The Good Sheppard

MOTOWN TRAVELS TO MELODYLAND; A CHURCH OBJECTS

Imagine a record label charting with six of its first seven singles, including two which went to Number One, and another which reached the Top 30, by a singer first signed to the parent company ten years earlier.

      Welcome to Motown country.

      We’re in Nashville, Tennessee, where Berry Gordy’s business opened Melodyland Records in the autumn of 1974. “It was just an upstairs,” the label’s biggest star once told me. “You’d walk up the back staircase of a building, there were like three or four offices, and that’s where it all took place. That’s where I would go and meet John Fisher and other people, make my phone calls to radio stations around the country and do interviews. That’s kind of where it all happened.”

T.G. Sheppard (no devil in sight)

      It sounds as modest a start as Gordy’s original workplace on Detroit’s Gladstone Street in 1959. But the launch of Melodyland was, in fact, testimony to how substantial his empire had become within 15 years. By then, of course, Motown Industries was headquartered in Los Angeles, and Gordy was preoccupied with making movies. Ewart Abner had been appointed president of Motown Records, and it was diversifying. In 1974, the firm inked distribution deals with a couple of British rock labels, Manticore and Gull, and with Creed Taylor’s new-jazz outfit, CTI. Then, it unwrapped Melodyland.

      The label’s biggest star? T.G. Sheppard, of course, the onetime promotion man-turned-singer whose “Devil In The Bottle” and “Tryin’ To Beat The Morning Home” were among those initial Melodyland releases. The former topped the Billboard country charts in February 1975, the latter in June. “I think I got a lot of attention, being their first major artist,” Sheppard said, “because they were trying to develop a country division, so therefore probably spent a little more money, time and effort in making that happen. And I just happened to be there.”

      He had taken a while to get there. Tennessee-born in 1942 as William Browder, he worked in Memphis as a teenager in pursuit of a music career, made a record as Brian Stacy (“High School Days”) on Atco, and was an opening act for the Animals, Jan & Dean, and Sam the Sham. “The reason I got into the music business side,” he explained, “was because I wasn’t having any success as an artist.” He secured work with Memphis record distributor Hot Line, gaining enough experience to then join Stax’s national promotion team. “I already had a close friend [there], a guy named Steve Cropper. That really was the reason I ended up getting the job.” Subsequently, Browder worked for RCA Records, before forming his own promotion and artist management firm, Umbrella Productions, in 1972.

HEARD THROUGH THE WALL

“I come home late at night with my shoes in my hands/Stumble in the back door being quiet as I can/And I know she’s there in bed, cold and all alone/And she's crying ’cause I’m breaking up our home.”

      Convinced of the appeal of lyrics like these in songwriter Bobby David’s “Devil In The Bottle,” Browder tried to get it recorded by others, then cut a demo himself. Pitching that proved no more fruitful until one particular day in Nashville. “I was playing it for another record company, and John Fisher happened to hear it through the wall, and caught me as I was leaving. He said, ‘I really think that’s a hit.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m glad you do, because the company I just played it for doesn’t think so.’ And that was the start of my record career.”

Al Klein (second left) with Barney Ales (seated), Phil Jones (first left) and Irv Biegel

      Fisher was one of two key figures at Melodyland’s start-up; the other was John Widdicombe. Both were recruited by Herb Belkin, a former Atlantic executive who had joined Motown in 1974 to oversee and expand its so-called “creative operations.” Widdicombe was given responsibility for Melodyland from Los Angeles, while Fisher was hired as its man in Nashville.

      Motown had form in country music, but no success. Its Mel-O-Dy imprint began in 1962 with R&B repertoire, but was reshaped the following year into a country label. This was largely the province of songwriter/producer Al Klein, who had previously operated Duchess Records in Dallas. “He was like a country boy,” said the late Motown executive who hired him, Barney Ales, “who used to make records for $200. We let him fool around with it for a while, then he did national singles sales out of Dallas. He brought in Dorsey Burnette and Bruce Channel.”

      Indeed, he did. Channel and Burnette were among the artists with country music singles on Mel-O-Dy in 1963-64, as were the Chuck-A-Lucks (previously known, of course, as the Dipsy Doodlers), Gene Henslee and Howard Crockett. Ales had met Klein when both worked at Warner Bros. Records. “He was a big guy, six-foot-five, and looked like a football player. Berry liked him very much, too, because he had a great personality.”

A FAMILY AFFAIR

      Ales’ experience with country music had begun even earlier, during his days at Capitol Records. “I had a great relationship with Ferlin Husky and all the different country artists there,” he said. That affection for the genre influenced Motown’s Mel-O-Dy reboot in ’63 – and the boss was also supportive. “Berry was happy with Dorsey Burnette, he liked him personally, and wanted to produce him himself.” That may also account for the fact that Burnette was happy to return to Motown ten years later: his “Molly (I Ain’t Gettin’ Any Younger)” was one of those first seven Melodyland releases.

      When Motown launched the label in the last quarter of 1974, T.G. Sheppard was unknown to country music fans, regardless of his industry credentials as Bill Browder. The artist gaining the most attention was the one whose “Candy Lips” was the very first Melodyland release: Pat Boone. By then, the white-bread rock & roller was a middle-of-the-road entertainer, complete with family – and Motown signed them all, including wife Shirley and their four daughters. (The Boones’ perky update of “Please Mr. Postman” was released on Motown in September ‘74.)

