Rob Moss

Don Juan Mancha — songwriter, producer, musician and talent scout. The name ‘Don Juan’ first appeared in the Spanish play ‘The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest’ by Tirso de Molina in 1630. The plot centres on a fictional libertine who devoted his life to seducing women. The term quickly passed into literary parlance as a synonym for a ‘womaniser.’ The story itself was rewritten numerous times throughout the centuries, in a variety of forms, including many plays, a poem by Byron, an opera by Mozart and a social satire by George Bernard Shaw, ‘Man and Superman.’ Don Juan Mancha’s legacy may not have the same longevity or notoriety as his famous namesake, but it remains a lasting testament to a long and distinguished career that spanned the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. His father’s Spanish roots provided all names for him and his brother Pedro. Mancha’s work with artists like Wilson Pickett, Edwin Starr, Betty Lavette, Ike and Tina Turner plus scores of others, for labels like Motown, Golden World, Thelma, Scepter and others, at numerous studios across America made him a popular and well known figure on the music scene, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. Don Juan Mancha Although he is best known as a prolific songwriter, he also produced and arranged music, sang and played, and undertook various management roles. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he didn’t restrict himself to working in one city or region, but travelled extensively throughout the country to promote his songs, record, produce and arrange, building up an extensive network of contacts, colleagues and co workers along the way. Detroit was always home however, and it was in the Motor City that he produced his best work — with an array of local artists, either on his own or in collusion with some of the most talented songwriters and performers of the era. For ‘Rare soul’ enthusiasts his body of work contains some of the finest, and most sought after, material by the likes of Jack Montgomery, Martha Star, Just Brothers, Billy Kennedy, Billy Hambric, Honey Bees, Wilson Pickett and scores of others, many of whom he discovered. Don Mancha’s teenage years largely comprised of schoolwork, singing and learning to play music, and a two-year stint in the U.S. Air Force. By the time he’d completed his military service, in 1960, the local music scene in Detroit, led by the early successes of Motown, was evolving into a vibrant and potentially lucrative environment. His first serious encounter with entertainment came in high school, as he clearly recalled “ We had a vocal group back then that we called ‘The Delrays’. Barrett Strong was our lead singer. I came up with a song called ‘Funny that’s what I want’ that we would do. I played piano and even auditioned for ‘Popcorn’ Wylie but that didn’t happen. I would do shows with the Delrays, but, to be real honest, I didn’t like singing and I didn’t really like the lifestyle. Even back then, I liked writing better, and working with artists and the musicians. I wrote a song called ‘Misery’ that I gave to Barrett and we took it over to Motown and recorded it on him. I guess that was the first song I ever did that I got paid for. Robert Bateman engineered that session and Sonny Sanders was there too with Popcorn and some of the others guys I would work with a lot in future days.” If Mancha thought his career as a songwriter and producer would continue after the Air Force he was mistaken. “When I came out of the Service my buddy ‘Mack’ Rice called me to come and audition for his group, The Falcons. I guess Joe Stubbs had left and they were looking for a replacement. Mack had hooked up with Robert West at a company called Lupine, so I went over there. To start with they wanted me to sing. Robert cut a record on me, a thing called ‘Hong Kong’, which didn’t get released, but I just wanted to work with artists and write, so I signed a management contract and that’s when Mack found Wilson Pickett and we did ‘I found a love’. It was my song but I didn’t get a credit. I played piano on the session and Mack brought a guitarist in. They rest of the players were from Dayton, Ohio. They named them the Ohio Untouchables on the record. They went on to become the Ohio Players.” ‘I found a love’ became a huge national hit for the Falcons in 1962, and although Wilson Picket stayed with the group initially, he eventually joined a mini defection of personnel to join the fledgling Correctone set up over on Michigan Avenue. This included Bob Bateman, Sonny Sanders and ‘Popcorn’ Wylie who had all left Motown around the same period and Don Mancha. He has happy recollections of his time at Correctone. “The label and studio was owned by Wilbur Golden. He was primarily a gangster I guess you’d say. He didn’t really care whether we had a hit. He put a lot of money into it because he used it as a ‘picnic’ — a place to show off to