
No other record company of its era devoted as much energy or as many resources to developing its artists’ careers. That’s the reason an image so often comes to mind whenever the stars of Motown are mentioned: a visualisation of music, of sharply-tailored motion, of cool choreography, of sophisticated soul.
Challenge that claim, by all means – call it obsequious, even – but if you’re going to do so, be prepared to provide substantial evidence of another firm’s comparable commitment to delivering 360 degrees of artistry.
And it’s Harvey Fuqua who deserves much of the credit.
Harvey Fuqua with you-know-who: stretch those limbs, girls
“He was a very creative guy,” Johnny Bristol once told me. “He assembled a great team,” wrote Berry Gordy in To Be Loved. “Harvey was a lot of fun,” declared Smokey Robinson. “He was a gentleman,” recalled Barney Ales, “and very knowledgeable.”
The broad brushstrokes of Fuqua’s life are familiar: his central role with the Moonglows in the 1950s, yielding a doowop milestone, “Sincerely”; the Moonglows reboot, with Marvin Gaye among its members; moving to Detroit in 1960 and becoming involved with Gwen Gordy and Anna Records; his other label adventures, Harvey and Tri-Phi, with acts such as the Spinners, Jr. Walker and Shorty Long; his subsequent move into Motown and its Artist Development team; his departure from Detroit in 1969; and success in the ’70s with New Birth and Sylvester.
What’s regrettable is that Fuqua seldom shared his own, first-hand version of that career other than with friends and business colleagues. Press interviews were few and far between, and even then, he tended to be laconic. When visiting the U.K. in 1978 with Sylvester, Fuqua guested on Radio London one Sunday with Charlie Gillett, a knowledgeable interviewer. Still, most of his answers were short on detail, although he did elaborate on discovering Shorty Long, recalling a tour with Etta James and James Brown, and a show in Birmingham, Alabama. “We left the gig to go to the clubs to see what was happening around town. Shorty was there with a trio, and he played trumpet, harmonica and piano – at least two instruments at once. He asked, could he get a break. I said, ‘I don’t know.’
A SMALL STAFF, AND NOT GETTING PAID
“About eight or nine months later, he said he was coming to Detroit. I said, ‘Fine,’ and at that time, the [Tri-Phi] label had started, and the Spinners were doing pretty good with ‘That’s What Girls Are Made For.’ He came up and he had some rock & roll songs. We recorded a couple of things, which didn’t happen. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any hits with him, but he got some great hits at Motown.”
Fuqua also told Gillett about the woes of being a label owner. “I had an office, a small office, on the east side of Detroit, and a small staff. [That was] probably one of the reasons why it didn’t happen, when you’re understaffed like that. Plus the fact of distributors not paying. You had to come up with three or four hits in a row in order to be established.”
A family trip, circa 1964: Harvey and Gwen, Marvin and Anna
The Radio London interview was set up by the late Bob Fisher, a former Motown press officer in the U.K. who had advanced to label manager at EMI Records for California’s Fantasy Records, where Sylvester was signed. “When Harvey arrived, he took me straight out to lunch somewhere,” said Fisher, “and we got on remarkably well. He seemed quite elated to be able to talk about the Moonglows, Chess Records, Chuck Berry, Etta James. But I made some derogatory comment about Alan Freed’s songwriting credit on ‘Sincerely,’ and he told me off in no uncertain terms about how much of a contribution Freed made to the song, and that his credit was fully deserved.”
Fisher also remembered Fuqua’s wish to meet EMI’s Colin Burn, whose acquaintance he had first made during a 1964 trip to London with Marvin Gaye. “We learned that Colin was at those Friday-night EMI shows on Radio Luxembourg with Shaw Taylor and Muriel Young. Harvey was amused that Colin made the tea there.”
On another occasion, Fisher and Fuqua discussed one of the latter’s Tri-Phi acts, the Merced Blue Notes, whose later recordings were included in All Night Long They Play The Blues, an album compiled by Fisher. “Harvey then went on to say that he had a lot of unissued masters by them, and said he would send me some.” Fuqua did not, any more than he completed work on an autobiography – which was his regular excuse for not overly sharing information about his past. “It was that whole ‘I’m saving that for my book’ cliché,” commented Fisher.
In public, Fuqua did mention the book once or twice. During time spent in North Carolina in the late ’90s, he told a local newspaper of memories he was committing to cassette. “So far, he’s completed eight tapes with long, free-flowing monologues,” reported Joe DePriest of the Charlotte Observer. Fuqua himself said, “I’m nowhere near through. Somebody else will have to decipher it. But I have something to say. I have something to talk about.”
