We think of them coming off the production line, smiling girls in matching satin cocktail dresses and carefully groomed men in slick mohair suits, choreographed to perfection. We think of songs that so artfully employed metaphor and simile - "Just like Pagliacci did, I try to keep my sadness hid" - to illuminate the teenage condition. We think, most of all, of that driving backbeat, a whipcrack synthesis of snare drum, tambourine and (the secret ingredient completing the magic formula) the downstroke of a plectrum across a set of heavy-gauge strings attached to a Fender Telecaster. What we do not think of, when we think of Motown, is surf music, or novelty songs, or gospel hymns, or white-bread rockaballads, or supper-club crooning. But that is what we get among the 155 tunes that populate this album. It is the first of 12 volumes that, when complete, will form a definitive anthology of both sides of every 45rpm single issued by Berry Gordy Jr's company between 1959, the date of its founding in Detroit, and 1972, when the enterprise decamped for Hollywood, in search of a different kind of glory.
Once his initial batch of artists had hit their stride, Gordy employed a wonderful slogan to describe their output: "The sound of young America." In a sense, however, the records that the company released during their first three years of activity, before their artists established themselves as a permanent presence in the charts, were more broadly faithful to that description. Gordy, it becomes clear, was ready to try almost anything in his bid for success, and in the early days trying anything usually meant copying something.
There are attempts to emulate the Coasters' Yakety Yak (Blibberin' Blabberin' Blues by Gino Parks), Larry Verne's Mr Custer (Custer's Last Man by Popcorn and the Mohawks), Sheb Woolley's Purple People Eater (It by Ron and Bill - actually Ronnie White and William "Smokey" Robinson of the Miracles), and the Champs' Tequila (Ich-i-bon by Nick and the Jaguars). None of the imitations came close to success, which may have persuaded Gordy - a songwriter himself - to encourage the search for originality among his proteges.
Most of these songs, in fact, are barely distinguishable from the general run of popular music being produced in America at the time. The exceptions, not surprisingly, are the songs we know. These include the Miracles' irresistible Shop Around (which finds Smokey Robinson exploring a useful metaphor), Mary Wells's driving Way Over There, Barrett Strong's pounding Money (That's What I Want) and the Marvelettes' sparkling Please Mr Postman, the first of Motown's many girl-group smashes. Each of these songs is based on a powerful central idea, and each was a national hit. But even the near-misses and the palpable mistakes are full of interest. When Marvin Gaye sings the standard ballad The Masquerade Is Over in the style of Nat King Cole, for example, his entrance is preceded by a piano introduction borrowed from Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight, hinting at the jazz orientation of Motown's session musicians. "I guess I'll have to play Pagliacci and get myself a clown's disguise," Gaye sings, and it is easy to imagine the young Smokey Robinson in the control room, storing the idea away for use, years later, as the central theme of The Tears of a Clown.
Most of the tracks feature the embryonic work of the Funk Brothers, as the house rhythm section became known. They appear as the Swingin' Tigers on Snake Walk Pts 1 and 2, a bluesy instrumental. Renamed the Twistin' Kings, they are also heard on Xmas Twist. A novelty song called Buttered Popcorn finds the young Supremes, on their first visit to the studio, enunciating a lyric of quite breathtaking - and possibly unconscious - lubriciousness. And there is also the chance to examine the claims of such obscure early Motowners as Henry Lumpkin, the Satintones and Singin' Sammy Ward.
Copiously annotated and imaginatively packaged (the front cover is a 45rpm Tamla jacket, enclosing a facsimile of the original issue of Strong's Money), the set is a product of Universal's Hip-O Select department, which releases limited-edition compilations and reissues for sale via the internet. Volume 1 is an edition of 5,000 copies, priced at $119.98, and will be followed by a further 11 multi-disc sets, each devoted to a single year.
For those who wince at the sound of classic singles digitised in gutless fake stereo on modern CD anthologies, the very best aspect of this historic project will be the determination of the remastering engineers to reproduce the effect of the original vinyl - which is to say, hot to the point of distortion and in glorious mono, just the way they burst out of transistor radios in the days before Berry Gordy Jr looked at the Billboard chart, gave a little smile of satisfaction and picked up the phone to put down a deposit on his first Cadillac.
· Details: www.hip-oselect.com
