For this lesson we sort of focussed more on the invidual artist of Motown, the main writers and the creator of Motown agian.
THE LECTURE:
So we first started to discuss Holland, Dozier and Holland. I recently found out about these three people. Holland-Dozier-Holland is a song writing team but Allan also said they area production team too. They are Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland (the two Holland's obviously being brothers). The three of them wrote and produced many popular songs from the Motown period.
We then moved on to talk about the famous group 'The Four Tops' who are a four member band who, in Motown are very well known. We didn't talk about there history we just talked about two of their songs.
Their song I can't help myself was an immediate straight away hit, it was so popular. After such a success with this song the Motown company wanted another really successful song so asked the Four Tops to create another song. The song they made which was another hit was 'The same old song'. If you listen really closely to the bass line in I can't help myself, it is the same bass line in The same old song but backwards. So the same notes and everything but just reversed. That's what was 'funny' about what they did because them two songs were so similar but extremely similar.
Allan then started to talk about DIana Ross from The Supremes. He told us that their song 'Where did our love go' wasn't origanlly wrote for The Supremes, it actually wasn't written in her key.
But the people forced her to sing, she had no choice. So basically in that day it was 'sing it how we want it or find another Record Label'.
A lot of people think that the singers write the songs when in fact sometimes they don't. In fact in Motown a lot of the singers didn't write their own songs, it was all given to them by songwriters.
So that means the people that make Motown songs what they are, are the Songwriters, the Producers, Berry Gordy and of course the Singers.
Berry Gordy - He picks who should sing what song and basically makes all the decisions.
Songwriters - Come up with the lyrics and general song structure. They usual write about a personal experience.
Singers - They come up with song or a lot of ideas. They sing the song and give it the sound it needs. They remeber it and perform it live.
Producers - Mix the songs and organise some gigs.
It's now more than 60 years since Motown was first created and it is still well known and enjoyed to this day.
Berry Gordy hated albums about politics. He thought it wouldn't be successful in Motown. It turns out that a political Motown album is now one of the most successful albums in Motown.
WHAT I'VE REALISED:
So after reviewing my past few blogs about Allan Geln's lectures I have noticed that Motown is a genre that nearly everybody likes. White and Black people. When I was talking about Blues, I must have said that whites wouldn't listen to blues and that white's and black's were very against each other at least once in each blog. But now with Motown I haven't said that once.
Everybody has heard of Motown and more people like it than dislike it. I think it's a very happy genre that really gets you moving and cheers people up.
My favourite Motown artist would definitley be Stevie Wonder. I think he is so talented and just amazing. His songs are so happy and jolly.
One of my favourites...