all his friends. He probably laundered dirty money too, but we didn’t care ‘cause he paid us well. We had Theresa Lindsey, Pickett, Gino Washington, the Pyramids, Danny Woods and the first artist I worked on there, Lillian Dorr. I did an answer song to ‘If you need me’ called ‘I need you’ Pickett was on a contract with the Falcons but he was always his own man and did what was in his own best interest. I was right in time with him when we joined Correctone. We did a single on him at there, ‘Let me be your boy’ that was later leased to Verve, who put it out again when he got hot in ’65, and we all worked on ‘If you need me’ with him. But Pickett worked in spite of himself and with ‘If you need me’ he blocked his own action. He went out on the road with the Falcons to New York where he did a deal with Lloyd Price to put the record out on his own Double L label, then sold the song to Solomon Burke who recorded it at Atlantic, so they both had it on the charts at the same time. Lloyd Price gave him a Cadillac to try and get him to break the management deal he had with Wilbur Golden, but he wouldn’t sign it so Lloyd Price took the Cadillac back! I did a deal with Lloyd too around that time on a Detroit blues artist, Buddy Lamp that he put out on his label.” (My tears b/w Thank you love) Although ‘If you need me’ was only minor hit for Wilson Pickett, in the face of the better promoted Solomon Burke version, it did bring him to the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records in New York, particularly when the follow up ‘It’s too late’ made some noise too. Mancha clearly remembered the sequence of events. “Things weren’t really happening for Pickett around that time and he became desperate. He was having to pay for his own sessions at Correctone, which led to him being pretty disillusioned with Mr. Golden and his staff. He didn’t feel any allegiance to them and started negotiating with Atlantic behind their backs. I went to New York with him in early 1964 when he finalised his deal. I’d written a song with him called ‘For better or worse’ and they used it as the B side to his remake of ‘I found a love’ that he cut for Atlantic.” Back in Detroit, Mancha became involved in another fledgling music operation that would eventually provide competition for Motown’s domination. “Wilbur Golden had lost his shirt on Correctone. He’d lost his wife, lost contact with his family. Lucky for him, Wingate bought him out. He gave him some money and took the artists’ contracts, equipment, everything, but he wanted a bigger building so he bought the plot on Davison. It’s kinda funny that Wingate called it Golden World ‘cause the ‘Golden’ was actually Wilbur! Wingate was into the numbers racket and was well connected. He looked like Idi Amin and wore these baggy suits so no one knew what was in his pockets. The first thing I did for him was on Sue Perrin in New York, then we did ‘Deep freeze’ on the Adorables. That was Pat Lewis’ group. We did that at United Sound on three tracks — one vocal, two for music. Robert Bateman was a genius at placing mikes to get the best sound and he showed me how to do it and we reckoned it sounded just like a Motown record. Then I did Freddie Gorman sessions there too. ‘Take me back’ and ‘Can’t get you out of my mind’ were what we called ‘sneak’ sessions. They were recorded at 6 am ‘cause we had to wait for the musicians we wanted to come in when no one could see ‘em. We waited up all night to do that session. Before Wingate purchased Golden World, all of the records we cut were done at United. His investment, and the faith he put in people like ‘Popcorn’ and Bob Hamilton, paid off big time too when the Relections hit with ‘Just like Romeo and Juliet’. That record helped launch the whole operation really.” Bob D’Orleans was commissioned by Ed Wingate to fit out the new studio with the latest ‘state of the art’ equipment, but the installation didn’t run as smoothly as hoped. “I remember the first day in there. Bob and his people had wired it wrong, or something, and when they turned the power on everything started shaking. The glass window in the control room that looked out over the studio started vibrating. I remember Al Hamilton was there with his brother Bob, and he shouted ‘She’s gonna blow!’ and moved outside real quick. Wingate came in and just grabbed the big tape wheels and ran off with them. That was so funny.” When normality was restored success quickly followed. “ I was writing with Bob Hamilton around that time and Edwin Starr came up from Cleveland. He’d just got back from service in Germany. We did a thing together called ‘Oh how happy’ but I hated it and gave him my writers’ share. It was a big mistake ‘cause it hit big with a white group (Shades of Blue) he gave it to but I just thought it was junk. Around the same time, he hit with ‘Agent double O soul’ and I became his tour manager. Luther Dixon We were in New York with Edwin and that’s where I first