Motownobit: Maxine Powell

Maxine Powell, who ran Motown's Artist Development Department, has died.

Powell always had one foot in performance and one in deportment - during the 1930s and early 40s, she would perform a one-woman comedy show by night, teach etiquette by day.

She settled in Detroit in 1951, where she opened a banqueting house and started to promote events; she was instrumental in persuading the city's motor industry to include African American models in their advertising.

Amongst the models she worked with was Gwen Gordy Fuqua. The sister of Berry Gordy, Gwen introduced Maxine to Motown, which would become the only label to train its young artists in how to behave.

As the HistoryMakers site tells it:

Powell taught Marvin Gaye posture and how to sing with his eyes open. Diana Ross, The Temptations, and Martha Reeves acknowledge Powell as the one who taught them how to enter a room and work with their fans.

Maxine Powell was 98; she died Monday, 14th October in Southfield, Michigan.

Motownobit: Deke Richards

Deke Richards, Motown songwriter, has died.

Richards was one of the four members of The Clan, and - after the Clan disbanded - was one of the four members of The Corporation - alongside Berry Gordy, Alphonzo Mizell and Freddie Perren. Both groups of songwriters were created by Berry Gordy, desperate to avoid the creation of more "back room superstars" after Holland-Dozier-Holland grew too large for the label.

Although only partially successful at burying the characters of the team, both groups did well as creative forces. The Clan was short-lived, but produced a couple of outstanding tracks for Diana Ross & The Supremes:

The Corporation were even more powerful creatively:

The team was disbanded in 1972 - their main focus had been writing for the Jackson 5, a role that was being taken on by Hal David. Subsequently, Motown relented and allowed their group credit to be replaced by the names of the individuals involved.

Last year, Richards was involved in selecting and polishing a collection of Jackson 5 rarities, Come And Get It.

Deke Richards had been suffering from oesophageal cancer. He died March 24th, at the age of 68.

Motownobit: Marv Tarplin

Marv Tarplin, one of Smokey Robinson's Miracles, has died.

Besides his guitar work on the records, Tarplin was a writer, collaborating with Robinson on this:



Tarplin had joined Motown at the end of the 1950s, originally as a backing guitarist for The Primettes (The Supremes as they would become later). Robinson spotted his talent, and grabbed him for the Miracles. When Smokey went solo, Tarplin originally planned to stay with The Miracles, but within a year was back besides Robinson. He would stick with him until his 2008 retirement.

The cause of death has not been made public; Marv Tarplin was 70 years old.

Labelobit: Esther Gordy Edwards

Esther Gordy Edwards, Motown executive, has died.

The sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy, Esther was most effective in her work bringing the label's artists to the world as head of the International Division. She's the reason why people living this side of the Atlantic are as familiar with the brand as those on the home side.

She also acted as a calming, mentoring influence on the label's younger stars, taking an approach with Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross - amongst others - that helped them cope with the sudden rush of stardom.

After Berry moved the label from Detroit to Los Angeles, Esther remained in the Motor City and oversaw the transformation of the original base into a museum. Although her role wasn't uncontroversial - some felt her tight hold on the project choked off some of the commercial potential of the project - the city was grateful that one Gordy, at least, didn't head off to California.

Esther Gordy Edwards was 91. She died, in Detroit, on Wednesday 24th August.

Motownobit: Gladys Horton

Gladys Horton, lead singer of the Marvelettes, has died.

A co-founder of the band originally known as the Casinyets (short for Can't Sing Yet), she took over as main vocalist when Georgia Dobbins quit the group. Rebranded The Marvelettes, Horton was just fifteen when this song was a hit:



The follow-up to Please Mr Postman was Twistin' Postman, a song which attempted to have the cake of "songs about postmen seem popular" and eat the trend for the Twist. Not even the kids were going to buy that, though. Even so, he powerhouse of Motown and hook-ups with the like of Smokey Robinson kept the band in sales and the charts through the first half of the 1960s.

The band was never a fixed grouping - Georgeanna Tillman left through ill-health, as did Juanita Cowart. In a somewhat brutal move, in 1965 a new lead singer was brought in to the band, pushing Horton more to the sidelines. In 1967 she quit the group altogether to get married.

Horton never quite left the stage. Although looking after her son meant she was sort of semi-retired, she would play as Gladys Horton of The Marvelettes (Motown had sold the band name on and so no actual Marvelette was able to perform directly under the name.)

Gladys Horton died Wednesday in Sherman Oaks, California. She was 66.

The illustrated Hello: Mary Wilson, Di and Flo

For some reason, Betty didn't get a greeting when the Beloved greeted The Surpemes. Or Barbara.

They were once called the much-less alluring Primettes. First they became The Supremes, and then - Berry Gordy decided his girlfriend was the most supreme of the Suremes, and the became Diana Ross and The Supremes. Primus inter pares.

They still hold the American record for 'most successful vocal act in terms of number one singles', which is quite specific but still quite impressive, although the ease with which acts can get to number one these days means it's probably only going to be a few weeks before Tom Cruise's daughter and Billy Graham's niece get together, throwtogether a baker's dozen of autotuned downloads and change history.

Still, The Supremes, eh? Brilliant:



The Supremes by Bad Dreams Fancy Dress. Oh... the actual Supremes?



[Buy: The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal by Mark Ribowsky
Meet The Supremes


[Part of The Illustrated Hello, the feature that would never end]

What Craig David doesn't know about music...

Bad news for Craig David - that guy who used to pop up everywhere a few years back making him look a fool is back.

No, no, not the Bo'Selecta guy - he could never make David look as much of a ratchet-handle as David does himself.

