The French Connection
RICHARD, CLAUDE, SYLVIE – AND THE VELVELETTES
Comment allez-vous?
The out-of-the-ordinary Motown cover versions highlighted here last week were all in English. But there’s a substantial inventory in other languages, not least of all, French. Hey, Claudine Longet’s ascent of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is arresting, n’est-ce pas?
The French connection to Hitsville U.S.A. stretches further. As a music industry professional, Berry Gordy’s first trip outside North America included a stopover in Paris in 1963 to meet potential business partners. Later that same year, (Little) Stevie Wonder’s first European concert appearances took place in the French capital. And in 1964, the Velvelettes became the first Motown act to record in French.
There’s more. Gordy’s autobiography relates his amorous adventure with Diana Ross in Paris in 1965 (spare us the depiction in Motown The Musical). During that same visit, he was on-site for the French debut of the Tamla Motown label, as the Motortown Revue played the city’s Olympia theatre. And at the launch party, Gordy announced his signing of one of France’s most popular singing stars, the late Richard Anthony.
First in French, the Velvelettes: Betty Kelley, Norma and Bertha Barbee, Cal (Carolyn) Gill
“It was really a great thrill,” Anthony told me in 2014. “They talked about it in the papers in France. [But] I was working so hard and selling so many records that it sort of flipped by me after the surprise and the enormous happiness of being on the label.”
Anthony had developed his career in the 1950s and ’60s with astute, French-language remakes of American hits, ranging from Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” and Paul Anka’s “You Are My Destiny” to Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” and Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want To Be With You.” This was a much-travelled road, of course, and as far as Motown was concerned, there may have been more covers of its repertoire in France than in any other non-English-speaking nation.
French resident (but American-born) Nancy Holloway recorded “Do You Love Me,” “You’re A Wonderful One,” “My Guy” and more. Singer/actress Sylvie Vartan wrestled with “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” “It’s The Same Old Song” and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Pop trio Les Fizz carbonated “Ooo Baby Baby” and “Stop! In The Name Of Love.” All were en français, as was the treatment of “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” by Vartan’s then-husband, singer Johnny Hallyday, rendered as “Les Coups.”
Motown’s interest in Richard Anthony was stirred in late 1964, when it first considered importing repertoire from abroad. Company lawyer George Schiffer had brought samples home after a European trip, and these appealed sufficiently to Berry Gordy that Schiffer was directed to take a transatlantic trip to sign the singer in person. “I sent him a Thunderbird with a chauffeur, to sit comfortably in the back,” Anthony said. “I had a lot of wonderful cars at the time.”
FOOD AND WINE: A CALMING INFLUENCE
But after the overnight flight, Schiffer’s journey from Le Bourget airport to Anthony’s residence outside Paris wasn’t wonderful. “When he arrived at the house, he was a nervous wreck, the drive had taken so long. But we calmed him down with some good French wine and a good meal. By then, it was three o’clock in the afternoon. I signed the papers, and he went back to America!”
Even so, Anthony’s only Motown release was a single, “I Don’t Know What To Do,” on the V.I.P. label in August 1965. “I think it went into the American charts…but I was making so many hits, selling so many millions of records [in France] that – please forgive my pretension – it got lost in all the songs I was releasing at the time. I know I got royalties out of it, and so did Silvano Santorio, who wrote the music, so we were two French guys on a Tamla Motown record in America!”
There were similar thrills for one of Anthony’s contemporaries, Claude François. He, too, was a Motown fan, having cut a slew of French-language covers in 1966-67, including “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “My Girl,” “Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” Moreover, after the Supremes’ 1968 performance in Cannes at the inaugural gala of international music industry trade fair MIDEM, they guested on François’ TV special and sang “Reach Out I’ll Be There” with him.
Gilles Pétard with Stevie Wonder
Three years later, François visited Motown in Detroit to record with its musicians and producer Hank Cosby, including versions of “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)” and “Bernadette.” The results were part of the singer’s 1971 album, C’est La Même Chanson (“It’s The Same Old Song”). When Lamont Dozier appeared with François on French television in 1977, the pair sang several Four Tops hits. “I’m a fool for all those songs that swing so much,” François told renowned French radio programmer/broadcaster Yves Bigot in 1974. “That music with the greatest rhythm and added punch, courtesy of the horn section – mostly black music. I listen exclusively to those [records] for hours on end, every day. I’m truly obsessed.” Bigot, a self-described “journalist for all seasons,” vividly recalled the occasion for West Grand Blog, not least because he was dining with François at the impossibly hip Parisian nightclub, Castel’s.
Bigot also explained that while covers accounted for much of Hitsville’s initial popularity in France, it was during the ’70s that its own stars began to sell significantly. That was confirmed by Gilles Pétard, a Motown aficionado who helped to set up the company’s first French office. “Motown had gotten very little airplay in France,” he said in a 2015 interview. “Only a couple of releases – like ‘Fingertips’ by Little Stevie Wonder or ‘Baby Love’ by the Supremes – were exceptions.” The first major hits were the Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” and Wonder’s “Superstition,” added Pétard.
