The Motown Sound:
Memories of Making the
Music
by Harley Berger, Vice-President
Motown Records will always be remembered for the music it created working
with artists such as The Four Tops, Temptations, Marvelettes, Miracles,
Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, the
list goes on and on. Teenagers during the 1960s listened to the “Motown
Sound” on records, transistor radios, on the TV dance shows and in the
car. Motown was everywhere. Never in history has one record company
produced so many top ten hits as Motown did during that incredible decade.
But for Motown’s performers, making the music was fraught with more than
its share of illness, substance abuse and behind the scenes conflicts with
the record company. For an insiders view of what really happened both
on-stage and off at Motown, join us on Saturday, May 20, when our guest
will be Katherine Anderson-Schaffner, a founding member of
the Marvelettes, who sang with the group for 10 years.
The Marvelettes was Motown's first successful female vocal group, and most
notable for recording the label's first #1 pop hit, Please Mr. Postman. No
“one-hit-wonder,” in the years that followed the group also recorded
twenty-two other Pop chart hits, including Beechwood 4-5789, Too Many Fish
In The Sea, Don't Mess With Bill, The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game and
My Baby Must Be A Magician. They set the precedent for later Motown girl
groups such as The Supremes and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas.
Ms. Anderson-Schaffner will give us a firsthand account of
how the group adjusted to its meteoric rise from an obscure high school
quintet to the top of the music charts in less than a year; the whirlwind
lifestyle of a top recording and performing act; the tours; the
challenges, the triumphs and the defeats.
For more information on The Marvelettes see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marvelettes
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This is not a program of Northwest Unitarian
Universalist Church. |
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