If you have a desire to preserve any respect for Craig David, look away now:

He said: "[I] didn't actually know that Motown was a label ... I thought it was an era or genre, like New Jack Swing or something - I didn't know that if you weren't on Motown records, it wasn't Motown."

David then looked puzzled after reading the claim "if it doesn't say Kelloggs on the box, it isn't Kelloggs in the box" on the side of his Rice Krispies. "Isn't Kelloggs a type of food?"

Now, not knowing Motown was a record label and thinking it was an "era" would matter less if he hadn't just released a "Motown" collection.

"But then that didn't matter, because I wasn't conceptualising the album at all, it was purely songs that I liked and had inspired me, and songs that when I sang them, were a challenge too."

Bless him, he wasn't conceptualising the album. Isn't he cute?

"I wanted to make an album of me re-recording famous songs," he said. "There was no strong concept, but it ended up falling into a Motown thing, which really stemmed from Michael Jackson dying last year.

That was a terrible night for Craig, until someone explained to him that Michael Jackson was a specific person, and not "everyone in America".

"I'd got my tickets, and really wanted to see his show, so when he died I listened to his records a lot like a lot of people. I then looked at other music that had inspired me, from my childhood and later in my life, started singing them and realised that a lot of the records were Motown songs."

How could you realise that if you didn't know what Motown songs were, Mr Craig?

[tip of the hat to Andrew Collins]

Denham tries a new sell on longer copyright

Clearly, the idea of extending the life of copyright in recordings beyond the already excessive fifty years is an unpopular one with all but the few who will make big money out of the deal; now that the government has decided to ignore the findings of its own Gowers report, innovation, universities and skills secretary John Denham is trying a new approach to persuade us that the shrinking of public domain is a good thing:

A spokeswoman for Denham said yesterday: "The aim is to give the lesser-known artists and the sessional musicians a much bigger share of any increase of new royalties after 50 years. Many Motown singers, for example, who are now out of copyright protection, got pretty raw deals during the 1960s and they could be the first people to gain from any change in the law."

Right. So record companies ripped off artists some decades ago, and the response is not to get the record companies to make good on their bad faith, but instead to change the law to force all recorded product to remain out of the public domain for anything up to another forty-five years?

That's crazy, surely? It's like reacting to a greedy idiot destroying two banks and god knows how many lives by giving him a sixteen million pound pension pot drawn from funds the bank doesn't have, to take an unlikely-sounding example.

Denham is fighting Europe to allow nations to implement any copyright extension locally, choosing how to divvy up the cash:

Denham wants the money from royalties to be split 70/30 in favour of the artist after the first 50 years. This would mean, in most cases, that much more money would go to the artist rather than the record company. In the case of some megastars who already command as much 90%, however, it would mean a cut in income.

He also wants a break for artists at 50 years. This will allow them, if their record company will not re-release their tracks, to be able to launch their own CD label or get another company to do it for them - and keep all the royalties.

This does, at least, seem to be the government conceding that the driving claim of those who would extend copyright - that it benefits poor, starving artists - is hogwash; it's a pity the response is "let's try and see if we can fiddle to change the distribution a little bit" rather than "... so let's not reduce the concept of public domain any further".

Motownobit: Levi Stubbs

After a long period of ill-health, Levi Stubbs passed on Friday at his home in Detroit.

The son a foundary worker, Stubbs was born in June 1936. His real name was the subtly but importantly different Levi Stubbles. It was in Detroit, while at Pershing High School, that Levi formed a band with Abdul "Duke" Fakir; in 1954 they hooked up at a party with Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton and The Four Tops was born. Almost. For a while, they were The Four Aims, which was changed to The Four Tops to avoid confusion with another local band, The Ames Brothers. While the name might have changed, the line-up was pretty solid and lasted for 44 years, until the death of Payton enforced a change of personnel.

In a lucky break, Roquel "Billy" Davis - Payton's cousin who was sometimes drafted in as an extra voice for the group - was a gifted songwriter; Chess records was keen to sign him up to write for the their artists and this gave him the chance to push the Four Tops onto the label. The cut one single for Chess, Kiss Me Baby, which was to be the start of a seven year slog through a number of labels and a large pile of unsold records.

It wasn't until arriving at Berry Gordy's Workshop Jazz label that the band's success playing live started to find a successful shape on disc - Breaking Through wasn't exactly a major smash, but it was enough to persuade Gordy to try moving the band towards soul, shifting them to his more mainstream Motown imprint and, crucially, pairing the group up with Holland-Dozier-Holland. Baby I Need Your Loving reached number 11, and kick-started an eight year stretch of some of the most sublime music ever to grace the US charts.

The depature of Holland-Dozier-Holland from Motown in 1967 started a period of mild decline for the band's fortunes: they still had hits, but 1968 saw them treading water releasing cover versions. Fair enough, one of those covers was Walk Away Renee, but it was a cover nevertheless.

In 1972, unwilling to follow Motown out of Detroit to the new LA base, the band moved to ABC/Dunhill where they had a mini resurgence before fading again. Casablanca Records would be their next home in 1981, delivering their final significant hit, When She Was My Girl. By 1983, they were back at Motown but adjusting to a position as a heritage act.

Stubbs had two acting roles under his belt - one major, one somewhat more obscure. He was the voice of the plant in Little Shop Of Horrors and of Mother Brain in the Captain N Super Mario Brothers spin-off franchise.

He quit touring in 2000 when his health deteriorated. Levi Stubbs was 72; he is survived by five children, 11 grandchildren, and Clineice. At 48 years, their marriage was as durable as the band which made him famous.