The Class of ’71

STUDYING THE ‘SOUL MUSIC ENVIRONMENT’

​If 1963 was Motown’s most momentous year — as testified here last month — then 1971 can be considered to carry comparable weight.

      Two events spring immediately to mind: the release of What’s Going On and Stevie Wonder’s coming-of-age. Coincidentally, both occurred in the same month of May.

      Marvin Gaye’s masterwork is now widely accepted as the most influential album ever released by the company, and thus assured of its place – with his – in 20th century cultural history.

‘What’s Going On’ arranger David Van DePitte (left) at work, with Funk Brother Bob Babbitt

      Wonder’s introduction over the 1971 Memorial Day weekend to technologists Malcolm Cecil and Bob Margouleff empowered him to explore the music of his mind more imaginatively than ever, and to begin building one of the era’s most admired bodies of work. His decision that same summer to re-sign with Motown ensured the continuation of its creative and commercial clout through the 1970s.

      The Gaye milestone needs no further elaboration here, although perhaps more credit is due to David Van DePitte – whose arrangements (and more) resulted in What’s Going On sounding as timeless as it’s proved to be – than has generally been dispensed. Of Wonder’s milestone, more in a moment.     

      Gaye’s album delivered something else which made 1971 significant for Motown: for the first time, the names of the in-house session musicians were included in the cover artwork. The so-called Funk Brothers finally came out of the shadows, as they also did on Exposed, Valerie Simpson’s debut album, which was shipped on the same date, May 21.

      At least two other events of ’71 can be added to today’s testimony: the release that October of Michael Jackson’s first solo outing, “Got To Be There,” anticipating one of the most extraordinary careers in music, and the debut that June (with Tom Clay’s “What The World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin And John”) of the MoWest label, anticipating its parent company’s relocation to California and all the consequences.

ELEVATED BY HITSVILLE U.S.A.

      That said, it’s also important to put Motown’s year into a wider context. The record industry was evolving and expanding in the new decade, and some of that irreversible change was due to what Berry Gordy and his Hitsville team had achieved during the 1960s: elevating black singers, songwriters and musicians into some of the most accepted, most popular and most influential stars in the world.

      Nothing validated that view more than A Study of the Soul Music Environment, a 1972 report prepared for the Columbia Records Group (CRG) by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration. Obviously, Columbia was one of the U.S. record industry’s leading players, but it was almost entirely absent at that time from what the report called “the Soul segment” of the music market.

      “CRG’s past efforts to cultivate this market have lacked virtually all of the elements critical for success,” its authors wrote, while noting that interviews done for the report “with people in the Soul music business indicate that CRG is perceived as an ultra-rich, ultra-white giant which has for the most part chosen to snub Blacks in the business. Blacks in the trade feel that CRG has heaped upon them the ultimate insult: that of ignoring their existence.”

      The report also pointed out Columbia’s competitive shortcomings, referring to how “aggressive, innovative, specialized national companies, highly focused on Soul, have played a key role in broadening the market for Soul music both inside and outside the Black community.” Naturally, Motown was recognised as one of these, with an estimated 20 percent share of the so-called soul market, together with Atlantic Records (also 20 percent) and Stax (10 percent).

      “They have an entrenched position and control half of the total market,” noted the Harvard study. “They have most of the established Soul artists, their management and professional staff have extensive experience in this market, and a deep understanding of its subtleties. They operate through a highly sophisticated personal and informational network which they have built up over a period of many years. Finally, they have a profound understanding of the art form with which they work, and of its commercial possibilities.”

      CRG commissioned the report in 1971, and it was published on May 11, 1972. That particular week, the Billboard Hot 100 included six Motown singles – three in the Top 20 – while Atlantic had the country’s Number One LP, by Roberta Flack. Stevie Wonder’s Music Of My Mind, meanwhile, was marching up the album charts.

OUTBIDDING MOTOWN FOR STEVIE

      In truth, Columbia had already been trying to strengthen its presence in the R&B business. In January of ’71, it announced a new partnership with Philadelphia’s Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff – and later in the year, the company was a serious contender for signing Wonder as his Motown contract expired on May 13. Any such offer would have “dwarfed ours,” Berry Gordy once told me, but whether CRG would have been truly able to maximise the opportunity, beyond splashing the cash, is a matter now lost to time and speculation. Columbia’s then-president was Clive Davis – no novice in the record industry – but the Harvard presentation indicated the firm’s weaknesses.

      CRG “knows little about Black consumers, Soul artists and Black professionals in the music and related businesses, such as radio,” declared the report, adding that “the almost total absence of Blacks at the professional and managerial levels in its organization until recently has denied it of what could have been a valuable resource for relating to that market.”

Stevie’s trade-press declaration in the summer of ‘71

      Clive Davis clearly understood the rock business, but it’s debatable how Wonder’s defection to Columbia would have been received in, for example, black radio circles – or in the wider socio-political environment during economically-difficult times for black Americans, under president Richard Nixon.

      Wonder had enjoyed an almost-uninterrupted run of Top 10 albums on the R&B countdowns during the second half of the 1960s, but none of those registered inside the Top 20 of the pop charts. It wasn’t until the musician’s nationwide tour with the Rolling Stones in 1972 that he began to reach white album buyers (and critics) in any meaningful way.

      Obviously, the Harvard report is a digression from the main thrust of today’s WGB. But it’s worth noting that Columbia Records Group took the researchers’ conclusions seriously, and charged full-scale into the black music business from that point on. In 1975, the firm’s Epic label signed the Jacksons away from Motown – a year before their contract ended. Two years later, the Miracles joined Columbia, as did Marvin Gaye in 1982.

      When I asked former Motown Records president Barney Ales about those times, his response was simple. “They got in the business,” he recalled, “because we were monopolising the market.” He also said that most of the so-called majors, including Columbia, “picked up our promotion people – they figured they were responsible for everything,” adding, “People who worked at Columbia’s R&B division came from Detroit, among them LeBaron Taylor and Bill Craig.” Furthermore, Ales noted that Motown had its own separate, long-term relationship with Columbia’s pressing plants as a third-party client.

      In Motown history, of course, 1971 stands in the shadow of the following year. But the evidence above suggests that it can hold its own in the arc of Hitsville U.S.A., and when anniversaries are celebrated, the opening atmospherics of “What’s Going On,” Eli Fontaine’s heavenly sax intro and Marvin Gaye’s divine tones will define the era as much as anything else.

Study notes: the Harvard report cited above has long been available to enterprising researchers, but it became digitally available in 2017 thanks to Ascent Publishing and Logan Westbrooks. (Check Amazon for the physical and Kindle editions.) Westbrooks was one of the first Columbia executives hired for its newly-created black music division, and served as liaison between the label and Harvard U while the report was being compiled. Other key individuals involved with the study were Larry Isaacson and Marnie Tattersall. Later, Westbrooks ran MCA’s Source Records, best known for Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers’ “Bustin’ Loose” smash.

West Grand Blog is taking a short break. See you on the other side, with luck.