Words Can’t Possibly Describe – But Try
SEEKING THE HONEST PRAISE OF HOUSEHOLD NAMES
Berry Gordy’s devotion to traditional American showbiz values was never more evident than in his description of the Supremes’ debut at the Copacabana, 55 summers ago. “As I stood there filled with pride,” he wrote in To Be Loved, “I was watching what the reviewers would later say was one of the most dramatic openings the Copa had ever seen.”
He recalled how the group began their performance with a jazz arrangement of a Cole Porter song, “From This Moment On.” How they went from there into “Put On A Happy Face,” another Tin Pan Alley standard, from Bye Bye Birdie. “This was Broadway,” Gordy declared, excitedly. Then he noted how moved he was by the Supremes’ rendition of “Somewhere” from West Side Story.
“Shortly after the Copa, the most exclusive clubs in the country started booking the Supremes,” trilled the Motown founder. “The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas signed them a year in advance – sight unseen!”
The Cockney Meets the Cowboys?
Shortly afterwards, too, Gordy – or someone on his behalf – approached one of the night’s high-profile guests to compose liner notes for the live album which captured the Supremes’ Copa triumph. “As a performer I admire them more than words can possibly describe,” wrote Sammy Davis, Jr. on the back of The Supremes at the Copa. “Having worked with the girls on a couple of occasions, I can honestly say that they are not only magnificent performers who have created a trend and who have captured the hearts and the musical taste of not only America but internationally as well. But they [also] happen to be marvellous ladies.”
This must have been the hyperbole hoped for at Hitsville U.S.A., much as when Gene Kelly delivered his sleeve notes for The Supremes Sing Rodgers & Hart two years later, or when Carol Channing put her thoughts onto paper for the group’s Greatest Hits package. Welcome to the second part of a two-part look at Motown album liners (here’s the first).
“My ear was caught by the youth and vitality that poured from the machine,” remembered song-and-dance king Kelly about the moment he heard the Supremes on his daughter’s record player for the first time. “I loved the clear, pure sound and the joy that was an inherent part of the music.”
Broadway queen Channing was equally as effusive. “Great as The Supremes are, they are even greater in person,” she wrote, recalling the night that she and her producer, David Merrick, caught Diana, Flo and Mary at – where else? – the Copa. He was less than keen to see a “rock ’n’ roll group,” according to Channing. “But when he heard the girls sing ballads as they should be sung, and show tunes – especially those from Mr. Merrick’s hits – he became their biggest booster!”
‘REFRESHING IN ITS HONESTY’
Sammy Davis, Gene Kelly and Carol Channing weren’t the only old-school stars whose signatures appeared on Motown album sleeves in the ’60s. To some reading this, the name of the first such contributor may even be a surprise. But in 1963, Tony Bennett poured praise on his accompanist, Ralph Sharon, for the latter’s one and only LP on Gordy, entitled modern innovations on country and western themes. “The music here is most unusual and delightfully refreshing in its honesty,” wrote Bennett of pianist Sharon’s interpretations of Hank Williams’ “You Win Again,” Bob Wills’ “San Antonio Rose” and other C&W chestnuts. “The ballads are tender and soulful, and the brighter tunes swing merrily all the way.”
These liners were undoubtedly done as a favour for Sharon. He had cut the album in Dallas with Al Klein, a songwriter/producer who had his own label there, and who then joined Motown to handle promotion and sales in southern states. Klein was also responsible for producing some of the company’s country music output on its Mel-o-dy label in 1963-64.
From Sammy Davis Jr., hoped-for hyperbole
But Tony Bennett had a different title in mind for his colleague’s Gordy release, alluding to Ralph Sharon’s London birthplace. The album, he thought, really should have been called The Cockney Meets the Cowboys.
Another showbiz sultan who was asked to endorse albums for Motown was Ed Sullivan. During the 1950s and ’60s, his weekly TV variety show was a vital media platform for entertainers of every type, and Gordy’s stars – particularly the Supremes – were regulars on the Sunday-night programme. Sullivan composed notes for two releases, Barbara McNair’s Here I Am in 1966, and Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations in 1968. Of McNair, he wrote, in part, “On each of the Sundays Barbara’s been introduced by me, on our stage, she has been a solid hit. And, the mail reaction from all over the country, from Canada and from Australia has been great!”
Sullivan also mentioned viewers at home and abroad in his other Motown contribution. “It has always been a pleasure to me to bring little-known but talented artists and our TV audiences together,” he remarked. “Never was there a better opportunity for this than when I first introduced Diana Ross and The Supremes and The Temptations to the U.S. and Canadian viewers of our show.” (What, no Australians?) The two groups appeared together on The Ed Sullivan Show in November 1967; their joint album was released 13 months later.
