Motown Song Credit Database

Hey all,

I've been working on www.pfunkportal.com for the past few months, and have added a number of song credits for Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly & The Family Stone, James Brown, Zapp & Roger, and other funk groups. I've decided to switch it up a bit, and after discovering the Complete Motown Singles collection series, decided to go through Motown. My plan is to go through all fourteen volumes of that series and add to www.pfunkportal.com all the credits I can find in the booklets, on the Internet, etc. for those songs.

I understand that a lot of these credits are questionable, forgotten, lost, or even unrecoverable, but I think that with the great deal of knowledge I've seen in these forums, and the recollections of surprisingly high number of people who were present for those wonderful recordings and frequent this site, we may be able to recover and consolidate a fairly significant amount of information. And even if a large chunk of the Funk Brothers song-by-song credits are not recoverable, a great deal of the vocal information can surely be captured, and data such as every song Melvin Franklin had a feature on, for instance, would certainly be possible to gather.

If you know of any credits [[or disagree with any as I put them up), or have really any information about Motown in general, please let me know on this thread or shoot me an email at admin@pfunkportal.com. I am not by any means a Motown historian or human encyclopedia, so don't be afraid to send me something that you might think is too obvious; it's possible that I don't know it! I would also love to know of any resources [[books, websites, other music collections, etc.) anyone knows about that would help attach more credits to songs; maybe a mythical Motown song credit database already exists and I haven't yet found it!

Lastly, I'd appreciate any feedback you have about the site: any additional data that you think should be captured, any improvements that could be made to the site in general, any suggestions, etc.

I'll hopefully have the first volume up within a week, and I'll use this thread to update when I've added a new volume. Thanks everyone!

What additional information for Motown that hasn't already been done before

Are you aware of this site?

http://www.dftmc.info/

X-Town is right that there is already a very good website in existence that gives Motown song credits, I wouldn't mind if DFTMC.info included ALL recording info for each song. Often, it seems the "recording date" listed is only the final date of recording--apparently whether that is a lead vocal or a tambourine overdub--the latter type of which could take place months or years after all other recording dates took place. We know from the TCMS series that many tracks [[especially between 1965 onward) had multiple session dates. Personally, I year-credit Motown tracks to the date the [[final) lead vocal is added as that would be when a track would've been generally able to be released. That said, I would really love it if those wonderful guys at DFTMC.info would add all recording dates [[track, lead, background box, strings, horns, etc.) for each track! Hey, I'd help with data entry--let me know!

dftmc.info is a great site for all the version of a song, however, it doesn't have song credits in terms of who were the lead singers, who played what instruments, etc. On that site, there is no way to be able to tell all the songs the Adantes appeared on, or all the Marvelettes recordings that Gladys Horton sang lead on, or who played bass on "Bernadette", for example. In addition, as danman869 said, dftmc.info also only gives one recording date for each recording, and a list of all recording dates as they appear on TCMS would be nice to see.

Could be a huge undertaking. The thirst for knowledge of all things Motown knows no bounds it seems and every piece of information is useful in some way. Need to get the basics right though - Marvelettes has only one L and two Ts!

I was just trying to save you a lot of work!!

Good luck mate

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Originally Posted by mysterysinger

Could be a huge undertaking. The thirst for knowledge of all things Motown knows no bounds it seems and every piece of information is useful in some way. Need to get the basics right though - Marvelettes has only one L and two Ts!

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Whoops! Thanks mysterysinger, spelling has been corrected. Not sure how I messed that one up.

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Originally Posted by theboyfromxtown

I was just trying to save you a lot of work!!

Good luck mate

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Completely understandable and appreciated X-Town, but I oddly enjoyed doing the same thing for some of the bands I mentioned earlier. It's a great way to go through the discography of an artist, and in this case, record company! If you know of any other resources besides dftmc.info, which is definitely a great one for some of the things I'm trying to do, let me know! Thanks!

JKen don't worry about messing up the spelling of The Marvelettes name. Even Motown didn't spell it correctly on the revised album cover of their "Sing" album.

Good luck on a very worthwhile project.

JKen, I look forward to seeing your results! Thanks for putting in the time and effort!

I put up the first volume [[1959 to 1961) of The Complete Motown Singles up this evening. You can find it by clicking on the following link:

http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...253A+1959-1961

Clicking through to each track will present a page containing all the credits for that particular recording, plus the known recording dates, though for this volume the known recording dates are sparse, so a number of them are marked as being an educated guess. Feel free to let me know if I've missed anything or gotten anything wrong.

I've started work on the second volume, which should be up within the next couple of days. Thanks all for the encouragement so far.

It's very easy to use and understand. At my age, i need it to be that way! LOL

You're younger than me, so I have to agree! With the years comes even more new information, adding to the decades of memories.

So often, all is received and recalled at random. It's hard, if not impossible, to pull it all together in order.

I like what I see here.....:)

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Originally Posted by westgrandboulevard

You're younger than me, so I have to agree!

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And I'm not gonna let you forget that! LOL

Tbfxt & WGB -

Personally, I don't care what anybody says about me . . .

as long as they say I look thin!

JKen -

Best of luck with your endeavor. It's certain to be utilized and appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Methuselah2

Tbfxt & WGB -

Personally, I don't care what anybody says about me . . .

as long as they say I look thin!

JKen -

Best of luck with your endeavor. It's certain to be utilized and appreciated.

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Cos THIN is IN!

Reminds me of Diana saying...I beat I got Twiggy beat.....I wonder if folk know who Twiggy is these days!

