A Televisual Triumph
AND AN ALBUM THAT NEVER CAME TO BE
Did they all get on a coach from West Grand to the airport?
It was 60 years ago – on March 14, 1965, to be precise – when more than 20 Motown travellers took Northwest Airlines’ flight NW212 from Detroit to New York, arriving around 5pm that Sunday. Three hours later, they were on board British Overseas Airways Corp. (BOAC) flight BA500, bound for London, and set to arrive early the following morning.
The contingent was booked in economy, although musician Jack Ashford later recalled that Berry Gordy was in first-class, and that the flight’s departure was held up when the boss’ camera had to be retrieved from the aircraft hold before take-off.
On set in Wembley, Dusty briefs Martha
Among those on the Boeing 707 jetliner were the Supremes, the Miracles, Martha & the Vandellas and Earl Van Dyke’s band, as well as Gordy’s parents, his three oldest children and his sister, Esther Edwards. Also, Van Gordon Sauter from the Detroit Free Press, who told me recently that the huge group “was a bit of a shocker to the airline crew – and the Motown group was somewhat intimidated by the Brits.”
This historic excursion – Motown’s first (and only) U.K. package tour – has been well-documented over the years, but it may be worth a modest revisit here with a few extra facts to hand. Specifically, as they relate to The Sound of Motown TV special which was filmed upon their arrival in England, before everyone hit the road for the 20-city concert itinerary.
And the single most interesting fact not previously reported? That Motown wanted to put out an album of that television show.
The transatlantic adventure began on Monday, March 8, when the Temptations jetted directly from Detroit to London for radio and TV promotion. (They were not part of the forthcoming tour.) The first booking was on Granada TV’s Scene at 6:30; later in the week, they sang “It’s Growing” on Britain’s hippest television show of the time, Ready Steady Go! The quintet also appeared on another popular music TV programme, Thank Your Lucky Stars.
“It’s Growing” was one of the half-dozen singles which, on March 19, introduced Tamla Motown as a standalone label in Britain through EMI Records. (Previously, the American company’s releases went through EMI’s generic Stateside imprint.) In addition to the bookings mentioned above, the Temptations performed the song on Top Gear, a popular music radio show on the BBC’s Light Programme.
AN OUT-OF-TUNE PIANO?
(My own recollection of that Top Gear moment was hearing disc jockey Brian Matthew asking one of the Temptations – David? Otis? – why “It’s Growing” sounded like there was an out-of-tune piano on it. As best I can remember, the improbable reply was, “Maybe there was out-of-tune piano in the studio.”)
Stevie Wonder was next to cross the ocean. He landed in the British capital on March 12 and appeared on Ready Steady Go! later that day – on the same show as the Temptations – to sing “Hey Harmonica Man” and “Kiss Me Baby.” Three days on, he, too, taped a Top Gear segment. For its part, “Kiss Me Baby” was another of those first six U.K. Tamla Motown 45s. Accompanying 15-year-old Wonder on the trip was his tutor, Ted Hull.
The Sound of Motown set, seen from above (photo: Getty Images/Popperfoto)
After the larger Detroit contingent arrived on March 15, everyone came together for rehearsals at the north London studios of Rediffusion Television, the company producing The Sound of Motown with director Rollo Gamble and host Dusty Springfield. (A common mistake in several subsequent Motown biographies and autobiographies was that the show was televised by the BBC. It was, in fact, aired across various regional commercial channels.)
At the Rediffusion studio in Wembley, Earl Van Dyke’s team cut tracks for the show – including those for Springfield – to which the artists sang live. The American musicians were also augmented by a half-dozen British players. “It was absolutely rehearsed in the same way that we would have rehearsed Ready Steady,” programme editor Vicki Wickham told me years later, “and then shot in the evening. Again, there were no retakes, no stopping – it was recorded live.”
That live filming took place on Thursday, March 18, and the result was edited into a 45-minute show transmitted across the U.K. on April 28. That it was televised more than two weeks after the end of the commercially-disappointing Tamla tour meant, of course, that the programme’s immediate promotional value was lost. However, internal Rediffusion paperwork indicates that the special was never likely to have been broadcast before the end of the roadshow.
After The Sound of Motown was aired, Hitsville attorney George Schiffer cabled Rediffusion for the rights to release the special as an album, including Dusty Springfield’s performances. The British TV firm responded that in her case, permission would have to come from Philips Records, where she was signed – and it appears that legal (or perhaps financial) issues got in the way.
Instead, Motown recorded its artists in Paris on April 13 – one day after the U.K. tour had finished – and issued the result as an album in November ’65. “It was such a shame that the [British] theatre shows did so badly,” said Vicki Wickham, “because nobody knew who these acts were, and then once our show went out, everybody went, ‘Oh my God, Motown!’ Then it opened doors. But in those days, nobody thought about marketing or anything.”
What someone did think about was getting the Motown entourage back to the U.S. immediately after the Paris show. “All acts except the Supremes and Stevie Wonder must return to New York City, U.S.A. to fulfil an engagement contract commencing April 15,” wrote Booker Bradshaw in an interoffice memo. (He had supervised all the travel arrangements and accompanied the tour.)
Then again, perhaps it was just as well that the Supremes didn’t have to get home right after playing Paris – as Berry Gordy subsequently revealed in To Be Loved. And when he and Diana Ross did return to Detroit, it’s unlikely that they got on a coach to West Grand.
Video notes: For years, The Sound of Motown remained only in the memories of those who had seen it when broadcast in 1965. Twenty years on, the show was finally released on videotape in the U.K. after Dave Clark (he of the Dave Clark Five) had secured footage and rights to Ready Steady Go! material. That edition was called The Sounds of Motown, augmented with clips of two 1964 Marvin Gaye performances on RSG! Then in 2023, the original show was included in a bumper, limited-edition DVD set of Ready Steady Go! released by U.K. TV archive firm Kaleidoscope. It can also be found online, of course.
Weekend notes: the definitive RSG! book is Andy Neill’s Ready Steady Go! The Weekend Starts Here, published in 2020. It includes six pages devoted to The Sound of Motown, complete with stunning images.