#kings of motown

[helloparkerrose]

[xosiren]

ᴍɪᴄʜᴀᴇʟ ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ ᴅᴇʙᴜᴛᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴏɴᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴀᴛ ᴍᴏᴛᴏᴡɴ 25ᴛʜ ᴀɴɴɪᴠᴇʀꜱᴀʀʏ ɪɴ 1983

[thechanelmuse]

It's the 45th anniversary of the iconic Sidney Lumet-directed film, The Wiz.

The cast. The costumes. The sequences. The set. The soundtrack. 🤌🏽

This is good news. So take it away, Evillene 🎤:

[mj-forever-777]

August 4th, 1998. While on a business trip with Don Barden, Michael visited the Motown Museum in Detroit, Michigan, with Stevie Wonder and Berry Gordy's sister, Esther Gordy Edwards.

[mj-loves-to-tour]

Michael Jackson's Thriller

[wildandmoody]

GROUP: Michael Jackson

Solo albums:

Got to be There (1972)

Off The Wall (1979) (2009 Rerelease)

Thriller (1982) (afaik this is an original pressing)

Bad (1987) (2015 Rerelease)

The picture on the inner cover of Thriller, featuring the tiger cub who was also named Thriller.

Solo remix singles:

Remember The Time (1991)

They Don't Care About Us (Promo-only white label double pack) (1996)

Randoms:

Farewell My Summer Love (Motown Unreleased Compilation album) (1984)

We Are The World (1985)

Full-sized original '84 poster of Michael during the Motown years that came with Farewell on the left, and the brochure sleeve advertising merchandise for We Are The World on the right. Talk about a time capsule. Also I want all that merch

[freshthoughts2020]

[popgodz]

[ruthey97]

[mywifeleftme]

360: Dusty Springfield // Dusty Springfield's Golden Hits

Dusty Springfield's Golden Hits Dusty Springfield 1966, Philips

These early Dusty Springfield singles really get the “Wall of Sound” production treatment, despite Mr. Spector’s absence from the credits: mixed loud as hell like the kids liked it, screaming string charts, backing vocals en regalia, and a big beat knocking around underneath. Folks love to cite her as the second artist of the British Invasion to hit the U.S. charts, and for cultural reasons that may be significant, but her early sound was indistinguishable from American acts like Lesley Gore and the Shirelles. I don’t know many of the details about her career, but it seems like whoever was managing her was hell-bent on breaking her in the States. Call it a credit to English ingenuity (and specifically arranger Ivor Raymonde) that they were able to give Springfield a knock-out sound that passes for the contemporary Hollywood (or Detroit) product.

Dusty Springfield’s Golden Hits, her first major compilation, is Brill Building / girl group-style music par excellence, with a murderer’s row of hitwriters from both sides of the pond (Bacharach/David, Goffin/King, Beatrice Verdi/Buddy Kaye, etc.). Practically anyone could’ve had chart success with these songs and this packaging (and a number of these were subsequently hits for others), but Springfield had a cannon of a voice on her that makes the best of these numbers undeniable. Those who place her voice with the Arethas and Dionne Warwicks wish she’d been guided towards soul or sophisticated torch songs from the start, but I personally love it when someone vocally overqualified for bubblegum is made to tear into a good bop. “I Only Want to Be With You” is buffeted along by the force of her voice, the violins shrieking like a 33rpm record dragged up to 45; “Little By Little” could’ve been written for a Motown powerhouse like Darlene Love (but scarcely improved on by her); “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” moves from the sound of a girl sadly combing her hair before her vanity to Sampson bringing down the temple.

There’s plenty of treacle here, and “Wishin’ and Hopin’” probably set feminism further back than “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” but this is a worthy addition to any ‘60s pop library.

360/365

[helloparkerrose]

[mjsloveslave]

Rest in Peace and Power Mr. Tito.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

[eduardofr23]

🇺🇸“Right after Motown25, my family read a lot in the press saying that I was the “new Sinatra” and “exciting like Elvis” that kind of thing. It was even nice to hear, but I knew the press could be very fickle. One week they love you, the next they treat you like garbage”

~ Michael Jackson in his book ‘Moonwalker’

🇧🇷"Logo após o Motown25, minha família leu muita coisa na imprensa dizendo que eu era o "novo Sinatra" e "excitante como Elvis" aquele tipo de coisa. Era até legal de ouvir,mas eu sabia que a imprensa podia ser muito inconstante. Uma semana eles te amam,na outra eles te tratam como lixo”

~Michael Jackson no seu livro ‘Moonwalker’

[rockingreads]

David Ritz: Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye (1985)

Black History Month 2025 will be wrapping up soon, but America's unfortunate legacy of racial disharmony will sadly remain a frustrating and persistent enigma, not unlike the frustrating and persistent enigma that is Marvin Gaye ...

David Ritz is a music biography machine, with over a dozen titles (about Jerry Wexler, Etta James, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, etc.) to his credit, but not even he could fully untangle the complexities and contradictions that tore at Gaye's Divided Soul.

But Ritz may have come as close as anyone ever will, since his book is based on extensive interviews he conducted with Marvin himself leading up to the singer's death in 1984, and which allowed Ritz to paint an inspiring AND unsettling portrait of this bona fide musical genius.

Ritz takes us from Marvin's difficult Washington D.C. childhood under an authoritarian, often abusive father, to his emergence as Motown's crown prince, to escalating personal issues and drug addiction, all culminating in a violent premature demise reminiscent of a Shakespearian tragedy.

In the end, the best Ritz -- or anyone, really -- can do is document the lifelong struggles that lay at the root of Marvin's Divided Soul: the dichotomy between Gaye's strict religious upbringing and the sinful, sensual hedonism of his music career that tormented him to his dying day.

All these years later, random YouTube comments like this one, referring to Marvin's final career classic, the double-Grammy winner "Sexual Healing" (coincidentally co-written with David Ritz!), really say it all:

"R.I.P. Marvin Gaye. So many of us were made because of your music."

Featured Records:

Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On (1971)

Marvin Gaye: Let’s Get it On (1973)

Buy from: Amazon

[fortressofserenity]

African American music and boy bands

Since I said that boy bands actually owe far more to doo wop groups like The Platters and The Drifters, that the African American roots of boy bands should be considered more. I even think Motown acts like The Four Tops and The Temptations actually provided the blueprint or template for the modern boy band, alternating between downtempo love songs and uptempo dance numbers, as well as coordinated dancing as well as the Backstreet Boys and Nsync covering songs by Black musicians.

Even if they didn't write their own songs either, in some cases at least it's the Black musician who sang that song first. Therefore you can't get the Blackness out of boy bands, no matter how hard one tries. Even if you'd say that Black musicians are niche, this hasn't stopped the likes of Janet Jackson, Aretha Franklin and Nat King Cole from achieving mass popularity, that you might as well be marginalising and discrediting Black American musicians this way. Without Black music, the Backstreet Boys wouldn't be where they are.

Same with other white boy bands that it's about time to confront the African American roots of boy bands.