What Happened With 4 Tops & Motown?
motown67
4,513 Posts
Anyone know the story of how the 4 Tops ended up leaving Motown? It seemed like early on they were going hit for hit with the Temptations, and most of their tunes were written by Holland-Dozier-Holland. That writing team ended up leaving Motown, and the 4 Tops later switched to ABC-Dunhill. What happened there? Why didn't Motown try to keep one of their top hitmakers?
By the way those later Motown releases/early ABC-Dunhill records are not to be slept on. They were still putting out some quality Soul even if they weren't making the top of the charts as much.
By the way those later Motown releases/early ABC-Dunhill records are not to be slept on. They were still putting out some quality Soul even if they weren't making the top of the charts as much.
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And I agree about the later records, I've been playing out both "Feel Free" and "I Can't Hold on Much Longer" for the last year or so, and they both sound really nice to me these days.
I think you may have answered your own question. They weren't hitting as hard as they were prior to HDH's leaving. And I'm sure if they had stayed, they might have wound up being semi-neglected like Junior Walker. So a change was in order.
Gladys Knight & the Pips left Motown a year after the Four Tops did. I remember reading an interview where they felt that between Motown leaving Detroit and getting in the movie business, they weren't feeling like an indispensable priority anymore. So they split for Buddah. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the Four Tops' story.
The Jacksons were gone by '75.
Stevie is still there?
Stevie never left.
Even Smokey bolted at one point.
Smokey was a lifer
by the early 70s Berry Gordy was too busy fucking Diana Ross & trying break her as an 'actress' to pay attention to any other artist in his stable
I wanna know how white rock bands felt signing w/ Rare Earth Records and who was behind the sub.
Ive always wondered if Ross had gotten the Oscar for Lady Sings the Blues, if Gordy/Motown/LA would have went down differently. Would it had really gotten out of control or would the stable/Ross & Gorday be able to harness the new found success.
Gordy was right up there in figuring out new ways to screw artists out their dough too
New Decade, new town, new medias, new musical styles, artist demanding control, artist demanding accounting.
Barry thought he could enjoy the high life and build a new empire and he did.
So old acts were of less interest to him, and they wanted to see if another label would treat them better.
I don't know the inner workings of the 4 Tops leaving.
And their 1972 single 'A Simple Game' had backing vocals by the Moody Blues :oof:
It's actually quite good.
It's a Moody Blues song, isn't it? Mike Pinder wrote it. I think it was the b-side to one of their late 60s singles.
The Tops recorded another Moody Blues song around the same time. This was a hit in the UK, but it seems it never got released in the US.
in the response to Batmon's earlier question, Motown had been signing local Detroit white garage rock acts since the early days - Nick & the Jaguars have a rare early single on Tamla - sort of a surf / rockabilly thing - in the mid 60s Motown signed the Underdogs to VIP, the Ones etc
look at the amount of Motown covers the Beatles did, tons
Naw, I'd say Stevie was the lifer, because he's never had anything on any other label.
But I do remember, at some point in the nineties, that Smokey hooked up with SKG Records or some similar major label. It was when he did that Double Good Everything album.
I understand that that was a local white rock & roll band that backed up Barrett Strong on "Money," which would explain why it sounds twangier and cruder than the Motown hits that followed.
And they kept doing that during the early Rare Earth days, with not only the band of the same name, but also Stoney & Meatloaf, Sunday Funnies, and the Power Of Zeus.
And maybe somebody could interview Rare Earth (the band), since they
Going by a piece that Rolling Stone magazine did on the band circa '73, I get the impression that they were misunderstood and that Motown was not wired for actual rock bands, even one with soul appeal.
The Rare Earth label, to its' credit, had a line on two of the most fertile rock scenes of the late sixties, Detroit and the UK. However, they seemed to get most of the third-tier bands from Detroit, couldn't break the UK acts they had., and any success that came from this new label was a fluke. The band Rare Earth actually had a pretty good heyday going between 1970-73, but they too seemed to drop off around the time Motown became a short-lived movie company.
as for 70's signings - Riot seemed designed as a "if you like War, you'll love Riot!"
re 'Money' being 'twangy' that's just how Detroit bands sounded then - check out Mary Wells 'Bye Bye Baby' - Motown's first real hit
one of the rarest Barrett Strong records is 'Lets Rock' - which was buried when 'Money' hit
'soul' wasn't a category back then, it was all Rock N Roll
I think the Underdogs could have made it under the right circumstances.
It was the later Detroit acts on the Rare Earth label that I'm skeptical about. Sunday Funnies would have headed straight for the cutout bin no matter what label they were on. (And they were originally on Hideout Records too...)
I have a Barrett Strong compilation - one of those "20th Century Masters" deals you always see - and the general aura is close to what Nathaniel Mayer was doing at the same time for Fortune, another Detroit company.