Motown 2020 – Plan B
STARS RESET THEIR SCHEDULES AND MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD
With six months gone, this year is proving to be, uh, rather unusual. You’ll have your own choice of songs to suit a pandemic, but “Upside Down” must be a candidate.
Diana Ross is but one of Motown’s daughters and sons whose professional plans for 2020 have been upturned. Among the others are the Temptations, Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson. Pre-coronavirus, Stevie Wonder’s schedule for the year seemed a little vague – has he actually had that kidney transplant? – but in the event, his profile is quite high.
Motown’s birthplace at 2648 West Grand Boulevard has been affected, too, although the latest museum news – assuming no reversal of easing in Michigan – is positive. Universal Music continues to reissue some of the magic once made in that basement studio, while other classic Motown material has been remixed for extra attention. And then there’s the matter of Ms. Ross’ new album – out this year? – for another of Universal Music’s famous brands, Decca Records.
Staying safe: Motown Museum CEO Robin Terry and her team (photo: Kirthmon F. Dozier/Detroit Free Press)
If ever there was a single piece of music which embodies the world in 2020, it’s “What’s Going On.” The Marvin Gaye masterwork was summoned to soundtrack the global protests sparked by George Floyd’s death and racial injustice. Meanwhile, recalling another time of conflict, that same music has been powerfully applied to the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s Vietnam War drama, Da 5 Bloods.
If ever there was a living Motown musician qualified to comment on today’s turbulence, it’s Stevie Wonder. And he has, in a five-minute videoclip entitled The Universe Is Watching Us, posted on social media on June 23, shortly after the Juneteenth holiday. Speaking from what looks like a room in his home, Wonder makes his points with humour (“It’s a bad day when I can see better than your 20/20 vision,” addressed to the current U.S. president) and from personal experience: “It was a fight I was not willing to lose,” referring to his part in the campaign to make Rev. Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. “It was a fight many of you joined, and I thank you. But here we are again, and again, and again and again.”
Wonder calls on people to vote (“move more than your mouth”) and to change. “Black lives do matter. And this is not another digital viral trend moment or hashtag. It is our lives, literally. Yes, all lives do matter. But they only matter when black lives matter, too.” From the alchemist responsible for “Higher Ground” and “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” for “Love’s In Need Of Love Today” and “Living For The City” and so much more, it’s a compelling message.
INSPIRED BY WONDER
Wonder’s influence is a central theme of another video released shortly before The Universe Is Watching Us. This is one episode of a ten-part documentary series from Apple TV+ entitled Dear…, which highlights the lives of celebrated individuals, including Spike Lee, Gloria Steinem and Oprah Winfrey, as well as Wonder. His 30-minute edition of Dear… is linked to four citizens who say they were inspired by his music. Each reads from a letter (hence the Dear… device) explaining how, why and what happened as a result of that inspiration: the creation of the Equal Justice Initiative in the case of lawyer Bryan Stevenson, for instance.
The universe is watching, Stevie
These stories are woven into a visual and aural timeline of Wonder’s own life, including family photographs and performance footage, such as a high-quality excerpt from his 1974 set for German television’s Musikladen. The man himself recalls significant moments, such as the police brutality of the Detroit riots in 1967. “After that,” he says, “I started working on songs that had some political significance.” The Dear… series may be far from provocative – one critic has called them “public relations exercises” – but Wonder’s episode colourfully captures his significance.
Smokey Robinson is considered to be less overtly political than his Motown brother, but earlier this week, he posted on social media a forceful piece of poetry, Black American, with relevance to current events. He is seen reciting this on stage, its rhymes and rhythm artfully addressing his intense dislike of “African-American” as a description of people. “I’m an American-American,” Robinson declares. “I’m already who I was meant to be.”
This performance is an excerpt from “Words,” a spoken-word programme staged at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood in September 2012. It’s thought that Robinson first delivered Black American in public at a “Def Poetry Jam” four years earlier. The words retain their force, no matter when.
