Tag: Motown

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Stax Meets Motown

Rickey Fondren III center with microphone (Photo: Claire James)

“If you want to master something, teach it,” the great physicist Richard P. Feynman is said to have remarked. “The more you teach, the better you learn.” That’s certainly borne out by the recent experiences of students who teamed up to create a new musical film and instructional package on African-American history for the Soulsville Foundation. Once it premieres online this Friday, February 2nd, it will be available as a free download for educators and students throughout Black History Month and into September. Producing such a film for the national event is a tradition the foundation began after Covid made live performances risky, and it’s continued ever since. And taking the project’s mission to heart caused this year’s student-producers to learn much along the way.

“What Stax wants to do is keep the history and message of soul music alive, but especially that of Stax Records, and the impact that the label had not only on the Memphis community, but the world at large,” says Anaya Murray, a high school senior and Stax Music Academy (SMA) student who served as the film’s co-writer and co-producer. “Black History Month is an opportunity to remind people of this important part of Black culture and American culture. In our film, Stax Meets Motown, we focus on two record labels who were rivals and competitors, and what they both contributed to music, but it’s about more than that.”

Anaya Murray (Photo: Ayanna Murray)

Indeed, the film and companion study guides delve into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the Detroit Riots of 1967, the history of Black radio, the recording industry, and fashion. At the same time, the topic is also perfectly suited to a musical. “Think High School Musical and Grease,” Murray says of the film, which she masterminded with fellow high-schoolers Andrew Green and Rickey Fondren III. Green and Fondren attend SMA, as does most of the cast.

“There are moments where they’ll break out into song, where there’s dancing, and it’s all Stax and Motown music. And then, I’m one of the songwriting students at the Academy and we wrote an original song for the end credits. So we pay homage to Stax and Motown and then add something new. And all the sounds that you hear are Stax students singing and playing.”

That includes Murray herself, who also studies voice at SMA, and the story, set entirely in Booker T. Washington High School (which many Stax artists attended), is designed to both teach and give performance, recording, and songwriting students a chance to shine. As Murray explains the plot, “Lisa, the lead, moves from Detroit to Memphis, and it’s the simple story of her learning about Stax and the culture, but also of the Memphis kids learning from her about Detroit and Motown.”

Yet ultimately the film reveals the SMA’s support for more than music. As Murray says, “I’ve been a student at Stax Music Academy since my first year of high school, and once I started to show an interest in filmmaking over the past two years, Stax noticed that and gave me an opportunity to assist on the script for last year’s [Black History Month] film.” She also developed her own material, winning the 2023 Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest Jury Award for her film, Father’s Day.

Eventually she was tapped to write this year’s screenplay. “I’m really excited about the opportunity because screenwriting is something I love to do,” she says. “Then I was able to get Andrew Green, one of my film friends, on board. He’s also planning to go to college for screenwriting and directing. And Rickey is a singer at SMA, but acting is really where his passion lies. He’s actually co-starring in the film as the love interest, but he was really excited to go into screenwriting as well, so he helped a lot with doing research to make sure that we were really providing accurate information.”

Thus did the writers learn as they progressed, and gaining the Soulsville Foundation’s stamp of approval was proof positive that they got the facts right. Now the film and instructional materials are being readied for their premiere. As Murray explains, all involved are aware of how important this educational mission is: “When it goes live, they send that link out to students not only in the United States, but worldwide as well. It is a global event.”

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Motown legend Lamont Dozier records at Royal

Fred Mollin & Lamont Dozier at Royal Studios

Going in to this, I knew that Lamont Dozier was nothing short of a pop music icon – a true legend. After all, the man’s resume is undeniable. As a member of the Motown songwriting and production trio Holland-Dozier-Holland, he is responsible for well over 30 top ten hit singles, including 13 number ones. He also had an often overlooked but influential career as a performing artist, and his music has been sampled by everyone from Tupac Shakur to Linkin Park. Go ahead and tack on another number one co-written with Phil Collins and more awards than I could possibly list. Simply stated, the man knows his way around a song.

Earlier this week, when I received the invitation to meet Lamont Dozier and his producer, Fred Mollin (who has had an impressive career in his own right, working with folks like Miley Cyrus, Billy Joel, and the late Chris Cornell), I was a bit nervous, but also excited. Interviewing musicians, much less famous ones, is always a bit of a hit-and-miss proposition – they aren’t always patient, cooperative subjects or even nice people in some cases. However, none of that was true of Lamont or Fred. In our time together, they were introspective, generous with stories and information, and generally just good guys to hang out and share a meal with. Here are some of the highlights of our lengthy conversation:

The Memphis Flyer: For starters, what brings you to town?
Lamont Dozier: We’re here to work on a new album at Royal Studios singing old songs that were iconic back in the day and putting a new slant on it vocally and arrangement-wise.