met Luther Dixon. He’d had a lot of hits on people like the Shirelles and Chuck Jackson. He was working with Betty Lavette on sessions for Nate McCalla at Bell Sound and was looking for songs. Bob Hamilton and me came up with ‘I feel good (all over)’ and she cut that. Luther wanted more songs from me so that’s when we worked with an artist he had called Billy Hambric. Luther used two of my songs on that session ‘I found a true love’ and ‘She said goodbye’ but they didn’t pan out like he wanted. Luther got to work with the Platters but he wasn’t sure which direction to take them in so I convinced him to come to Detroit and work with them there. We had a lot of great studios, some of the best session musicians and songwriters, arrangers and producers everywhere. I hooked him up with Popcorn and they hit it off straight away. Luther loved it in Detroit ‘cause it was like one big family. Everyone knew each other and it was good times. Golden World was the best place I worked at ‘cause of the camaraderie of the people there. I met some incredible people there too — people I stayed friends with. Guys like Mike Terry, Fred Bridges, all the Hamilton boys (Robert ‘Rob Reeco’, Albert ‘Al Kent’ and Eugene ‘Ronnie Savoy), Mr. Wingate and so many others.” Mancha & Kent Another operation that utilised Mancha’s skills was a label set up by the parents of Berry Gordy’s first wife, Thelma Coleman in 1962, ‘Thelma’s Records’ later changed to ‘Thelma’. “ Mr. And Mrs. Coleman (Robert and Hazel) had seen Berry Gordy, their ex son in law, become successful and thought that they could do it too. Don Davis, who I’d known from way back, brought me in. The Colemans depended on Don ‘cause he had the musical expertise and knew a lot of people. He was a musician on call and played on a lot of sessions — he played everywhere, even on Motown sessions. He also had aspirations to be Berry Gordy, even before Berry! I was doing so much freelancing around that time (1965/66) that I was all over the place. Mancha and McMurray Don introduced me to Clay McMurray who was just starting out and we hit it off straight away. We did sessions with Billy Kennedy, and I remember thinking that ‘Groovy generation’ was gonna be a stone smash. When I got with Clay, I already had the tracks ‘cause I’d already cut them. I would get an idea in my head, play the chords out to the arranger and then he would write them out for the musicians and then we’d record it. I’d take the finished master tape away with me ‘cause I’d paid for the session. I don’t think anyone else worked like that, but that’s the way I did it. I never knew who the track was for or what the lyrics would be until I came to work with a vocalist. If I came across an act I wanted to record I would just take them into a studio to dub the vocals over the track. Sometimes it would take two to three days for a singer to get a song. Most of them didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Don Davis and Mr. Coleman put Clay and me with Billy Kennedy and Emanuel Laskey to start with and we worked on the lyrics together. We did ‘Sweet lies’ on Emanuel and we used the same track on ‘I’m lonely’ on Martha Star, which was good for me ‘cause I got two royalty cheques. Emanuel was good to work with ‘cause he’d got such clear diction and he’d got a great voice. A lot of other cats would mumble but he was clear and real easy to work with. We’d always record him in the morning when his voice was soft. I wrote ‘Peace loving man’ for him. I liked Martha Star too. She did one of my songs, ‘Love is the only solution’. That was an ‘acid’ song. I was high as a kite on acid when we did that —that’s why there is all that crazy psychedelic noises in it. I swore I would never do that again, and I never did.” When Thelma Records finally wound up operations Mancha had already moved on. “I really liked Robert and Hazel Coleman. We became good friends, but I couldn’t stay in one place all the time. I was doing so much freelancing I was always on the move. I went to Chicago or New York — wherever they needed me. But they had a good operation. I think they just ran out of money in the end. Some great talent got their start with the Colemans. Norman Whitfield started there and so did Richard Street. Some of their first sessions were recorded at Motown too you know. Berry and Thelma got along, even after they split up, and I know Berry would let her use the studio.” Mancha’s frequent travelling resulted in professional liaisons that eventually turned into business opportunities. One such meeting occurred in New York when he met Johnny Terry. “He was with the Drifters when I first met him. I was with Edwin’s tour. He told me he really wanted to produce and write for other acts. He was from Detroit so coming home for him wasn’t a problem. Around the same time I’d got with a business partner called Don Montgomery. He was a gangster — a lot of small labels were either set up or funded by gangsters, not