Quote Originally Posted by bradburger View Post
As Bob Olhsson has pointed out in the past, from the early days of Motown [2 track tape] Berry would normally cut the band tracks first and overdub the vocals at a later date, and sometimes at different studios to where the band tracks were recorded.

Of course, there will have been a few exceptions no doubt, and even after they upgraded to the 3 track machine at 2648. [I seem to recall the recording/session notes on some of the box sets/compilations mentioned that vocals on certain tracks were cut 'live', but I might be wrong!]

But these would have been the exception to the rule, and the continued practice of overdubbing the vocals at a later time/date would be the normal at Motown especially as the demand for artists to go on tour grew, and once the 8 track machine was installed in Studio A and in use by January 1965, the normal.

As for those 'staged' sessions for TV, they are always great to watch, but are of course do not represent how tracks were produced!

Cheers

Paul
That was all my understanding, thanks.

Someone in the YouTube comments for Sorry Is A Sorry Word keeps insisting that 1) this is actual footage of the recording session, and not staged, and 2) Motown often recorded that way. Neither is true to my knowledge.