The Motown Sound: The Complete Albums, Singles & More

[RossHolloway]

Thank you EVERYONE, for their positive response to this collection. It was a labor of love that took several years to come to fruition.

In re to the puzzlement over the annotations...

Fair question, but let me be sure I got this straight - there is a hand raised about the "quirkiness" of the annotations in this set, specifically the songs on the first album that surely were recorded by vocalists but whose overdubs are not noted. If I got that right, here goes:

Anytime a basic track is recorded by one and then another artist, there is usually a long list of recording dates for each of their overdubs. That may be interesting for the history of that particular song - which for nearly every song in Motown's classic era is laid out on my colleague Keith Hughes' essential site, www.dftmc.info - but for this specific collection and this specific artist, I felt it best to focus on Earl's contributions, and not lose the story of "his" song under a barrage of info for the vocal version. Keith and I actually created a "full" set and, perhaps it's a decision down to taste or aesthetic, but they were hard to follow. Now, where it says "Track recorded xxxxx, assigned to and completed by xxxx," that means the track and the vocal were done the same day, same session; there is nothing in-between the band track date and Earl's subsequent overdub[[s).

OK?

Harry-

Thanks for responding. Just out of curiosity, who was the re-recorded 1963 track to Money done for? Did anyone record vocals for this? The notes list it as being assigned to the Vandellas, and if I remember correctly you stated that the group never recorded vocals for the track, did any artist or group ever get around to putting their vocals down to this re-recorded track? Was this a fairly routine practice, where a producer does a instrumental track, but never gets around to an artist or group adding vocals?

[hwume]

"Money" was recorded on three-track, then sat in the can for nearly two years [[21 months) until it was "bumped up" to eight-track and guitar and organ were overdubbed. That became the version on the album. It was not used by anyone else.

Producers often recorded tracks to present to an artist or artists and they wouldn't return to them for one reason or another.