only in Detroit, but in other cities too, because they had excess money. Don would refer to himself as a ‘goodwill ambassador’! We set up Empire Productions and that was a real good time. Don didn’t care what stuff cost. He just wanted the best, so we had the best musicians, arrangers, studios and whatever we needed. I always used the local musicians ( now collectively known as the ‘Funk Brothers’) ‘cause they picked stuff up so quickly and that could save you a lot of money in wasted studio time. Just Brothers - Jimmy and Frank Bryant One of the first things we did was on one of Johnny’s acts, the Just Brothers. They had a sound that was unique, kinda the opposite of Sam and Dave, a lighter harmonic sound. We did one of my songs, ‘Carlena’. It was actually about my girl at the time. We were real close and had a child together. Her name was ‘Carlean’ but we changed it so it had an extra syllable to fit with the chorus. I worked with one of Eugene Hamilton’s (Ronnie Savoy) acts then too. They were two guys from Cleveland called Taurus and Leo — that was their birth signs. I did ‘I ain’t playing baby’. Then we did the Honey Bees too. They were a group I saw singing in a club one night. I wrote ‘Let’s get back together’ for them with Edwin. That’s when Johnny and me started producing. I did some songs for LeBaron Taylor too on one of his acts, Chalfontes. He named them after a street in Detroit he liked the sound of but no one could say it properly so we had to explain how to say it on the record label. I did a couple of tunes for him but he only credited me with one of them (Confessin’ my love for you)” Of all his achievements, the material Mancha wrote for the artist known as ‘Jack Montgomery’ arouses the most excitement. “I first saw him singing in a club in Windsor, Canada just over the Detroit River. I was over there to see the taping of a TV show, Robin Seymour’s ‘Swingin’ Time’ and his voice just knocked me out. He had a real natural talent and was very sophisticated. He was 19 when I met him and was training to be a draughtsman. When we started planning, we knew we had to change his name. It was Marvin Jones, but we thought that sounded too black if we were going to get airplay on white radio. So we settled on ‘Jack’ from Jack Kennedy, who we all liked, and we used Don’s last name to come up with ‘Jack Montgomery’. We did the same thing with Clyde Wilson, who was a hell of a songwriter, but he wanted to record too. He was a great singer. Don Davis and LeBaron were trying to come up with names that sounded less black. One of the names they considered was ‘Corey Strickland’! That’s how desperate they were. In the end they asked me if I minded them using my last name and I said ‘Sure’ so they added ‘Steve’ and that’s how he got his name. The songs we did on Jack Montgomery were the best I ever wrote, and he co wrote most of the songs with me. We did ‘Dearly beloved’ first, with Dennis Coffee and Mike Theodore arranging. It was the first arrangement they had ever done and man did they nail it. We recorded that session at United with the top sessions guys and the Detroit Symphony. That was the first time he had ever recorded and he picked it up quickly. The other songs we did, ‘Do you believe it’ and ‘Never leave me’ were just as good but we only used ‘Do you believe it’ on the B-side of ‘Dearly beloved’. Johnny had contacts in New York. He knew Florence Greenberg who ran Scepter/Wand and he did a deal with her to distribute it too. Jack Montgomery(Marvin Jones), Jay Davis and Johnny Terry We did another session with him too on a song I wrote with Fred Bridges, ‘Don’t turn your back on me’. Man, I really loved that song especially the way he sang it. I can remember teaching him the song with his brother in law, Jay Davis (of the Tempos) and he really got into it when we recorded it.” Sadly, things turned awry between Mancha and Terry that eventually ended Jack Montgomery’s short career. “ I guess I was too laid back for him and he didn’t like my style. Johnny was talking in his ear, promising him the big time and all that stuff and that’s when they split from me. It was a real error of judgement for Jack going off with Johnny especially when Johnny ran off with the tapes we had left in the can. Johnny spoke to Uni and got a deal for a release on one of their labels (Revue) on a song I had written with Jack called ‘Baby baby take a chance on me’. They only had the vocal and the track but that was enough I guess. Don Montgomery was real mad and wanted to give them both a ‘spanking’ but I knew it wouldn’t sell ‘cause I could put a block on it, and I convinced him to back off. I made a few calls to DJs and distributors I knew and told them what had happened and they wouldn’t touch it. I sure saved Johnny from a whooping. It was real sad, the way that went down ‘cause he was a hell of a talent and would have broken big in time. He had too much talent.” Marvin Jones died in 1982 of