Motown in the UK -- 1969

[jsmith]

A US newspaper piece on what Motown tracks were selling in the UK in 1969 ........
BTW, its the UK Top 30 POP Charts that the piece refers to ...
7241

[snakepit]

More than any other reason, I say that Tony Blackburn's morning show was the main reason that Motown product was doing so well at this time. We owe him a lot......he was very influential with regards to soul music being played to the mass pop market [[ I remember artists like Impressions, Gene Chandler, Originals, Brenda Holloway, Delfonics, and even artists such asSmokey, Edwin Starr.....Marvin Gaye, being featured.......prior to his Radio 1 show that didn't happen

[roger]

I presume you mean that didn't happen on the BBC Mr Snakepit.

Motown [[and some other Soul material) got plenty of airplay on the mid-60s offshore pirate stations and started to chart particularly heavily in the year or so after "Reach Out" and "You Can't Hurry Love" crashed into the Top 3 in October 1966.

For example here are the records that made the U.K. Top 20 in January 1967.. of the 31 entries 6 [[one fifth) were Motown ...

http://www.sixtiescity.com/charts/67chart.htm#jan

I think that one of the factors at play in early 1969 was that many of the big British "Pop" acts were recording very introspective L.Ps which had little appeal to "Pop" buyers and were effectively ignoring the singles charts. Soul/Motown and all those reissues seemed to fill the gap for a while.

Roger ..

P.S. In that list of U.S. Soul artists that you listed as being played by Mr Blackburn you've missed out TYRONE DAVIS .. I seem to recall his "Turn Back the Hands Of Time" being a record of the week, mind you that would have been in 1970. :)

[snakepit]

yes mainly BBC ....Pirates were good for Soul