Number One Across the Pond

A TALE OF BRITISH MOTOWN CHARTBUSTING

The three little girls grow up before our eyes, joyously singing and dancing as the years advance, until suddenly they are…Diana, Cindy and Mary, in shimmering adulthood, reflecting on their past.

Yes, it’s the TV commercial created to sell the Supremes’ 20 Golden Greats compilation to British record buyers in 1977 – as it did, with great success (you can view the ad here). That was one of eight Motown albums which topped the U.K. charts from the 1960s to the ’80s, just one short of the nine which reigned in America during that same period.

Four of the eight were compilations, assembled specifically for the British market, including 20 Golden Greats. A further two were variations on original U.S. releases: one with more tracks (and a different cover), the other with fewer. And one enjoyed a level of success which almost matched its American popularity, spinning off five hit singles, including a track which lived long into a new century.

It must also be noted that, disappointingly, neither Stevie Wonder nor Marvin Gaye ever topped the U.K. album charts. The former came close – he had three runners-up – while Gaye reached the Top 3, albeit ten years after his death. And despite the fact that Britain has historically been Motown’s largest and most loyal market outside the United States, there were some acts who never placed an LP on the best-sellers there, such as Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, the Marvelettes, and Jr. Walker & the All Stars.

With “My Guy,” Mary Wells was the first of Berry Gordy’s stars to score a single on the U.K. charts (if you don’t count Marv Johnson’s “You Got What It Takes” in 1960), but the first charted LP was Meet The Supremes, which peaked at No. 13 just before Christmas 1964. It took another three years for a Motown album to go all the way to the summit. So here are the specifics, using data from the country’s Official Charts Company.

THE FOUR TOPS: Greatest Hits (Tamla Motown 11061)

That the Tops should be the first Motown act with a Number One LP in the U.K. is no surprise, given their impact from late 1966 onwards, both in terms of hits – “Reach Out I’ll Be There” was the first of three consecutive Top 10 singles – and concert appearances. Their debut London show was a milestone, followed in early 1967 by a hugely popular nationwide tour, which began with a pair of sold-out shows at the Royal Albert Hall. And by the time Greatest Hits went to market in January 1968, the quartet had already accrued three Top 10 albums (On Top, Live, Reach Out) and “Walk Away Renee” was riding high in the singles charts.

“What I remember is that America had put the Greatest Hits album out in a rather bland-looking grey sleeve,” said John Marshall, who had just been appointed as Tamla Motown label manager at EMI Records in London. True enough: the U.S. front cover featured no photo of the group, only the song titles. “I wanted to make it more memorable in the racks and, of course, make it better value by including 16 tracks rather than 12. However, I just couldn’t get a decent shot of the Tops that hadn’t been used before. Motown was great at creating music, but their art and publicity departments were pretty average, in my opinion.”

The only fresh image available to Marshall showed the Tops performing by the Detroit River, outside the Roostertail club. “I tried to hide the photo by large title lettering. I hated the sleeve, but had to go with it at the time. Fortunately, we got it released during a good sales period for the U.K., and it sold.” Indeed it did, reaching Number One on February 10, 1968, with a further 14 weeks in the Top 5. (The tracks added by Marshall were “Where Do You Go,” “You Keep Running Away,” “Darling, I Hum Our Song” and “I’ll Turn To Stone.”)

DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES: Greatest Hits (Tamla Motown 11063)

The Four Tops were succeeded at Number One by this Supremes compilation, featuring the same front-cover portrait as the U.S. edition – released the previous August – but trimmed down from a two-LP package to one, and from 20 tracks to 16. Those omitted were one minor American hit, “Run, Run, Run” (never issued as a U.K. single) and four flipsides: “Standing At The Crossroads Of Love,” “Ask Any Girl,” “Everything Is Good About You” and “There’s No Stopping Us Now.” Added was “Reflections,” which was not on the original U.S. set, but had become a Top 5 hit in Britain by the time Greatest Hits was released there in January 1968.

“We decided that it made more business sense to release this as a single, 16-track album,” John Marshall told me. “It was simply better value for the buyers than a much more expensive double of only 20 tracks. Also, EMI was quite averse to the trend of double-album sleeves on the basis of reduced profit margin. Any album that a label manager put up for release was costed against potential sales.”

Greatest Hits turned out to be profitable, since the album held onto Number One for three weeks from February 17, 1968 during a four-month Top 10 run. Subsequently, it logged another six weeks in the Top 10, and accumulated a total of 69 weeks on the charts. During its last week at Number One, there were three other Tamla Motown titles in the Top 10: the Four Tops’ Greatest Hits and Reach Out, and British Motown Chartbusters.

DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES, THE TEMPTATIONS: Diana Ross & The Supremes Join The Temptations (Tamla Motown 11096)

What was perhaps most noteworthy about this January ‘69 release in the U.K. was how the album actually outperformed the U.S. edition in chart terms, spending four weeks at Number One from February 15 that year, compared to the No. 2 peak achieved back home. This, despite the fact that the two supergroups’ television special, TCB (Takin’ Care Of Business), was not picked up in Britain – although, in fairness, there were few outlets for broadcast at the time. The show, Motown’s first network TV production, was a U.S. ratings success when screened by NBC on December 9, 1968, which obviously pumped sales of the soundtrack album as well as Diana Ross & The Supremes Join The Temptations. To help drive sales of the latter in the United Kingdom, EMI Records relied on a Top 3 hit single, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.”

VARIOUS: Motown Chartbusters Vol. 3 (Tamla Motown 11121)

Beginning in 1963, Motown Records successfully established its 16 Original Big Hits album series in the United States. A couple were issued in Britain during the first half of 1967, but sold no more than 10,000 copies each. When he became EMI’s Tamla Motown label manager, John Marshall set to work. “One of the first things I wanted to do,” he said, “was create a 16-track compilation with chart entries more relevant to the U.K., since the U.S. series wasn’t selling very well.” Then, a title was needed. “For better or worse, British Motown Chartbusters seemed to cover all the bases. There could be no confusion about what you were getting.”

The first volume came out in October 1967, with five Top 10 hits and six Top 20 entries among its 16 selections. The no-confusion title paid off: the album spent 23 weeks in the Top 10 and was only kept from the peak by the all-conquering The Sound Of Music film soundtrack. British Motown Chartbusters Vol. 2 didn’t perform as well, but the third – released in November ’69 and jammed with ten Top 10 singles, four Top 20 titles and two Top 40 entries – hit the jackpot. On February 14, 1970, it became Tamla Motown’s fourth Number One album, holding that slot for three weeks and logging almost seven months in the Top 10. Total sales? More than 300,000 copies.

Motown Chartbusters Vol. 3 dropped the “British” but retained the creative concept: in fact, several tracks had even charted higher in the U.K. than in the U.S., including the Isley Brothers’ “This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You)” and the Temptations’ “Get Ready.” John Marshall recalled, “My thinking was that the use of ‘British’ was perhaps a bit outdated and a mouthful, and I wanted the word ‘Motown’ to lead. It also hung nicely on the sleeve front.”

That front featured a stronger design than its predecessors, too. “It was the first time I was really happy with the sleeve,” said Marshall, who admitted that the idea was “pinched” from one of EMI’s classical album covers, “which used to get money spent on them.” What also helped was the inclusion of vintage tracks which had reached the U.K. Top 10 as reissues in 1969, such as “Dancing In The Street” and “The Tracks Of My Tears.”

VARIOUS: Motown Chartbusters Vols. 4 & 5 (Tamla Motown 11162/11181)

Obviously, these follow-up albums depended on even more hit singles – and in that respect, there was plenty of fuel in the Tamla Motown tank. As noted above, the series’ debut featured five Top 10 tracks; Motown Chartbusters Vol. 4 contained nine when released in October 1970. These included two each from the Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder, as well as Jimmy Ruffin’s “Farewell Is A Lonely Sound” (a non-starter in the U.S.) and the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself” (a U.K. success on reissue in 1970). Another was Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell’s “The Onion Song,” which proved more successful in Britain than in America. Motown Chartbusters Vol. 4 topped the charts for one week on October 31, 1970.

The first four Chartbusters carried liner notes by popular disc jockeys of the day, beginning with pirate radio’s Mike Raven, followed by BBC Radio 1’s Tony Blackburn (on Vols. 2 and 4) and Alan Freeman (Vol. 3). None of the prose was prize-winning, but for his part, Raven did single out Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me” as alone “worth the price of the album.”

Motown Chartbusters Vol. 5 was the first in the series to be issued in spring rather than autumn – and the first to debut at Number One, where it stayed for three weeks from April 17, 1971. The album’s success was assured: no fewer than 12 tracks were Top 10 hits, including Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ “The Tears Of A Clown” (a chart-topper on both sides of the Atlantic) and two apiece from Jimmy Ruffin, the Jackson 5 and the Four Tops. What’s more, 10 of the 16 broke the four-minute barrier. “We did have trouble cutting 16 tracks and making the albums sound good,” admitted John Marshall. “When we got samples, they used to jump off the turntable, there was so much top on them.”

DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES: 20 Golden Greats (Motown EMTV5)

And so to the three girls, growing up. This was Motown Records’ longest-running Number One album in Britain, propelled there by EMI’s aggressive marketing campaign with the Three Little Girls TV commercial. Among the 20 Golden Greats were seven Top 10 titles, including one chart-topper (“Baby Love”) and a further five Top 20 entries. Admittedly, some tracks had barely scratched the Top 40 on original release – among them, “Back In My Arms Again” and “I Hear A Symphony” – but when they were corralled together with the major hits, the result was irresistible. The album debuted at Number One on September 19, 1977, and stayed there for seven weeks.