complications associated with diabetes. By 1967 Mancha found himself shuttling between Detroit and Chicago. “ I had two homes back then — one in Detroit and one in Chicago. I started writing with Harry and Mary McNeil who were really talented songwriters. We did some songs for the Soul Twins in Detroit and Darrow Fletcher over in Chicago. They were good sessions —I had Donny Hathaway on piano and I used Phil Upchurch too. Around that time my good buddy Mike Terry had been signed by Epic to write and record some of their acts and he asked me if I’d got anything he could use. Fred Bridges and me had written a thing called ‘Gone but not forgotten’ that Mike used on one of his artists (Johnny Robinson) I’d known Mike since the really early days. He was around in Popcorn’s first band and was pulled in to Motown at the very start playing his baritone. He had a unique sound that other sax players just couldn’t get. He was one of the true ‘Funk Brothers’ — he would sit with them and play his frills while they were laying down the rhythm track, then he would play on the horn parts later too. His horn became part of the rhythm section ‘cause Berry wanted a baritone to be right in the mix — they all knew that. We were like brothers. He was a genius, really quietly spoken but real funky too. A funky quiet guy! He left Motown in 1967 and they couldn’t replace him. If you look at the songs they were doing after he left, there is no more baritone sax on them. I guess he got frustrated ‘cause they wouldn’t let him do anything else but play his horn. He wanted to write, arrange and produce too but there was no opportunity with all the people they had there so he did his own thing. Whenever I used him to arrange he was always on the money and he had such a distinctive baritone sound we all used him on our sessions. Him and Jack Ashford set up a production company (Pied Piper) when they left Motown but Jack screwed Mike over when he got with Shelley Haims and they got a deal with a major (RCA). That’s when he got with Epic in Chicago, around ’68 I believe. He also arranged an album for Ollie (McLaughlin) on Barbara Lewis in Chicago and I gave Ollie a song that that project called ‘The stars’ that they liked. ” As the 1960s progressed into the early 1970s the scope and range of Mancha’s influence grew. In 1969 he headed south to work in Memphis with the Dynamics at Tommy Cogbill’s American Sound Studio. “I got to know a lot of guys from Memphis over the years, especially being out on the road with Edwin, including Darryl Carter, who became a close friend. We wrote a couple of things together. That’s what it was like back then. If you met someone who wrote songs like Darryl, and man, he wrote a ton of songs for lots of artists, you sat and wrote with them. Don Davis had some connections down there too, with Al Bell at Stax. Mack Rice was down there, and of course there was Pickett. It was a lot more laid back in the South, especially when they recorded. We’d be trying to get the tracks finished as soon as we could in Chicago or Detroit or New York, but down there they just worked on it ‘till they got what they wanted. The Dynamics were managed by Ted White, who was married to Aretha and he had contacts with Atlantic through her. I think it was Jerry Wexler’s idea to record them in Memphis. They used two of my songs on their album, ‘Too proud to change’ and ‘Love that I need’. I was doing a lot of freelancing back then. That’s when I started going to LA a lot more. I’d known Ike Turner from the old days and when he asked me to help him with ‘Nutbush City Limits’ I did. That was a smash. I wrote some real good songs on Tina Turner but they didn’t use ‘em. I got to work with Ike Turner’s band, ‘Family Vibes’ later too. We hit with ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. Loretta Kendrick Mickey Stevenson had moved down there from Motown. He set up Venture Records with Clarence Paul and I’d hang with those guys too. I actually helped them get a lead singer for a group they put together called the Naturelles ‘cause I’d done a song on a girl out of Detroit called Loretta Kendrick, which I didn’t put out, but they heard her and liked what she did, so they put her with the group. In fact Clarence Paul actually sings a line in her song. I wrote that song with Dick Cooper who was also a prolific songwriter.” The record, ‘My feelings keep getting in the way’ was eventually released on Hayley Records in UK in 1999 to critical acclaim. Another unreleased Mancha composition, that saw the light of day around the same time, was a tribute to Marvin Gaye that he wrote following his untimely passing in 1984 — ‘Thank you for the songs Marvin’.