Timmy...good on ya for posting some Motown 40. I'm hoping they do a M50, but 40 was the bomb. Everybody who was alive pretty much took part in some form. Aretha tore up them songs when she sang little samples, eh? As Lil Richard said, "People had picked all the cotton that could be picked!"
[Edited 6/24/09 18:17pm]

brooksie said:

Yes Ree-Ree did.

TD3 said:

It ticks you off, don't it? It made me mad too. I'm like "a lot of your STARS came through, idiot!"

^^^ Uh oh...if M40 clips pissed y'all off, wait until Unsing airs. M40 was showing Motown in a POSITIVE light. Unsung has blundered w/ a few of their eps, but even they can't fuck up the piss off factor here. This thread gonna explode when it airs. We're in Bobby Womackville here folks.

One thing that always pissed me off was why in "Dreamgirls" Flo is always protrayed as this super huge chick. Flo in her performing years was probably smaller than Beyonce is now Berry tore down her self-esteem relentlessly. I think he was trying to nudge her to quit, but she was too stubborn for that.

I never noticed how snotty Motown folks could be until I saw the "Respect Yourself" doc on Stax. Jack Ashford managed to piss off practically everyone who left a review on Amazon. What he said about Otis Redding was just . Ya don't high hat Otis fella...ya just don't!

brooksie said:

I'm not surprised about Jack, something about him seem snotty. As for Flo, yes, she was actually very tall and statuesque, far from the heavy-set image people are now assuming she is. Speaking about Jack, I bet he wouldn't have liked my review on "Standing in the Shadows of Motown", I think I gave it a 3 or 3.5 rating on Amazon.
[Edited 6/24/09 18:52pm]

Timmy84 said:

Well the best FBs were dead by then (ie Jamerson and Papa Zita). The ones left weren't all that great and the concert was too long. Did you recall what Puffy did to "update" "I Want You Back"? Berry looked at Puffy like "if I was 30 year younger, I'd whup yo ass all over this studio"! If Berry'd ever really been hooked up w/ the mob, Puffy'd be wearing cement shoes!

Who is Jack Ashford and what do you mean we're in "Bobby Womackville"?
Also, I don't know how incendiary this Unsung will be. Tv One has been touting Motown's 50th Anniversary all year. Just saying.

scriptgirl said:

Jack Ashford is a percussionist and one of the original Funk Brothers, who were Motown's in-house band. And it's Bobby Womackville because the topic is juicy with Flo.

brooksie said:

I would love to see that. Now I think Motown can be snotty with an excuse. I would love for Berry to punch Puffy in the jaw for remixing "I Want You Back" like that!

scriptgirl said:

Jack Ashford was one of the Funk Brothers, Motown's house band. He played baritone sax, IIRC.

Bobby Womack was apart of the biggest scandal that rocked Black music in the 60s. They're going to do an Unsung on him too, BTW....so I won't spoil it too much. The simplest explanation is that he was Sam Cooke's protege and when Sam died, he married his widow like 2 months later, lived in his house, and ended up sleeping w/ Sam's daughter (his underaged step daughter). His marrying Sam's widow alone killed off his chances for much of a career that wasn't behind the scenes. Sam was gonna blow him and his brother up big. They would have been a J5 type groups years before the Jacksons came on the scene. Think of this as the Bobby Brown Whitney Houston of the 60s. Flo and Al "Grits" Green are the next biggest scandals. Old Black folks (say 60+) know these stories chapter and verse...and will tell you in a sec. They were exceptionally conservative about this kinda stuff back in those days.

Mary Wells figures in the Womack drama too. Those Womack brothers had the majik pimp sticks like Bob Marley and sons and Berry Gordy. Did you check the link? You'll see what I meant by pimp stick.

There's a rumor that Motown will do another doc. I hope it's true, TV One's touting it means little because Motown owns all their footage. They have tons of stuff in their vaults that nobody but Berry and Suzanne have access to. Berry still owns Motown Productions (the movie and film stuff ) outright.
[Edited 6/24/09 19:36pm]

I won't want to watch it if it's Berry & Suzanne controlling it (the Motown special), lol.

UNLESS it has rare footage that is.

But since Universal owns Motown, isn't that technically Universal's footage? What link do you mean? Is Bobby's brother still alive?