We should expect to hear more of Smokey’s voice: he recently signed a deal for the release of a “musical narrative” through audiobook firm Audible. “I’m humbled to have the opportunity to share my story, the stories of my incomparable contemporaries like Marvin and Aretha, plus my music,” he said when the project was announced this past Wednesday (1). His Audible Original is in production and “coming soon.”
TOURS RESCHEDULED
Robinson will also figure in the forthcoming Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect – well, it’s a character depicting him, to be strictly accurate. Jennifer Hudson is in the title role; playing Smokey is Lodric D. Collins, best-known for his part in TV’s The Oval, Tyler Perry’s White House soap opera. Respect is due for release theatrically at the end of this year, COVID-19 circumstances allowing. There’s no update on Robinson’s own biopic, first revealed by the man himself in 2017.
The ‘Hangover’ which won’t quit
Moving pictures evidently interest Lionel Richie; he bought the rights to film Curtis Mayfield’s life story not long ago. Now there’s a musical based on his own songs being developed by Walt Disney Studios. Its working title? All Night Long. Don’t expect this soon; Richie is reported to have sold the pitch to Disney just six months ago. The singer/songwriter is a star judge on ABC-TV’s American Idol (Disney owns that network) but has time on his hands: his European tour this summer has been corona-cancelled. That itinerary, including shows in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Sweden, is being rescheduled for 2021.
The same is true of Diana Ross. Her “Top Of The World” concert dates in Ireland and the U.K. have been scrapped, with bookings now in the works for next year. She was also set to appear at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam next weekend. For the moment, her fans will have to be satisfied with Supertonic, a new assembly of Eric Kupper’s modern remixes of her hits. This includes “Love Hangover 2020,” which ranked No. 1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart in March, as other Ross remixes have done in the recent past. Supertonic is available now digitally, while the CD and vinyl editions are due on July 24.
As for Ross’ latest recordings, a track entitled “Come Together (Let Love Lead The Way)” found its way onto social media in early June, foreshadowing the album. On that basis, its release seems likely later this year.
The Temptations, too, offered new music on social media last month, or at least their take on a familiar song, Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend.” In addition, the clip introduced their newest recruit, Mario Corbino, who brings the group back to a five-piece after the 2019 exit of Larry Braggs. Previously, Corbino was associated with Club Nouveau and worked with Tony! Toni! Toné!
A TEMPTING VOICE
This was to have been celebrated as the Temptations’ 60th anniversary year, but that’s now been reset for ’21. At least that will allow founder member Otis Williams to mark three-score years since the group signed to Motown on May 15, 1961. In the meantime, he has been occupying himself by uploading short, on-camera recollections – about 20 clips so far – of key events from the past. Manager Shelly Berman joined him for the #OtisAtHome chat posted on June 29, about the quintet’s debut at the Copacabana.
Lionel, dancing for Disney night and day
Much of that history is available on the recently-issued audiobook of Williams’ 1988 autobiography, Temptations. It includes a new introduction and a revised final chapter; Williams voices the intro, while J.D. Jackson narrates the book. Temptations is available digitally and on compact disc, joining earlier audiobooks (on cassette, no less) by Diana Ross, Berry Gordy and the latter’s second spouse, Raynoma Singleton.
The stage musical based on the Temptations’ remarkable career, Ain’t Too Proud, was to have gone on the road about now in the U.S., but that’s obviously been deferred. Likewise, the Broadway production is currently closed, and will remain so until next year, like everything else on the Great White Way.
More positively, the Motown Museum in Detroit is preparing to re-open its doors on July 15. Visitors will be restricted to ten per tour, rather than the usual 30. “Obviously it will let people be more comfortable and have more personal space,” museum chairwoman/CEO Robin Terry told the Detroit Free Press. Visitors will get temperature checks and must wear facemasks; for the first time, they will be allowed to take photos inside.
A new exhibit, “Capturing A Culture Change,” is ready for the reopening, which will showcase the work of onetime Motown photographer Jim Hendin (his were the cover shots on Gaye’s What’s Going On album, among many others he took during the late 1960s and early ’70s). The museum is also moving ahead with its $50 million planned expansion; a new video depicts the site when the upgrade is complete.