20 Golden Greats was one of a series of albums with that branding, which in 1976 was originated and developed by a specific unit within EMI Records (hence, the EMTV prefix with each release’s catalogue number). This was largely in response to the success of firms like K-tel and Ronco in selling various-artists compilations via television advertising. EMI’s first three 20 Golden Greats were by the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell and the Shadows. “Diana Ross & the Supremes was the first EMTV [release] to come out of our licensed repertoire division,” recalled Brian Berg, head of TV merchandising at the time,“so we liaised closely with Motown. The TV commercial and sleeve design were created by our new ad agency, Collett Dickenson Pearce, which was probably the top creative house around.

“As with the previous releases, our media strategy was to buy prime-time spots nationally, featuring longer than average commercials – 45-60 seconds – with a minimum initial expenditure of £250,000.” (That’s the equivalent of £1.4 million today, or $1.75 million.) The outcome was the Supremes’ seven-week chart supremacy, and album sales of more than one million. “And the Three Little Girls TV commercial won several top industry awards,” Berg concluded, with satisfaction.

LIONEL RICHIE: Can’t Slow Down (Motown 8041)

Motown’s artists always seemed to appreciate their international popularity, perhaps none more in the 1970s than the Commodores. As John Marshall pointed out, their first hit, “Machine Gun,” even charted higher in the United Kingdom than in the United States. The group criss-crossed Europe in ’78 and ’79, shrewdly making themselves available to a multiplicity of media as well as performing in capital cities everywhere. For Lionel Richie, the result in Britain was a warm welcome when he embarked on his solo career, with a Top 10 slot for his debut album in March 1983.

***Three years (almost) on the charts***

Eight months later, the payoff was even greater. The U.K. release of Can’t Slow Down brought the singer/songwriter a Top 10 chart run of almost 49 consecutive weeks (for seven days, it slipped to No. 11) from October ’83 to the following September, including three weeks at Number One. In total, the album’s chart run was only a fortnight short of three years.

As in America, five consecutive hit singles helped Can’t Slow Down to rack up those 154 weeks: one chart-topper, two in the Top 10, and two in the Top 20. In 1985, the album was certified triple platinum, denoting U.K. sales of 900,000 copies – a total it has long since exceeded – while the singles “All Night Long (All Night)” and “Hello” both achieved gold status, with sales of 400,000 each. More recently, “All Night Long (All Night)” was declared by U.K. performing rights body PPL to be the single most-played Motown track of the 21st century.

And so, as this three-decade survey of Motown’s Number One albums in the U.K. wraps up, you might reasonably ask, what happened to Stevie, Marvin and solo Diana? Luck, it seems, was not on their side. Post-Supremes, Ross reached the Top 10 seven times during the ’70s and ’80s, and two of those albums almost made Number One: Greatest Hits 2 in 1976 (denied by the Beach Boys’ 20 Golden Greats) and her solo 20 Golden Greats in 1979 (second-placed to an Abba hits collection). Ironically, she finally got to the top long after leaving Motown, with a 1993 compilation entitled One Woman – The Ultimate Collection.

Wonder’s first U.K. Top 10 album was 1973’s Innervisions, and he gathered six more consecutively after that. The three which had to settle for runner-up status were Songs In The Key of Life in 1976, Hotter Than July in 1980 and The Woman In Red soundtrack in 1984. The first was locked out by two TV-marketed titles, K-tel’s Soul Motion and 22 Golden Guitar Greats by local hero Bert Weedon, while Hotter Than July was denied the peak by Barbra Streisand’s Guilty (hope she felt that way for doing so). The Woman In Red was outpaced by the third volume of Now That’s What I Call Music, followed by David Bowie’s Tonight.

Then there was Marvin. Many Britons held him in their hearts, but never enough to deliver a Top 10 album for him alone while at Motown – not even Live At The London Palladium! Yet there was a greater disappointment: the complete failure of What’s Going On to chart in the U.K. in his lifetime. “It was,” admitted John Marshall, “a bitter disappointment. Britain just didn’t seem to be ready for a political concept album from Marvin or Motown – perhaps because the Vietnam War wasn’t ‘ours.’ It was always near the top of the monthly catalogue sales, but never sold quickly enough to dent the charts.”

Perhaps if Collett Dickenson Pearce had been commissioned to make a TV commercial for What’s Going On…

Music notes: all the tracks on Motown Chartbusters are available on streaming services, of course, while two of the original albums (Vols. 6 and 7) appear to have been uploaded from Spectrum Music, which is the budget brand of Motown Records’ owner, Universal Music. Various fans have created playlists which exactly mirror the series, too. Meanwhile, this week’s own West Grand Blog playlist comprises a selection of Motown tracks which were especially (or in some cases, only) popular across the pond.