Motown turned to a composer acknowledged as an architect of musical theatre, Jule Styne, for the liners of two titles: the Four Tops’ On Broadway in 1967 and Diana Ross & the Supremes Sing and Perform ‘Funny Girl’ the following year. “This album was planned to include the works of many of the great Broadway composers and lyricists,” explained Styne about the former. “The Four Tops’ renditions of these songs show a deep understanding of the musical taste of Broadway and a respect for the classic line of the lyric.”
MAKING EVERYONE HAPPY
Those renditions ought to have done: the Tops by that point had been performing such standards for more than ten years. At Motown, they cut one of Styne’s best-known copyrights, “Make Someone Happy,” with producers Mickey Stevenson and Hank Cosby in 1964, before their breakthrough with Holland/Dozier/Holland; naturally, this song was part of On Broadway.
The neon lights are bright on Broadway
Other Hitsville acts recorded “Make Someone Happy,” including Stevie Wonder and the Supremes. In their case, they even featured the song during “Battle Of The Stars” at Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom in February 1964 – their adversaries that night were the Velvelettes – and recorded it in California later in the year. “I knew these standards were the key to taking our people to the next level of show business – top nightclubs around the country,” Berry Gordy asserted in his autobiography. “And I knew the Supremes could lead the way.”
The Motown monarch made Jule Styne even happier when, in 1968, he had the Supremes record Funny Girl as an entire album, which he produced with arranger/conductor Gil Askey. The original musical, written by Styne with lyricist Bob Merrill, was one of Broadway’s biggest ’60s hits, and helped to accelerate the career of its star, Barbra Streisand. Diana, Mary and Flo had included the show’s most-recognised song, “People,” in their act since 1964; it was one of Ballard’s choices, and she often took the lead in its live performance. (Ironically, by the time the Supremes recorded the Funny Girl project, she had been replaced by Cindy Birdsong.) “The album actually portrays a different musical style for each number,” Styne wrote in his sleeve notes, “with a dramatic musical background connecting each song. It takes in the early Dixieland and Two-Beat of the Twenty’s to the Electric Rock Sound of now and tomorrow.” But the composer did more: Gordy recruited him to work with Diana Ross on the vocal arrangements in New York, where the recording sessions were held. “What a delight to meet a star who is also a real human being,” Styne added in a postscript. “You’re a very special person Diana!”
‘STEAK SHOULD BE STEAK’
Gordy’s grand plan for Ross took another form in 1969, when she – without the Supremes – was a guest star on a Dinah Shore TV special that April, Like Hep! She participated in comedy sketches (including one where she was Snow White) and sang “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” from the hit Broadway musical, Hair. Diana’s “presence lent the already lively hour an extra sparkle,” judged trade magazine Variety.
And so, logically, Shore contributed sleeve notes to the Supremes’ next album, Let The Sunshine In. “When we worked together for the first time on my T.V. special,” she wrote about Ross, “I was a witness to that uncommonly tireless application of talent she puts into everything she does.” For the Like Hep! appearance, added Shore, “she worked beyond her endurance but never lost her cool. In the many sketches, she proved a bright, versatile comedienne. She can do it all!”
Here’s to Ralph, swinging merrily all the way
Now, I always assumed that Motown’s liner-notes “ask” of household names like Shore, Kelly and Channing was a task assigned to Shelly Berger, boss of the firm’s west coast office during the second half of the ’60s. Previously, he had set up the William Morris Agency’s Los Angeles unit and worked for comedian Don Rickles’ manager, Joe Scandori, so his familiarity and contacts with California’s showbiz community would have been substantial. However, Berger told me recently that he was never involved in seeking showbiz endorsements like that – more likely, it was Motown’s L.A. publicists, Rogers & Cowan. “They’d have been the ones to reach out to stars for that sort of ‘seal of approval,’ ” he said. “Many of those stars would have been clients of theirs,”
When the time came to launch the first of Motown’s second-generation hitmakers, Berry Gordy went in-house for superstar superlatives, not outside. “The JACKSON 5 sing honest,” declared Motown’s biggest star for the liners of the group’s debut album, Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5. “Straight out. No tricks. No gimmicks. But good. Very, very, very good. Everything about these guys says ‘honesty’ to me.” This was an important quality, Ross affirmed. “I think of something being straight out, all there, on the table – the way it is. Steak should be steak, you know what I mean?”