THE ABC OF MOTOWN
Now, before wrapping up with other Hitsville happenings in 2020 so far, it’s worth noting a campaign launched in May by “modern” Motown under president Ethiopia Habtemariam. Branded as the #MotownABCs, this has included donations to the Feeding America foodbank charity, and gifts of $800 apiece – the sum Berry Gordy borrowed from his family to launch Tamla Records in 1959 – to small black- and brown-owned businesses, such as Uncle Bobbie’s coffee shop in Philadelphia and Marcus Books in Oakland, helping them in difficult times. Commendable.
Marvin and, this time, his four girls
A global streaming project to present the treasure trove that is The Ed Sullivan Show began on June 12 with the release of seven videoclips, including five by Motown acts: Marvin Gaye (“Take This Heart Of Mine”), the Supremes (“You Can’t Hurry Love”), the Temptations (“I Can’t Get Next To You”), the Jackson 5 (“Stand”) and Gladys Knight & the Pips (“I Heard It Through The Grapevine”). These can be found on YouTube and elsewhere, as can other clips since uploaded by Universal Music, which cut a deal with the owners of the Sullivan library. Most of the 1960s’ biggest names in music – and other types of entertainers – performed on the Sunday night TV show, which ran from 1948-71.
Due in August from New Haven Publishing in the U.K. is Motown: Celebrating 60 Years of Amazing Music by Pete McKenna. Mistakes in the publisher’s publicity material (Berry Gordy’s $800 loan becomes $8,000) suggest caution, but McKenna has written at least one previous book, Who The Hell’s Frank Wilson, a work of fiction about people connected to a copy of Wilson’s ultra-rare “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” on the Northern Soul circuit.
Another book on the horizon is Supreme Exit, an account of Florence Ballard’s life after she left the Supremes, authored by her daughter, Nicole Ballard-Chapman. This past February, Houston’s Midtown Art Center staged Dreamgirl Deferred, a fictionalised account of the last year of Ballard’s life, written by Vincent Victoria. Broadway World published a review at the time.
Supertonic aside, a new remix project from Universal Music is Motown State of Mind from Bronx-born rapper/producer/DJ Lord Finesse. It’s already on digital platforms, and is due as a boxed set of seven 45s on July 24. The tracks given a sonic makeover include the Sisters Love’s “Now Is The Time,” Michael Jackson’s “I Wanna Be Where You Are,” and DeBarge’s “I Like It.” The first of those is particularly intriguing, since its only prior outing, I’m told (thanks, Harry), was briefly in The Mack soundtrack, during the pimps’ Players Convention. The Sisters can be seen in the flick, too, if you’re paying attention.
A previously-unavailable remix of the Temptations’ “Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)” by writing/producing partners Paul Fishman and Dave Harris is newly online. This version actually dates from the late ’90s, when it was said to have been approved by Berry Gordy himself – although Motown Records was long out of his ownership by that point. Fishman emphasises that he put out the remix to support the Black Lives Matter movement, and because of the song’s relevance to current events.
Motown Countdown is the title of a quartet of shows on the live, interactive Fox Soul streaming channel. The first is due for broadcast on July 7, hosted by Angela Yee of iHeart Radio’s syndicated The Breakfast Club. The new series will focus on the “top 5 current torchbearers” in different music genres, and artists and producers will join Yee in conversation. Hip-hop will be the topic of the first show; Motown songs will feature in the final edition, according to Fox Soul. Motown Records is a partner in the production.
On July 17, two Marvin Gaye compilations are coming out on vinyl. Every Great Motown Hit Of Marvin Gaye is the same as 1983’s 15-track package of that name. His Classic Duets adapts the front-cover artwork of 1969’s Marvin Gaye And His Girls, but with a different, 14-track selection. The original had four Gaye duets apiece with Mary Wells, Kim Weston and Tammi Terrell. The new album has one duet with Weston, two with Wells and 10 with Terrell, plus one with Diana Ross.
Music notes: this week's West Grand Blog playlist (you can listen here) takes its cue from current circumstances and recent events, as well as some of the news mentioned above. There’s no need to elaborate, only to remain optimistic.