Keeping Faith with Tamla
TALES FROM YESTERDAY AS THE LABEL RETURNS TO ACTIVE DUTY
He might have called it Diana Records.
OK, so Tammy was Berry Gordy’s first choice for the name of his label start-up, inspired by Debbie Reynolds’ smash hit of 1957. But that summer, the Reynolds record was jousting with Paul Anka’s “Diana” at the top of the U.S. charts. In fact, “Diana” dethroned “Tammy” on Billboard’s “Best Sellers in Stores” in August, and spent almost as long in the Top 10.
That Gordy discovered his preference was already taken by a record company in adjacent Ohio is familiar history. “By that time,” he wrote in To Be Loved, “I had gotten so used to the name I wanted to at least keep the sound of it.” He changed the last two letters, and Tamla Records came to be.
Back to work, in 2023
“To some,” declared Gordy’s ex-wife, Raynoma “Miss Ray” Singleton, in her autobiography, “it may have seemed inappropriate to name a sound that was rooted in black soul in honour of a pop song and a white teenage girl.” (Reynolds was actually 25 when “Tammy” was a hit.) “To others, though, it made sense – we all really liked Debbie and that song.”
As part of Gordy’s empire, the Tamla label lasted for 27 years, unalterably associated with Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye – and as the imprint of Motown’s first Number One pop hit, “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes.
In 1986, Motown Records retired Tamla as an active imprint in favour of the parent firm’s primary brand. Robinson’s “Love Will Set You Free” seems to have been its last single release, while Wonder’s “Part-Time Lover” was its last pop Number One; their subsequent material appeared on Motown. The Gordy label was given similar treatment, with the output of its most famous act, the Temptations, moved over to the mothership.
But now, Tamla Records is back.
Earlier this week, Universal Music’s Capitol division announced the relaunch of the historic label “as a mainstream imprint focusing on positive hip-hop and R&B music.” No new Tamla artists have yet been identified, but the unit is sailing under the command of Capitol’s so-called Christian Music Group, with E.J. Gaines appointed to run it, from Nashville. “I’m excited to continue [Tamla’s] rich legacy with groundbreaking, mainstream music that is faith-formed and culture-forward,” he said in the press release.
The first Tamla 45, in 1959
Capitol’s publicity referred to the original Tamla label as having been a “bridge from faith music to the mainstream since its inception,” adding that its first 45 in 1959 was by “gospel-singer-turned-R&B-artist Marv Johnson.” That seems rather a stretch: Johnson absorbed gospel music in Detroit’s Baptist churches as a youngster, but loved the blues of Sonny Boy Williamson, and was seriously influenced by the likes of Clyde McPhatter and Jackie Wilson. In interviews, Gaines has made the point that gospel music is part of black music. “It’s not separate faith music,” he told Billboard’s Gail Mitchell, “it’s part of what we do culturally. And Tamla was just sitting there, acknowledged for its value but not really being used to continue the legacy.”
That formidable legacy has been under Universal Music Group’s control for a quarter-century, and one assumes that, if only out of courtesy, the company advised Berry Gordy of its Tamla intentions – and perhaps Smokey Robinson, too, given that his last album was issued through UMG’s Decca imprint.
Marv Johnson’s “Come To Me,” produced and co-written by Gordy, went to market as Tamla 101 on January 21, 1959, followed shortly afterwards by Eddie Holland’s “Merry-Go-Round” as Tamla 102. Then came Barrett Strong’s “Let’s Rock” as Tamla 54021 in April, and his breakthrough “Money (That’s What I Want)” as Tamla 54027 in August. “I purposely used a large number so people would not know how young my label was,” Gordy admitted in To Be Loved.
LESS THAN PRACTICAL
Soon after “Money (That’s What I Want),” Gordy chose the Miracles’ recording of “Bad Girl” to expand his horizons. “The record came out so great I decided to use it to launch another label. The Tamla name was commercial enough – but had been more of a gimmick. Now I wanted something that meant more to me, something that would capture the feeling of my roots – my hometown.” In September 1959, “Bad Girl” was released as Motown G1.
“Now I had two labels,” Gordy recalled. “My original plan was to put out all the solo artists on the Tamla label and the groups on the new Motown label. Each label would have its own image and identity – solo artists versus groups. But this plan, like some others, turned out not to be practical.”
The first Tamla topper on the Hot 100, in 1961
Indeed, the Miracles were soon reassigned to Tamla, earning national recognition for the name and Gordy’s entire enterprise as “Shop Around” surged up the pop and R&B best-seller lists in early 1961. By the end of that year, the Marvelettes delivered “Please Mr. Postman” to the top.
The subsequent uptick in the number of labels started within Motown – Gordy in March 1962, for instance, Soul in March 1964 – was important for other reasons. In some cities, they were divided among independent distributors, such as in Chicago, where All State handled all the imprints except Tamla, which was in the hands of George and Ernie Leaner’s United. This encouraged competition among distribution firms to break the hits, to Motown’s benefit.
Yet another aspect was critical. “When I was a distributor,” the late Barney Ales, Motown’s sales supremo who joined the firm in 1961, once told me, “I might have four records in the Top 10 at a radio station, but they’d be on Scepter, Tamla, Fury, VeeJay, stuff like that. But if I had four records all on Tamla, somebody would notice and say, ‘Look, there’s payola going on here.’ So I felt it was better to split the labels up.” Berry Gordy was fine with that evolution, according to Ales. “He didn’t care. As long as it got out and it sold, that was his thing.”