“Having her name associated with a group of unknowns really helped announce their arrival on the scene,” observed Gordy in To Be Loved. “When people started saying Diana had discovered the group – that didn’t hurt either.” Yet these were not the first Motown liners to carry her signature: those were for the Supremes’ 1968 Reflections album. Using part of the title song’s lyrics as subheads, Ross looked back at her upbringing, her dreams, her good fortune (“to feel the warmth of your acceptance, the thrill of your applause”) and those who helped the Supremes to achieve success.
By the 1970s, Motown had largely stopped posting praise on the back of its album jackets. Instead, overdue credits for musicians and others involved with specific projects began to appear, most famously for two long-players shipped in May 1971, What’s Going On and Valerie Simpson’s Exposed. Actually, both these releases did also feature liners – by Marvin and Diana, respectively.
THINKING FOR YOURSELVES
Gaye gave notice that he wasn’t “gonna write no general information type stuff,” instead opting to acknowledge, with gentle sarcasm, “some good people who, without their help, I could have completed this project a lot faster.” And anyway, he added, “if you like the artist well enough to buy his or her album, you don’t have to be told how groovy it is, or which tunes you should dig, or how great his or her majesty is. I mean, the fact that people just won’t let us think for ourselves really bugs me!”
Their original British fan writes…
The brief Ross liners for Valerie Simpson’s debut LP were both informative and complimentary. “I always thought Valerie was a great writer-producer, and after I heard her recording of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ [sic] for Quincy Jones, I realized that she excelled as a vocalist as well.” The superstar saved the best for last: “The only word for this album is fantastic!”
A rising star provided copy for another Motown album released shortly after What’s Going On and Exposed. “If you think it strange that I am writing liner notes for the Supremes’ album,” advised Elton John on the back of the group’s Touch, “then all I can say is I am probably their original British fan. I bought their first single, ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ in England in 1964 (and thought I really knew why the British Empire had fallen after this did not become an English hit; my homeland was restored in my eyes, however, as The Supremes’ subsequent records became huge successes).”
Elton’s enthusiasm seemed genuine. What was peculiar were the mistakes, calling “Where Did Our Love Go” the Supremes’ first single (that wasn’t the case even in England) and declaring it a miss (the record reached No. 3 on the U.K. charts). Adding to the oddity was the fact that this up-and-coming star was personally close – and soon to become closer – to John Reid, Motown’s British label manager at EMI Records in London, who might have spotted the errors.
Anyway, enough already, you’re thinking – this West Grand edition seems longer than any ten of the above liners combined. So let’s conclude with brief notes about several others – and if you have been, thanks for reading.
Greatest Hits. This 1966 release by the Temptations carried a few paragraphs by the hottest young stand-up comedian of the day, Bill Cosby. “In my estimation,” he opined, “there are three things that improve with time, #1…a good tobacco, #2…a woman, #3…and the Temptations’ performance.”
Bye Bye Baby. This 1963 LP by Mary Wells appeared to offer personal remarks from the singer herself (“Words are inadequate to express just what it means to present to you my first album”) but this was slightly undermined by the small print underneath, which read, Liner Notes: Brown & McMurtry.
That Stubborn Kinda’ Fellow. Another 1963 release, this from Marvin Gaye, with adjective-stuffed sleeve notes and an engaging photo of Martha & the Vandellas, heard accompanying Marvin on “a number of tunes.” The signature here was simply “Bill,” who presumably was William “Smokey” Robinson. Although, on this occasion, none of the album’s ten tracks were his work.
The Fabulous Miracles. Still one more from ’63, with words again attributed to Bill (or in what looks like a typo, Bil): “They present precision, performance, and promise…in short, the “Miracles” have style.”
All By Myself. For Eddie Kendricks’ solo debut in 1971, his former bandmates each turned in a goodwill message. All were positive; Melvin Franklin’s seemed the most heartfelt. “Grow on, young man, keeping your eyes on the stars and God in your heart. Most of all remember that we, The Temptations, are in all ‘four’ of your corners.”
Elaine Brown. In 1973, the last album issued on Black Forum tucked away the thoughts of Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton on its inner sleeve, wherein he referenced “song flowing out of the pain and suffering of Black life in America” in Brown’s recordings. She, too, was a member of the party.
The Supremes and Red Hot. From 1975 and 1979, respectively, these both featured a few words from Mary Wilson on their jackets. “The Supremes…have been blessed with loyal and devoted fans,” she wrote on the first, gratefully and accurately. “Now singing my first solo album,” she declared on the second, “I must say it feels good.”
Hotter Than July. In 1980, Stevie Wonder was striving to have Rev. Martin Luther King’s birthday become a national holiday, and this album’s inner sleeve was one more place to campaign. “We still have a long road to travel until we reach the world that was his dream.” Amen, Stevie, amen.