Bigot agreed that Wonder became hugely popular in France in the 1970s. “Motown got many hits from him, including his legendary albums, as well as hits by others, such as ‘Love Hangover,’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way,’ ‘I’m Coming Out’ and ‘All Night Long (All Night),’ ” he said.
SOUL & GLAMOUR, EN FRANÇAIS
Motown’s legacy received fresh attention during its 50th anniversary year with the 2009 publication (in French) of Motown Soul & Glamour, an inviting coffee-table book authored by Pétard with Florent Mazzoleni. Pétard’s own collection of Motown memorabilia was prominently featured, including several photos of the afore-mentioned Velvelettes, whose 1964 French-language recordings – unissued at the time – finally materialised on The Motown Anthology in 2004.
This definitive set was compiled and produced by the group’s Cal “Carolyn” Street and their de facto historian, John Lester. The French tracks are versions of two 1963 hits, the Marvelettes’ “As Long As I Know He’s Mine” and Mary Wells’ “You Lost The Sweetest Boy,” and two originals, “Je Veux Crier” (“My Foolish Heart (Keeps Hanging On To A Memory)” and “Le Hokey Pokey” (“(The) Monkey”).
Tamla Motown TMEF 502: really sayin’ somethin’
The producer of these Velvelettes sides was Pierre Berjot, recruited by Berry Gordy as part of his effort to internationalise Motown’s output. “Cal had studied French in school,” Lester told me, “so it was a very basic level. However, one day she was in the same room as Mr. Gordy when the mailman arrived with a parcel. He spoke a little French and Cal interjected with a response. Mr. Gordy was impressed, and that exchange prompted him to use the Velvelettes rather than any other female group.”
Berjot was also tasked with recording Stevie Wonder on “Castles In The Sand” in French. “I gave him lessons for a fortnight,” the producer recalled, years later. “Stevie was very anxious,” added John Lester, noting that the Velvelettes’ Norma Barbee “took it upon herself to try and calm Stevie for his session.”
Unknown is the exact reason why the girl group’s work with Berjot wasn’t made available in France, but the Velvelettes did figure in the first three Tamla Motown releases there in April 1965. Their two U.S. hit singles, “Needle In A Haystack” and “He Was Really Sayin’ Somethin’,” were packaged with the flipsides into the four-track, extended-play format which was the French industry’s dominant sound-carrier at the time. (That EP is now among the most sought-after Motown collectibles from Europe, as Paul J. Hunter noted in an authoritative Record Collector article in 2014.)
Some ten years ago, John Lester took the Velvelettes to France. “Cal got in touch with Pierre beforehand, so that he could show them around Paris,” he said. “It was a fitting end to one of their more recent U.K. tours.”
A significant number of Motown acts have visited and performed in France over the decades, and the Universal Music Group – which took over Motown Records in 1998 – even launched a French subsidiary of the label in the 21st century, to acquire and develop local artists (among them, Vitaa and Ben l’Oncle Soul). Then again, perhaps it’s worth noting that UMG’s ultimate owner is the “integrated content, media and communications group” known as Vivendi. And yes, that’s a French company.
All things considered, perhaps Diana Ross should add Paris to her 2020 overseas concert schedule. “Stop! Tu n'as plus le droit/De nous parler d'amour”…
Music notes: some of the above-cited Motown covers in French are available on digital streaming services, including Claude François’ “I Was Made To Love Her,” “My Guy” (as “Ma Fille,” of course) and “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” but apparently not his 1971 album with several tracks cut at Hitsville. Another digital offering is Nancy Holloway’s take on Mary Wells’ “Oh Little Boy (What Did You Do To Me),” although her version of “My Guy” (“Bye Bye”) is absent. However, you can find that on YouTube. Richard Anthony’s “I Don’t Know What To Do” is digitally available on The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 5: 1965. The Velvelettes’ French recordings are on streaming platforms as part of the Motown Around The World package, originally released on CD. This also has many other foreign-language recordings by the company’s top acts, although only the Velvelettes in French. Ace Records offers lots of groovy Gallic girl-pop on various-artist compilations, while Annie Philippe’s cover of “Baby Love” appears on her Sensationnel! set released by that label.
Book notes: In Susan Whitall’s Women of Motown (2nd edition, Devault-Graves, 2017), Bertha Barbee of the Velvelettes tells the author that the first name of the group was Les Jolies Femmes. Meanwhile, Andrew Flory’s I Hear A Symphony (University of Michigan Press, 2017) includes a list of non-English Motown covers from 1963-68. And your favourite French bookshop probably carries Gilles Pêtard and Florent Mazzoleni’s Motown Soul & Glamour (Le Serpent à Plumes, 2009). Retailers online certainly do.