Timmy84 said:

You know you just wanna see Diane push Mary at M25.

brooksie said:

Why yes I do.

Those two women were the early alternate to "Desperate Housewives", two crazy-ass trainwrecks you just wanna escape but can't. You HAVE to watch. I know Flo looking down going "mmm-mmm-MMM! This is what I started? "

scriptgirl said:

Except for ONE (he had four other brothers), he has three surviving brothers (Cecil, Curtis and Friendly).

scriptgirl said:

Here's the link again:
http://www.people.com/peo...17,00.html

Yes, most of Bobby's brothers are alive...there were 5 Womack brother and they all sang together. His youngest got killed sometime in the 70s.

Universal owns Motown Records and now Jobete, but no Motown Productions wasn't sold and Berry owns it fully. It was a different entity than the record and publishing company. Berry owns "Lady Sings The Blues" outright, for example....he owns the master film. This is how it is w/ Motown Productions.
[Edited 6/24/09 20:22pm]

What? What kinda crackwhore names their kid Friendly?

scriptgirl said:

Country ass old school Black folks, not crack heads...Bobby's eldest brother was Friendly JR.

Old school country black folks names are names like Marvene, Lula Mae, Irma, shit like that.NOT friendly.

scriptgirl said:

You underestimate them girl, seriously. Friendly's not THAT odd, seriously.

Then ask his grandfather why Bobby father's named Friendly, Sr., who was a gospel singer, who then named the first of five boys Friendly, Jr. then. Besides they from CLEVELAND so it ain't just black folks from the South. We don't have any Friendlys.
[Edited 6/24/09 20:44pm]

Timmy84 said:

Ever been to Cleveland? LOL...it's da SOUF up NAWTH! Who ever said "country" was just Southern?
[Edited 6/24/09 20:46pm]

brooksie said:

Nope, I know there's some Southerners in Cleveland though. Southerners basically moved north back in the day so they were around the Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago areas. I stand corrected.

Timmy84 said:

One major positive can be said of Bobby Womack. He refused to allow Snoop Dogg to remake his song "Woman's Gotta Have It" as something dumb like "Bitch Ain't Gonna Get Shit". Bobby declined. So +1 for Mr. Womack.

brooksie said:

I heard about that, lol.

Funk brother bassist James Jamerson was a native
South Carolinian.

phunkdaddy said:

Yeah I saw that on the Funk Brothers documentary. In fact a lot of the FBs originally hailed from the South as did the original members of the Temptations.

Timmy84 said:

Which always baffles me on Motown's anti Southern bias.

brooksie said:

According to Otis Williams of the Temptations, the group were considered outsiders by Motown's staff because of their obvious Southern upbringings. They had to do everything on their own so they never really got any special treatment like the Supremes got. In fact a lot of the groups and acts were born in the South and migrated to Detroit.

That was always a story about Flo being from Mississippi. Her family was from Mississippi but she was actually born in Detroit which makes her, like Diana, a native Detroiter. Diana's Southern roots are traced in West Virginia and Alabama. Mary was born in Greenville, Mississippi. Marvin came from the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area and his parents were from Kentucky and my state, North Carolina.

Timmy84 said:

I totally believe Otis cuz you can just see the deep contempt anything 'down home' was viewed in. Berry really wanted to bury Southern culture even as far back as 3D Record Mart (ie it specialiszed in bebop for those who don't know). Until Richard Street joined, ALL the Tempts were born 'Down Souf. I've heard Berry's views on "da boos" (ie the blues) and look at how Gladys, Shorty Long, Mable John, Jr. Walker, etc were treated. The Tempts are lucky they weren't ghettoized to the "Soul" label. The worst sin in Motown was being born Down Souf.

The part that makes me so sick is how so many of the acts were ripped off because their parents were from Down Souf....more than a few had illiterate parents even if they were born Up North (see Flo). That's a huge part of how Berry got over cuz he knew just how to play the game. Almost everyone at Motown were either directly Southern "immigrants" OR were 1st gen Northerners, Berry included. Even the Jacksons are 1st gen Northerners

Maybe all this explains why Smokey and Diane got such good treatment....they were the least Southern of the bunch. I'm convinced this is why Gladys an 'em got such shabby treatment...what else can explain how they were constantly ignored and their hits sabotaged?