Harvey and Tammi Terrell: ‘most girls did’
Motown pilgrims would have hoped those monologues had specifics about running Artist Development for the company, which Fuqua did after Gordy first appointed him to promote its records to R&B radio stations (his Moonglows past meant he was always a welcome visitor). “When he first got the [promotion] job, he started planting the seeds about setting up classes to groom their singers,” wrote Cholly Atkins in his autobiography, Class Act.
When Berry Gordy saw the idea’s virtue, Fuqua was a logical choice to run the department. He was part of the family – literally, having married Gwen, while his protégé, Marvin, was Anna’s husband – and he had, by then, more than ten years’ experience in the music industry, performing in front of audiences, understanding their demands, knowing what worked on stage and on TV, aware of the competition.
“Those training sessions made the Motown artists unique,” recalled Atkins, who was one of Fuqua’s first recruits (the two men had worked together in the ’50s). “They had everything available to them that was necessary for progress. And it really paid off, and everybody in the recording industry had to sit up and take notice because those groups were smoking!” As valuable as Atkins on the team were Maxine Powell, the department’s mistress of etiquette; musical director Maurice King; and arranger/bandleader Gil Askey.
DOING WHAT THEY WERE TOLD
The department’s single most important assignment was preparing the Supremes for their Copacabana debut in July 1965. “I used to just freak on the Supremes ’cause they were so good,” Fuqua told Nelson George in Where Did Our Love Go? “They did everything you told them to do. If you take that out, they take it out. Don’t do that anymore, they don’t that anymore. Do a little of this, they do a little more of that.”
Fuqua was smart enough to allow his team autonomy, too. “Harvey was constantly in touch, when he wasn’t on the golf course,” explained Atkins. “Everything we did, we ran by him. We didn’t have to vote his way because that wasn’t what he wanted. He said he had the best people in his department there could be, and one of the reasons for selecting us was because he wouldn’t have to worry about anything. It made us feel good that he had that kind of confidence in us, but everything we were doing was his idea in the first place.”
‘Sincerely’ yours: Harvey at the Moonglows’ induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 2000
That autonomy also allowed Fuqua to spend more time producing records, particularly when the logic of teaming Marvin Gaye with Tammi Terrell became obvious. Coincidentally, it was the Supremes’ pre-Copa prep at a small club in Wildwood, New Jersey, which led to that union. In an interview with Steve Propes for Sh-Boom, Fuqua recalled seeing Terrell perform there with Steve Gibson & the Red Caps. “A young girl, she was wonderful-looking and sang great,” he said. “After they closed there two weeks later, I had her come to Detroit. She wanted to sing with Marvin Gaye. Most girls did.”
In 1969, Fuqua left Motown to return to his Louisville hometown. “I thought it was about time,” he told Charlie Gillett. “I’d been there about eight, nine years. I needed some air. Just being there sort of cleared my head.” To acquire some cash, he sold his songwriter’s rights to Jobete Music, in a deal negotiated by Barney Ales.
In fact, Fuqua had never stopped moving throughout his career, from Louisville to Cleveland, from Chicago to Detroit, and later to California, North Carolina and Nevada. In Las Vegas, he even appeared (with the Moonglows) at a doowop convention in November 2007, three years before his death at age 80.
The autobiography was never finished, but recognition of what he contributed to Motown is assured – at least among the knowledgeable – to this day, and beyond. “It’s the whole process of developing the artists,” he concluded to Charlie Gillett.
Considering all those who Harvey Fuqua helped and how, that’s a nice line in understatement.
Music notes: the breadth of this latest West Grand playlist reinforces Harvey Fuqua’s uniqueness as talent spotter and music maker. The 23 tracks feature performances, songs and/or productions from before/during/after his Motown years. The penultimate track, Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” features him on background vocals; Fuqua was also credited as “production advisor” on Gaye’s last album. Midnight Love. The final track here is the Supremes’ version of “Sincerely,” recorded and produced by Fuqua in 1965, but unreleased until 1986. His own 2000 album, T.V.O.X. The Voice Of Experience, featured liner notes by Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Sisters, whose cover of “Sincerely” was Number One on the Billboard charts (for ten weeks!) in 1955 – and a substantial income earner for Fuqua. He remained friends with her over the decades.
Family notes: the Fuqua name has attached itself to entertainment in more ways than one. Harvey himself was the nephew of Charlie Fuqua, one of vocal group pioneers, the Ink Spots. He was also the grandfather of Tina Farris, who today runs a leading tour management firm, with clients including the Roots, Lauryn Hill and Anderson .Paak. (“My grandfather wasn’t a stay-at-home dad,” she recently told journalist Larry LeBlanc, “so the only time I really visited him was on the road.”) A nephew of Harvey is film director Antoine Fuqua, best-known for Training Day and Olympus Has Fallen, among other hits. Before his movie-making success, Antoine directed music videos, including Stevie Wonder’s “For Your Love.”