The Complete Motown Singles, Volume 1: 1959-1961 (Hip-O Select)
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Most of the 1959-’61 set belies Motown’s reputation for perfection; some of it is actively awful. The Six Sigma-esque fanaticism about quality control that Motown later became famous for evolved slowly–at first, the label was willing to throw anything out there. Berry Gordy Jr. was an experienced songwriter and producer when he launched the label he first called Tamla in 1959, but he was also under pressure to make it profitable quickly–it was funded by his family, reluctantly, with an $800 loan. Early on, Gordy jumped on whatever seemed to be selling, cranking out knockoffs and answer records. When the Shirelles had a hit in 1960 with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” the Satintones answered with “Tomorrow and Always.” When Larry Verne had a novelty hit that year with “Mr. Custer,” Popcorn & the Mohawks recorded “Custer’s Last Man.” When Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” hit the top of the charts a second time in 1962, the Motown house band that later became known as the Funk Brothers pumped out two singles as the Twistin’ Kings, and the following week the Marvelettes adapted “Please Mr. Postman” into “Twistin’ Postman.”
Sometime between “Buttered Popcorn” and, say, 1964’s “Where Did Our Love Go,” the Motown sound took shape. It’s still inchoate on most of the early tracks, though, and when it does start to come together in 1961 it’s almost by accident. The band on the very first Tamla single, Marv Johnson’s “Come to Me,” included bassist James Jamerson, drummer Benny Benjamin, and guitarists Eddie Willis and Joe Messina, who all played on classic Motown tracks; the label’s second single was “Merry-Go-Round” by Eddie Holland, later of the gold-fingered Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team. The architects of the Motown style were there from the get-go, but they were flailing. Gordy didn’t just race after trends–he micromanaged records after they’d been released. He repeatedly recalled singles that he didn’t think were quite right–replacing a side, pressing a different take, or dubbing in a glutinous string section. For the first third of 1959-1961, he comes off as an indecisive meddler, pulling perfectly good records off the market to “fix” them.