Fred Mollin: It’s very intimate and stripped down. Don’t look for big production. It’s the first time Lamont has recorded them in this way, in his own voice, very acoustic and intimate. Essentially, you’re going to get to hear these songs again for the first time, at the genesis of where they came from.

Why did you decide on the stripped down approach?
FM: As a producer, I’ve done several records with great songwriters this way. Lamont was one of the first ones I wanted to do, but it’s taken 20 years to get it actually started. It was always my dream to do it like this because it becomes a timeless album. These are just incredible songs, and he’s an incredible singer. It’s a real chance to hear him sing these songs in a way that is really soulful and heartfelt.

LD: We’re giving the songs a new approach, a face lift, a new idea to give the fans an opportunity to hear these songs in a new light but still bring back memories. Really, it will give everybody insight as to what it was like to hear them as they were being written – just very sparse and intimate.

Do you see this as an opportunity to re-claim these songs as your own?
LD: There were a few that I had put in my back pocket that I had always hoped to record myself. But when Barry Gordy comes in saying, “Hey, you’ve got to come up with something in a hurry. Marvin Gaye is going out of town and we need something to put in the can,” you have to come up with something. So, for instance, I had stashed “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You).” I always had this comeback idea in my head, so I was holding it back. I had a feeling that it could bring me back to the forefront as an artist. But we were in a hurry and couldn’t really come up with anything special, so I went ahead and pulled it out of my back pocket and gave it to Marvin to do. It became a big hit for him.

And for James Taylor.
LD: Oh, yeah (laughs) – and a lot of other people too.

FM: We’re hoping to have James come in and sing with Lamont on that one for the album.

Are there any other songs you wish you could have back?
LD: I guess “Little Darling.” That was Marvin, too. It was a personal song for me because I wrote it for my grandmother, who was very ill at the time. I came over to her house when she was ill and played her this song when we had just recorded it. And this is one song, personally, that I wished I had sung myself, to her. But Marvin didn’t do a bad job with it either. And it became a hit for the Doobie Brothers and Michael McDonald later on.

Why did you decide to record in Memphis?
FM: Most of the album was actually done in Nashville, because that’s where I’m based out of. But we wanted to pay homage to Memphis. Because I know Boo Mitchell and work at Royal when I’m here, I wanted to bring Lamont down for a day of vocals. It was literally like a pilgrimage day for us.

What songs did you work on at Royal?
FM: I think we did “Reach Out (I’ll Be There),” “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” and “Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While).” These are unbelievable songs, the soundtrack to people’s lives.

What did the guys at Motown think of the music coming out of Memphis back in the day? Did you view it as a rivalry?
LD: No, we didn’t view it as a rivalry. A hit song is a hit song. I loved Stax. Stax had its own iconic sound. There was stuff coming out of there that we respected as songwriters and producers. Their sound was more blues-based. Their house was full of blues, I’ll put it that way. We respected that sound, because we knew the blues started it all, and I think they respected us.

How long have the two of you worked together?
FM: We’ve worked on a few things together. We worked together here on a Cliff Richard record at Royal back in 2011. To be honest, this is the first chance that I’ve had to make this particular dream come true.

LD: If there’s anyone I trust enough to work with as my producer, it’s him.

Do you feel your immense success as a songwriter and producer has overshadowed your career as an artist?
LD: No, I think it added to it. They always say Motown was like a college for music writers and producers. Sometimes if you wait, and study hard on your skills, you’ll just be better at something. When the time came for me to sing again, I was better because I had written and produced for other artists.

Did you ever tailor songs for particular artists?
LD: Oh, no. A hit song is a hit song, anybody can sing it. The song is king always. If it’s good, anybody with half a voice can do it. That’s how it was done, cut the tracks first and then bring in whoever was going to sing it and teach them the song.

My favorite song of yours from the Motown era is “Bernadette.” What do you remember about writing that one?
LD: (laughs) Everybody asks about that one.

FM: The version we have on the new record is so gorgeous.

LD: This particular song is a girl’s name, which is something we would never do because then all the other girls would want their names in a song. But in this particular case, the name just fit the music so well, and we all at one time had girlfriends called Bernadette. All three of us – different girls, though. She was my first puppy love thing was when I was 11 or 12. My Bernadette was like Venus de Milo. What does an 11 year old know? (laughs) She was this little Italian girl that just made my heart sing. And she was my muse, I used that feeling that I had for her to write songs up in to my 20s. Whenever I was writing a love song about someone I had feelings for, she would always be the picture in my mind’s eye.

For more information on Lamont Dozier, visit www.lamontdozier.com.

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Master Blaster

Despite being blind since infancy and surviving the duel depredations of a hardscrabble east Detroit upbringing and child stardom to become one of the most celebrated pop musicians in recorded history, Steveland Judkins “Stevie Wonder” Morris doesn’t have a biography that can match the torment or weirdness of Ray Charles, James Brown, Al Green, Prince, or Michael Jackson. And, right, he missed out on the mythologizing that early death provided to Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye.

