At 03:13 AM 1/29/99 -0500, Tera wrote:
>You guys are all the same....sheesh! <g>Actually, there probably wouldn't
>have been a Motown without Stax or Chess.
I can see, I guess, how we might argue that Chess paved the way for Motown
in that it proved there was a crossover market for black artists (Chuck
Berry, Bo Diddley), but if that's what you mean, why not also include King
or Imperial and whoever else?
More to the point, though, how is it that, without Stax, "there probably
wouldn't have been a Motown"? In truth, the two labels followed almost
eerily simultaneous paths to success. However, if we have to choose a
chicken or egg here, it's clearly Motown that came first, not Stax.
If our standard is which label released the first single, then Motown wins:
Smokey and the Miracles' "Way Over There" came out on Tamla the summer of
1959. Stax's first release (actually called Satelite at the time) was The
Veltones' "Fool In Love" from September, '59.
If instead our standard is first chart hit, then Motown squeaks out another
victory. Smokey's "Shop Around" debuted on the R&B chart in Dec. of '60 (on
its way to number one and number two pop) while Stax and Carla Thomas
didn't chart until Feb.of '61 with Gee Whiz (and didn't do quite so well
there either: #5 R&B, #10 pop).
Elsewhere, Tera said:
>You could probably say the same of Elvis Presley who took a "r&b" image
concept >and transferred it to rockabilly.
This seems off. Presley fused country and r&b to create rockabilly, not r&b
and rockabilly to create...what? (In fact, without r&b in the first place,
how do you even get rockabilly, let alone transfer r&b back to it?)
Do I like Motown? Hell yes! Indeed, catalogue to catalogue, and with a gun
to my head, I'd prefer its output to Stax's, though barring the gun I don't
really see any need to choose. I will, however, give a shout out to Gamble
and Huff and Philly International (the O'Jays, Harold Melvin, etc.) which I
will proclaim loudly as my favorite of all the great soul labels.
Especially if we can include the work that Philly house arranger Thom Bell
was doing, simultaeously, with the Spinners and Stylistics at Atlantic (and
for that matter, what Philly Int.'s other arranger, Bobby Martin, was doing
with the Manhattans at Columbia) then to my taste the more general term,
Philly Soul, describes the best there ever was.
--david