Then there was the design of the various Motown labels. This has received relatively little attention over the years, with more focus on the imagery of album sleeves and related artwork. Tamla 101 displayed nothing more than the company’s name in capital letters at the top, with its Detroit address (in early 1959, this was 1719 Gladstone Street) in small type below that, all on a yellow background. By midyear, the label had evolved to horizontal stripes on the top half, with the name Tamla sitting within those stripes, vertically. The West Grand address was added.
A place in Tamla history, in 1966
The third Tamla design for singles showed up in the summer of ’61, retaining the yellow underlay and introducing two circles at the top, one in red, the other with the label name over a global map of the Americas. Slight variations appeared on Tamla albums. It’s assumed that all this was the work of Motown art director Bernie Yeszin, thought to have joined the firm circa 1961.
The fourth (and perhaps most widely-seen) Tamla logo was introduced in October 1966 on Stevie Wonder’s “A Place In The Sun.” Across the top was the so-called “brown bar,” with the all-capitals label name at its centre in yellow, underneath a squashed “globe.” This lasted for the next 20 years, with slight variations used on promotional copies, and it is this design – with part of the second “A” positioned slightly atop the “L” – which has been chosen for the Tamla relaunch, as illustrated above.
Such business matters aside, WGB readers will be intimately familiar with Tamla’s remarkable, prolific output of singles and albums over the years, and the stars created as a result. Today, E.J. Gaines will be gratified if just a small percentage of his signings fly to such heights, commercially and critically. “But they don’t want to be referred to as gospel or inspirational,” he emphasised to Billboard. “They’re just artists making music: young, hungry, aggressive and very open-minded as to what music can be. And they want desperately to have a voice to engage with their audiences. And Tamla will be the place where their creativity will be fuelled to soar.”
Marv, Smokey, Stevie, Marvin and many other Hitsvillians must have spoken and felt those same words and ambitions more than 60 years ago, ever since Tamla 101.
Now, the statistics. Here follows a tabulation of Tamla’s Number Ones on the Billboard Hot 100 from 1961-1985, before Berry Gordy sold the record company. The label scored 15 such chart-toppers during that period, compared to 33 for Motown and five for Gordy. The 15 are ranked below by weeks at Number One, with ties broken by a record’s total of weeks in the Top 10 – or, if necessary, by the total of weeks on the Hot 100. These numbers are shown for each title.
TAMLA’S CHART-TOPPERS:
1. MARVIN GAYE, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Tamla 54176) #1 for 7 weeks, Top 10 for 11 weeks
2. STEVIE WONDER, “Sir Duke” (Tamla 54281) #1 for 3 weeks, Top 10 for 11 weeks
3. LITTLE STEVIE WONDER, “Fingertips – Pt. 2” (Tamla 54080) #1 for 3 weeks, Top 10 for 7 weeks
4. MARVIN GAYE, “Let’s Get It On” (Tamla 54234) #1 for 2 weeks, Top 10 for 13 weeks
5. EDDIE KENDRICKS, “Keep On Truckin’ (Part 1)” (Tamla 54238) #1 for 2 weeks, Top 10 for 10 weeks (Hot 100, 19 weeks)
6. SMOKEY ROBINSON & THE MIRACLES, “The Tears Of A Clown” (Tamla 54199) #1 for 2 weeks, Top 10 for 10 weeks (Hot 100, 16 weeks)
7. MARVIN GAYE, “Got To Give It Up (Pt. 1)” (Tamla 54280) #1 for 2 weeks, Top 10 for 9 weeks
8. THELMA HOUSTON, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” (Tamla 54278) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 8 weeks (Hot 100, 24 weeks)
9. STEVIE WONDER, “Part-Time Lover” (Tamla 1808) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 8 weeks (Hot 100, 21 weeks)
10. STEVIE WONDER, “I Wish” (Tamla 54274) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 8 weeks (Hot 100, 17 weeks)
11. THE MARVELETTES, “Please Mr. Postman” (Tamla 54046) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 7 weeks (Hot 100, 23 weeks)
12. STEVIE WONDER, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’ ” (Tamla 54252) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 7 weeks (Hot 100, 19 weeks)
13. STEVIE WONDER, “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” (Tamla 54232) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 7 weeks (Hot 100, 17 weeks)
14. THE MIRACLES, “Love Machine (Part 1)” (Tamla 54262) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 6 weeks (Hot 100, 28 weeks)
15. STEVIE WONDER, “Superstition” (Tamla 54226) #1 for 1 week, Top 10 for 6 weeks (Hot 100, 16 weeks)
Prior notes: of Tamla titles which topped the main Billboard album charts, there have been three – all by Stevie Wonder, as outlined in this earlier WGB edition about the Hitsville acts which sold the most long-players.
Global notes: in some respects, the above just scratches the surface of the Tamla tale. There is, for example, the brand’s use outside North America, where it was married to Motown for the 1960s and the first half of the ’70s. In Britain and elsewhere, that ran through to October 1976, when the “blue” Motown label took its place. Even so, Tamla Motown did pop up again occasionally, mostly for reissues.