“ I’d known Marvin since the early days back in Detroit and really felt it when he passed. I wrote it not long after he died and recorded it on Darryl Carter’s nephew Tim Carter, but I figured it was too soon after his death to put it out, and felt it might look like we were cashing in so I kept it in the can and kinda forgot about it.” The secret, if there is one, to Don Juan Mancha’s incredible ability to weave emotions, feelings and sentiments into his songs is probably best summed up by the man himself. “All my songs were heartfelt. I couldn’t have done them if I hadn’t been in situations or experienced them for myself. I met a lot of different people and went through a lot of different times — good and bad, and that’s what I drew from. I was close with my brother Pedro and we wrote some things together, but it was the same thing. We couldn’t make it up. It had to have happened.” From a purely business point of view, expediency and efficiency seemed to prevail. “As a freelancer, I was always thinking that if a song came to me I had to get it down on paper and on tape, so that I wouldn’t forget it, and then try to get it with someone as soon as I could. I was always recording tracks so that if someone wanted a song I only had to add the lyrics. I always had a slew of quarter inch tapes with tracks on with me, wherever I went so that I was ready.” Although Mancha wrote with scores of talented writers he wouldn’t work with just anyone. “I passed on working with a lot of people. I wouldn’t work with people I didn’t like or thought I couldn’t work with. I didn’t prostitute myself just to make a buck.” Don Juan Mancha passed away in Detroit on 9th June 2011. Rob Moss Feb 2013 http://www.hayleyrecords.co.uk

PAUL RISER - MBA (Motown’s Brilliant Arranger) The importance of the arranger in the musical process, whatever the genre, cannot be overstated …or underestimated. The arranger translates the basic structure of a song, or piece of music, into a format that musicians can play, while improvising and embellishing the original concept into a completed creation. The American Federation of Musicians defines musical arrangement as “ …the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include re harmonization, paraphrasing and/or the development of a composition so that it fully represents the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structure.” As Berry Gordy’s fledgling Motown company became more and more successful into the early 1960s, the need for accomplished, classically-trained virtuosos, capable of transforming basic musical ideas into polished, commercially viable product, became essential. As Gordy himself put it, “Many songwriters and producers, myself included, lacked a lot of formal music education. When it came time to merge all these different elements we looked for help from the arrangers we had brought into the company.” One of the first to scale this mantle was Dale Warren, who had been recruited by his aunt (Gordy’s second wife) Raynoma to arrange strings, from a local music conservatory where he had been classically trained as a violinist. Like any professional organisation, Motown relied on its own network of contacts to identify and attract talented personnel, and when the pool of session musicians required a second trombone, Warren suggested a precocious teenage protégé he knew from his days as a member of the Cass Technical High School Symphony Orchestra — Paul Riser. The significance of Riser’s recruitment to the Motown staff would eventually have considerable, and far-reaching, consequences for the company specifically, and for popular music, in general. In a career that spanned the decades, Paul Riser has, almost single handedly, elevated an art form struggling to gain respectability, from the inane to the immortal. Raynoma Gordy described him as “ …gifted beyond belief, he emerged as the man most responsible for the gorgeous arrangements that were born in the classic Motown days.” And Berry Gordy recognised him as “ …one of Motown’s all time great arrangers, who was best known for his string and horn arrangements that merged classical traditions into Motown funk.” Performers, players and production staff paid homage too … yet it all could have been so different. The entry requirements at Cass Technical High School, Detroit, in all disciplines, were so high, as to only admit the very best students. It was known as a ‘magnet’ school. Cass graduates were not required to complete College Admission Tests at Michigan universities, such was the high academic esteem in which the school was held, and in most departments, new entrants were hand-picked. Paul Riser had reached such a high standard of musical competence, discipline and understanding by the time he left junior high school, at age 15, that his attendance in the music department at Cass was inevitable. As he recalls those times, the happy memories return, “I dedicated myself to music throughout elementary and high school and I had some harsh taskmasters teaching me in both places, namely Dr. Harold Arnoldi, Dr. Harry Begian and Dr. Michael Bistritzky. I practiced incessantly on the trombone, though I loved the trumpet and cello too. The cello is probably my favourite