      Boone’s “Candy Lips” did not chart, despite being produced under the auspices of Mike Curb, an influential music man who was also responsible for others signed to Melodyland, including Jerry Naylor, formerly of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, and Ronnie Dove, an erstwhile rockabilly singer and pop hitmaker. According to Living The Business, Curb’s 2017 autobiography, it was an approach to him from Berry Gordy which led to the label’s formation. Nonetheless, it was a new name – T.G. Sheppard – who put the venture firmly on the road with the chart-topping “Devil In The Bottle.”

      “It was basically a country record,” Sheppard said, “with very heavy gospel overtones, rhythm & blues, and southern gospel, because of the background singers.” So when his first Melodyland album was released in 1975, it was no surprise to see backing vocals credited to, among others, Rhodes/Chalmers/Rhodes, the Memphis trio memorably heard behind Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Sheppard also name-checked another backgrounder who stepped forward in later years. “Janie Fricke was a jingles singer in Memphis, and I needed this certain high, bluesy kind of a voice, a gospel voice, so she came in and rendered her voice onto my first Number One record. It was a magical time.”

      If it was magical for Sheppard, it was also positive for others. Those whose careers were advanced by hits on Melodyland included Naylor (“Is This All There Is To A Honky Tonk?”), Dove (“Things”), Boone (“Indiana Girl”), Kenny Seratt (“I’ve Been There Too”) and – memorably, though perhaps for the wrong reason – Jud Strunk, whose “The Biggest Parakeets In Town” became tangled in a later problem.

PARAKEETS AND PROMISCUITY

      Still, reaching the Billboard charts and making a profit can be mutually exclusive for record companies. After 15 months of operating, Melodyland underwent change: execs John Widdicombe and Ken Revercomb departed, amid rumours that the label might even close. Motown in Los Angeles was certainly concerned about the bottom line, which motivated Berry Gordy to elbow Ewart Abner aside and bring back Barney Ales to run its record operations.

      A further complication was a legal dispute with the Melodyland Church, a Pentecostal facility (complete with 3,500-seat theatre) across the street from Disneyland in Anaheim. It had bought rights to the Melodyland trademark in 1969, using it to brand records, TV shows and books. In particular, church officials claimed to be upset by the immorality of music issued by the Motown imprint. Pastor Ralph Wilkerson cited Jud Strunk’s “The Biggest Parakeets In Town” and two T.G. Sheppard tracks, “Tryin’ To Beat The Morning Home” (“about a promiscuous affair,” the church noted) and “Another Woman” (“dealing with promiscuous living”).

Goodbye Melodyland, hello Hitsville

      At first, Motown wouldn’t stop using the name, but eventually relented and rebranded its label as Hitsville. In May 1976, Sheppard’s remake of Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” was the first Hitsville 45, followed by Pat Boone’s “Texas Woman.” Veteran music man Ray Ruff came on board as creative director, and began producing records by Boone, Sheppard, Dove and Wendel Adkins.

      The writing, however, was on the wall. Barney Ales had given oversight for Hitsville to his lieutenant, Gordon Prince. “I recommended dropping the label,” Prince told me, “because we spent more money entertaining [people] than making off the 40,000 or 50,000 singles we’d sell to go Top 10 on the country charts. The volume wasn’t there. I was shocked.” By the spring of 1977, Hitsville was shuttered and Mike Curb acquired all the assets.

      For his part, T.G. Sheppard was shocked, too. “Because they were really starting to make some inroads,” he said, “and still to this day, I don’t know why they didn’t want to do it anymore. As a matter of fact, I was still signed to them for a year or two after they closed the record company, and they wouldn’t release me. So I just had to stop my career for a couple of years until my contract ran out.”

      In retrospect, Motown’s adventures in country music resembled its earlier excursion in rock. The company established one major new act in each genre – Sheppard and Rare Earth, respectively – but little beyond that. Much money was spent, little profit was made. Still, the star of Melodyland Records did not take his good fortune for granted. “I was just so thankful and blessed,” said Sheppard, “to have had the opportunity to have been the one who kinda came out of all that.”

Music notes: a cross-section of Melodyland’s 1970s output can be located today online, mostly through YouTube (hence the links above), but by no means all of it. Motown owner Universal Music has reissued nothing, perhaps because of Mike Curb’s rights acquisition at the label’s end. Meanwhile, fans of T.G. Sheppard can find much of his post-Melodyland music on streaming services, and even one or two re-recordings (by him) of his first hits. As for Mel-O-Dy, that material was included in The Complete Motown Singles series, which means it’s available digitally to this day.

Music notes 2: the closure of Hitsville was not quite the end of Motown’s activity in country music. The company distributed Mike Curb’s new label, MC Records, releasing 15 singles between September 1977 and July 1978, mostly by artists who had been with Melodyland/Hitsville. It scored a few minor hits on the country charts, including remakes of “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” (by Marty Mitchell) and “Baby I Need Your Loving” (E.D. Wofford). Three albums were issued, but others were scheduled – and then never released. MC was no more.