![]() ![]() Certainly the production is a bit dated, but the funky-butt moves in Crawford's soulful playing and the tough riffing of Gale more than transcend it. With arrangements by David Matthews, this set is a cooker. Crawford ever the Memphis groover, brought his own set of soul vibes to the date and fused them willingly with Taylor's penchant for the chart-emergent disco of the day. Crawford's "I Hear a Symphony" listed among its cast of players Richard Tee, Don Grolnick, Steve Khan, Bernard Purdie, Steve Gadd, vocalists Patti Austin and Frank Floyd, and guitarist Eric Gale, among others. “Everybody who contributed to the Motown recordings, everybody who was involved…what an example they set! They were wonderful people and wonderful musicians, and we’re fortunate to still have such a marvelous orchestra today.Hank Crawford's June 1975 date was an attempt to swing for the same fences that cats like Grover Washington had sailed over the year before with "Mister Magic" and had crossed again a month before with "Feels So Good." Creed Taylor and his Kudu label scored big with Washington in what was the real precursor to smooth jazz. ![]() “ are fun, they’re meaningful,” says Greg Staples. In the years since then, many Motown artists have trekked to Orchestra Hall and other venues to perform alongside the DSO, thankfully with a bit more room available than the cramped digs of the Snake Pit! building still stands, and now houses the Motown Museum. Motown Records packed up and relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, but the original Hitsville U.S.A. even released their own album on Motown in 1970: Catalog number MS722/M1180, titled Strung Out under the name “Gordon Staples and the String Thing.” Other DSO musicians who recorded at Motown include violinists Alvin Score, James Waring, Lillian Downs, Linda Snedden Smith, Richard Margitza, Virginia Halfmann, and Zinovi Bistritzky violists Anne Mischakoff, David Ireland, Edouard Kesner, Meyer Shapiro, and Nathan Gordon cellists Italo Babini, Edward Korkigian, Marcy Schweickhardt, and Thaddeus Markiewicz and harpists Carole Crosby and Pat Terry. I really think there must be something to this thing they call the ‘Detroit Sound,’ because it is different.” “I heard someone say, if you’ve played one rock session, you’ve played them all. “It’s not easy, I’ll tell you that!” Staples remarked in a Detroit News article in 1969. Tales of the DSO-Motown connection sound almost mythical today, but they’re true-on many a night, after finishing up a performance with the DSO, Staples would round up his band of musicians and drive north on Woodward Avenue to Motown’s Studio A (nicknamed “the Snake Pit”), where the group would lay down orchestra parts until the wee hours of the morning. ![]() And the band plays on! There are the triumphant horn triplets in the second verse ( ba da da, ba da daa!), and the soaring strings on the instrumental break as the Temps sing “Hey, hey, hey…”įrom 1964 to 1972, the orchestra players who helped craft the Motown Sound were members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, helmed by then-DSO Concertmaster Gordon Staples. Think back to “My Girl”-after bobbing through the first verse, Ruffin begins singing that famous chorus: “I guess / You’d say…” Softly, a group of horns enter the mix, gaining a bit of volume during “What can make me feel this way?” When Ruffin croons “My girl,” the strings make their entrance, laying out a romantic vamp that continues to grow throughout the song. And perhaps the most important-though a certain bias should be noted-is the innovative use of lush, beautiful orchestral arrangements on what would otherwise be simple rock-combo pop tunes. The “Motown Sound” both defined the label’s identity and cemented its success, with a recipe using a variety of musical ingredients: bright, treble-laden mixing melodic basslines call-and-response vocals ringing, jiving tambourines. The perfectly-crafted and intensely memorable radio hit was the specialty of Berry Gordy’s Motown empire, headquartered at its heyday in the blue-and-white “Hitsville U.S.A.” house on Detroit’s West Grand Boulevard. Without even trying, your brain constructs David Ruffin’s clear, evocative voice, and the way he finesses the word “sunshine” in the first lyric. Think of “My Girl” by The Temptations: immediately you can recall the fuzzy, thumpy bass intro, followed after a few bars by a twangy guitar lick and echoing snaps. Some tunes are so catchy that we can “play” them in our head-not just the basic melody, but individual moments of musical inflection.
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