instrument. All my learning centred on classical music and the incredible discipline required mastering its many aspects. My goal was to play in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as First Chair.” By the age of 13, Riser experienced his own epiphany. “ It was such an incredible experience to realise that I could finally, not only play music properly, but read it and transcribe musical scores for other musicians to read. I got to play with the high school concert band and orchestra too as first trombone. That band was so good that it is still the only high school concert band to ever be inducted into the Smithsonian Institution! I also loved jazz and played in a few different local bands.” Although everything in his life looked as if it was on course to realize his dream, the fickle finger of fate (and financial necessity) intervened. “ I knew Dale Warren from Cass and one day, right out of the blue, he called to tell me that there was a paid position playing trombone at Motown and that I should come down. I knew nothing about Motown. I hated R&B and most other forms of pop music, with the exception of some of the Atlantic stuff that I’d heard my brother and sister played, people like Ruth Brown and Ray Charles, but I reluctantly agreed.” A seminal moment in music history had taken place as Riser took his place in the cramped confines of Studio A. “It was something of a shock for me to see the way the other musicians behaved. I thought a lot of them were dangerous ‘cause they would drink, get high, fight sometimes and just generally behave badly. I wasn’t used to music being performed this way, coming from the highly disciplined background I knew. They were like a brotherhood though. I sat next to George Bohanon who also played trombone, and there was Marcus Belgrave, John Trudell and Herbie Williams playing trumpet too. I found it difficult at first to assimilate. I had no ‘street smarts’ and they did. I guess they thought I was a ‘long hair’, kinda snobby and a bit stuck up. I was religious and they were gun toters! It was a real shock for me …but I must say though, I respected how dedicated they were and the fact that they all could play.” George Bohannon, Paul Riser and Herbie Williams Riser’s tenure as a full time ‘Funk Brother’ lasted just over a year. Wiser heads, including Berry Gordy himself, recognized his abilities in other areas and began to utilize him in a somewhat different role; “ I’d learned music theory at Cass so I knew how to arrange and orchestrate music into charts for different instruments. Clarence Paul is the producer of the first recording session I played on as a trombonist, which was for Little Stevie Wonder, and Norman Whitfield was the first producer I worked with as an arranger -- then it all just followed from there. I started writing rhythm charts, then horn charts and then strings. I realized it was much easier work and much more fulfilling to write than play, so I began to wean myself off the trombone and dedicate myself to being a copyist / arranger. I found writing for strings easier than anything else”. It wasn’t long before his talent as an arranger was put to the test and the pivotal point came on a Berry Gordy string session for which he had written the arrangements. “ I was really disciplined and I knew exactly what I wanted and how it should sound. Berry and the other people around Motown had faith in me so I was pretty confident. When we got to running the song down I had failed to recongize something critical to all music: accidentals! There were a lot of corrections and I knew Berry Gordy wasn’t pleased! At this point, writer / producer Holland-Dozier-Holland called Berry down and told him to get rid of me, but Berry just told them all to cool off and allow me to resume things the following day. When we got back, the session went fine and, career-wise things began to roll successfully from then on. It shows what great vision Berry Gordy had to keep me around.” Ultimately, Riser’s talent ensured that musicians and producers alike trusted him and relations improved greatly, especially when he produced hits. As much as he contributed to sessions, the experience he gained, in return, was invaluable. “Yes, I learned a lot about the recording process at Motown, especially what it took to make a hit record. Berry always wanted us to capture the listener in the first few seconds for instance. That’s why I came up with that hook at the start of ‘Dancing in the Street’; and we did that all the time. We used to ‘double’ instruments too — maybe strings and the piano, or the piano and vibes. It depended on the song and what the producer wanted. In the early 60’s, Motown wasn’t a union company and we were paid less than the Union rate; we got $2.50 per song! But we didn’t mind because we were enjoying it. It was a labour of love. Money wasn’t that important back then. There was no time limit on a song either — we would go to 20 or 30 takes on