Like his onetime Motown elder Smokey Robinson, he’s a relative normal (no, I haven’t forgotten about Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants) and a lifer whose music suggests those rather unexciting qualities. And also, right, a genius.

These days, Wonder is too often thought of — when thought of at all — as the Grammy-certified embodiment of middlebrow respectability: neither a hip-hop/neo-soul touchstone (like Gaye) nor a totem of crossover hip (like Brown).

But who else in soul/R&B has produced a deeper, more wide-ranging catalog? And how many can match his longevity? No other R&B artist who was making notable pop music when Wonder debuted, at age 12, with 1963’s “Fingertips (Part 2)” was still much of a factor well into the ’80s, much less 2005. That was when Wonder released the unexpectedly solid A Time To Love, his first proper studio album in a decade and an album that, aside from its few nods to hip-hop, could have been released in 1977 without sounding terribly out of place.

Wonder’s embrace of the middlebrow genteel — and its even more fervent returning affection — made him an institution during his fecund adult prime in the ’70s and well into an ’80s now best remembered for his soupy but somewhat underrated soundtrack smash “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” But that reputation overshadows how much of a politically tough-minded, musically idiosyncratic groove machine he was at his peak. And, perhaps just as much as the larger social forces coming to bear, he was the primal force that changed Motown, musically and in a business sense, in the incredibly fertile five-year period (1971-1976) after he turned 21 and seized control of his career, culminating with the overreaching but often brilliant double-record-and-then-some Songs in the Key of Life.

Some highlights of a discography ripe for rediscovery:

Love songs: Pre-emancipation Motown singles “I Was Made To Love Her” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” are well-oiled vehicles for Wonder’s irrepressible and — by Motown’s early standards — nearly chaotic vocal performance. But Wonder’s best love songs might be those that bookend what is, despite the elevated reputations of Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life, his best album, 1972’s Talking Book. The opening “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” its synth-and-bongos intro the unlikely sound of a waking epiphany, might be the most wholly beautifully record he ever made. The closing “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)” is a romantic hymn hypnotic in its repetitions.

Political songs: Aside from an early, Motown-mold-breaking Dylan cover (“Blowin’ in the Wind”), the then-19-year-old Wonder made his first foray into political pop with 1970’s “Heaven Help Us All,” singing someone else’s words over too-intrusive gospel-styled backing vocals and making them sound a lot tougher and smarter than they really were. On his own after that, Wonder proved a more astute commentator. Innervisions‘ “Living for the City” is an epic, personalized allegory for the civil rights movement that makes pained acknowledgement of its lost momentum. Wonder then devoted the second strongest synth riff of his career to the Nixon-era admonishment “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” a fed-up lament that’s lost little bite or relevance in subsequent decades.

Groove records: With the possible exception of Wonder-inheritor Prince, there may not be a modern R&B musician who so fully absorbed the variety of the black music canon. With its sassy, swinging horn fanfare, shout-outs to the greats (adding Glenn Miller to Ellington, Basie, and Armstrong), and joyful interjections from Wonder himself, “Sir Duke” captures this better than anything, though Wonder would extend his jazz tribute across 10 minutes of “Do I Do” with Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet. “Boogie On Reggae Woman” was a fruitful nod to the Jamaican contribution to the black pop diaspora, but Wonder topped it with 1980’s “Master Blaster (Jammin’),” still probably the best non-Jamaican reggae record ever. “Higher Ground” is a funk workout not even the Red Hot Chili Peppers could ruin. And on Talking Book‘s “Maybe Your Baby,” Wonder multi-tracks his own vocal into a trance-like rhythmic abstraction.

Devotional songs: Vocally, musically, and philosophically, Wonder may have been soul music’s least gospel-influenced star, at least through his own prime years. Songs in the Key of Life opens like Sunday morning, with the one-man-backing-choir of “Love’s in Need of Love Today” and the personal devotional “Have a Talk With God.” But, more often, Wonder found the spiritual in the form of others: Martin Luther King Jr. on the joyous “Happy Birthday,” a special someone who spurs contentment on the lovely “For Once in My Life,” and, most of all, a newborn daughter on “Isn’t She Lovely?”

Visionary, mystical, or otherwise beyond classification: “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” probably rivals latter Motown discovery Michael Jackson’s (and the Jackson Five’s) “I Want You Back” as the greatest kid-pop ever recorded. A 15-year-old Wonder runs roughshod over a locomotive Motown groove, yelping, “Got empty pockets, you see, I’m a poor man’s son!” at the climax of a conventional poor-boy-rich-girl love story turned into something more. “Visions” is Wonder’s ultimate testament of faith in this world, more affecting for how matter-of-fact it is, a blind man’s meditation on the certainty of leaves changing from green to brown. And “Superstition” is probably one of the greatest pop records: such a tough, gritty, and synthesized groove paired with an equally tough, questioning lyric about religion (“You believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer”) that it would take more than a decade for another black pop musician to take up.