woodward
01-25-2013, 05:00 PM
Al Albrams was interviewed by Suzi Quatro on 1/24/2013. It is a 30 minute interview and you can listen to the interview which is playable for the next 6 days.
Here are some excerpts from the interview.
When he was a boy, Al Abrams used to smuggle a radio under his bedclothes so that he could listen to his beloved blues and R&B. The white son of a Jewish family - his father had one of the first integrated businesses in Michigan - Al would regularly make the unusual trip across town to buy blues records from the shop where John Lee Hooker worked and spent all his free time hanging around radio stations.
Which is how - as this unsung hero explains to Suzi - Al came to be the very first employee of Motown Records, engaged by Berry Gordy as his PR man after an epic feat of radio plugging!
Al was right at the heart of Motown during its most creative period, and his natural guile produced some notable coups for the nascent soul legends.
How do you overcome the racism of one magazine editor to get Diana Ross and The Supremes on the front cover of a TV listings magazine? Let him believe you lost ownership of the company in a card game!
The full story & many others are uncovered by Suzi as she meets Al Abrams - one of the most influential people in music history that you've never heard of!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01pz1hb
Here are some excerpts from the interview.
When he was a boy, Al Abrams used to smuggle a radio under his bedclothes so that he could listen to his beloved blues and R&B. The white son of a Jewish family - his father had one of the first integrated businesses in Michigan - Al would regularly make the unusual trip across town to buy blues records from the shop where John Lee Hooker worked and spent all his free time hanging around radio stations.
Which is how - as this unsung hero explains to Suzi - Al came to be the very first employee of Motown Records, engaged by Berry Gordy as his PR man after an epic feat of radio plugging!
Al was right at the heart of Motown during its most creative period, and his natural guile produced some notable coups for the nascent soul legends.
How do you overcome the racism of one magazine editor to get Diana Ross and The Supremes on the front cover of a TV listings magazine? Let him believe you lost ownership of the company in a card game!
The full story & many others are uncovered by Suzi as she meets Al Abrams - one of the most influential people in music history that you've never heard of!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01pz1hb