Yes, folk certainly do know who Twiggy is these days, especially if they are female customers of Marks & Spencer......LOL

I can say I've been friends with many people for decades, through thick and through thin. And, unlike many of them, I've always been thin.....;)

[QUOTE=JKen13579;267316]I put up the first volume [[1959 to 1961) of The Complete Motown Singles up this evening. You can find it by clicking on the following link:

http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...253A+1959-1961 QUOTE]

This looks good so far - good luck with this project.

The Library of Congress catalogue lists who wrote the words and who wrote the music for each song listed. Someone has very kindly trawled the LoC files online [[they are enormous), and donated a spreadsheet of all Jobete [[and Motown-related) publications to DFTMC: that info will be added as soon as it can be managed ... I don't know if he wants to be named, but we owe him a huge debt of thanks.

As for who played on each song, there is some Motown session info retained in the archives at the AFM Detroit offices, but it is not available to the public: it contains people's addresses, incomes, social security numbers etc etc and would have to be heavily redacted - by the AFM - before they could be released. The AFM doesn't have the resources to do that. Other than that, I know of no source for such information other than those two oddly-shaped appendages we each have on either side of our heads ... the advice that you should use those objects is one of the Boy From Crosstown's most frequent contributions to this Forum!

Keith

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Originally Posted by keith_hughes

The Library of Congress catalogue lists who wrote the words and who wrote the music for each song listed. Someone has very kindly trawled the LoC files online [[they are enormous), and donated a spreadsheet of all Jobete [[and Motown-related) publications to DFTMC: that info will be added as soon as it can be managed ... I don't know if he wants to be named, but we owe him a huge debt of thanks.

As for who played on each song, there is some Motown session info retained in the archives at the AFM Detroit offices, but it is not available to the public: it contains people's addresses, incomes, social security numbers etc etc and would have to be heavily redacted - by the AFM - before they could be released. The AFM doesn't have the resources to do that. Other than that, I know of no source for such information other than those two oddly-shaped appendages we each have on either side of our heads ... the advice that you should use those objects is one of the Boy From Crosstown's most frequent contributions to this Forum!

Keith

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I realise as I get older, my ears don't work as well as they once did, so maybe I need to keep quiet in future! LOL

May I ask where the timings quoted for each song came from?

I'm pleased to see these recorded on this listing, as for some reason, they unfortunately did not appear anywhere in the song annotations accompanying the individual Complete Motown Singles books and the times you've quoted don't always concur with those printed on the actual 45 labels.

Second and third volumes are now up. Holland-Dozier-Holland is rising!

Second volume:
http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...2E+2%253A+1962

Third volume:
http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...2E+3%253A+1963

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Originally Posted by keith_hughes

The Library of Congress catalogue lists who wrote the words and who wrote the music for each song listed. Someone has very kindly trawled the LoC files online [[they are enormous), and donated a spreadsheet of all Jobete [[and Motown-related) publications to DFTMC: that info will be added as soon as it can be managed ... I don't know if he wants to be named, but we owe him a huge debt of thanks.

As for who played on each song, there is some Motown session info retained in the archives at the AFM Detroit offices, but it is not available to the public: it contains people's addresses, incomes, social security numbers etc etc and would have to be heavily redacted - by the AFM - before they could be released. The AFM doesn't have the resources to do that. Other than that, I know of no source for such information other than those two oddly-shaped appendages we each have on either side of our heads ... the advice that you should use those objects is one of the Boy From Crosstown's most frequent contributions to this Forum!

Keith

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Keith, first, thanks for your contributions to The Complete Motown Singles sets, and also for your work on dftmc.info, both of which have been immensely helpful to me so far.

That LoC information is fantastic! It's amazing how many places there are to find information about artists; it would be great though if all that information was in one place.

It's unfortunate, but completely understandable, that the AFM doesn't have the resources to go through that session information and release it to the public; that info would be excellent to know and would hopefully shed some more light on some of the unsung heroes of Motown.

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Originally Posted by motownjohnny

May I ask where the timings quoted for each song came from?

I'm pleased to see these recorded on this listing, as for some reason, they unfortunately did not appear anywhere in the song annotations accompanying the individual Complete Motown Singles books and the times you've quoted don't always concur with those printed on the actual 45 labels.

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I've used the times from the CDs themselves when viewed in iTunes, since that's the release that I'm tracking, so likely that describes the discrepancy you're seeing. The problem with times that I've found is that it could be different on the label or liner notes than it is on the LP, 45, CD, etc. Because of this, I've been less concerned with the actual track length, and instead use the time that's easiest for me to access. If the track is the same between two releases [[meaning same mono vs. stereo format, seemingly the same mix, etc.) but one track maybe has a few more seconds of silence at the end, I call them the same recording; the James Brown recordings I've added to my database are a good example of this.

Volumes 4, 5, and 6 now up:

4: http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...2E+4%253A+1964

5: http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...2E+5%253A+1965

6: http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...2E+6%253A+1966

Volume 7 to follow within the next few days.

Volume 7 now up:

http://www.pfunkportal.com/releases/...2E+7%253A+1967

All 14 volumes of the Complete Motown Singles have been added www.pfunkportal.com. To browse by volume, check out:

http://www.pfunkportal.com/artists/Various+Artists

For an easy view of the more important Motown artists of the era and their various recordings:

http://www.pfunkportal.com/collectives/Motown

Let me know if any of you have any thoughts, suggestions, etc. I assume I got a few credits wrong, or missed some, and I'd love to get them right! Thanks!

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Originally Posted by JKen13579

All 14 volumes of the Complete Motown Singles have been added

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JKen, that was quite an undertaking – a LONG, labor of love, for sure!!!