some occasions with no pressure. On average we would finish a song in 8 to 10 takes. I realised how good the Funks were too, especially how they picked new things up so quickly. I only realised this when I went to other studios in different cities. Many of the musicians and producers in those places found my arrangements too difficult, or would take a long time to learn their parts, but the Funks never complained about them. They liked the challenge I think. We were all kinda anonymous at that time too. There were very few credits given out on records or albums and the Funks were kept close to the studio. If Berry hadn’t have done that we would have had other companies coming in to try and convince us to leave — he was smart that way.” As Motown productions became more sophisticated, the complexity of Riser’s creativity developed in tandem. He was given more and more intricate song material by producers and given the opportunity to work on full orchestrations with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. “I loved doing orchestrations, particularly with strings. String players are usually better disciplined than horn players and certainly more than rhythm guys - and that suited me. The producers didn’t put any pressure on me. They would give me something to work on and just say ‘Go and do your thing’ which I appreciated because it gave me a lot more confidence. A lot of the time I got to add ‘sweetening’, as they called it, onto songs. Many times the rhythm, and sometimes horns, had already been recorded and I would put strings on top — that’s what ‘sweetening’ was, strings. A good example of that was ‘My Girl’ for the Temptations. Smokey had given it to them without strings but they thought it was ‘square’ and they didn’t want to do it. In fact they hated it! I put the strings on and everything changed. The producer usually decided whether to add strings or not and that depended how they interpreted the song. I really got into sweetening when Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong started stretching out with their material (i.e. “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” & “Masterpiece”). Same with Stevie Wonder and Smokey. They would usually give me a piano demo and a scratch vocal or maybe a bass and drum track with piano as a demo and I would go away and come up with the rest. I would usually write an arrangement as close to the recording session start time as possible so that it was fresh in my mind. The musicians would be expected to ‘sight’ read my arrangements, that is, play them on the spot, not take them home to learn them, but pick it up right there in the studio, on the session! That’s why I’ve got so much respect for studio musicians. I’ve always liked to use 17 string pieces in the studio — nine violins, four violas, three cellos and a harp. Most of the time I wouldn’t hear the lyrics or vocals at all. I tended to arrange the parts around the rhythm chord structure. One exception was ‘Baby I’m For Real’ which I really love. On that one I tried to arrange the music to converse with the lyrics, like the instruments are talking to each other.” The arrival of Valerie Simpson and Nick Ashford at Motown in 1966, to, almost exclusively, write for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, elevated the standard of musical technique and complexity even higher, which Riser readily admits. “ They introduced Motown to a symphonic component which elevated the output above a lot of other companies, and they were two of the greatest songwriters in the business. Not only did they elevate Motown, but they elevated me. It allowed me to open up musically as my training had dictated. Their material created challenges for all of us and made us all more creative. In fact, it was one of their songs that remains one of my favourites to this day — ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. We’d done it on Marvin and Tammi but then I got the chance to completely revitalise it on Diana Ross in 1970. When Valerie first played her concept of it on the acoustic piano I realized it would be a challenging piece, especially with the dynamic changes and the sudden key change at the end, but when we had finished it everyone seemed to like it, so that was very satisfying. The Funks laid down the rhythm tracks in Detroit but all the horns, strings and the vocals were done in New York.” Although many critics, at the time, thought Riser’s arrangement on the song merited more formal recognition, it was only nominated for a Grammy in 1971 in the ‘Best Female R&B Vocal Performance’ category and didn’t win, which was particularly ironic, considering the arrangement was written in the absence of vocals! He would have to wait another two years before finally winning that prestigious award, with Norman Whitfield, for ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ in the ‘Best R&B Instrumental Performance’ category. Although Paul Riser is best known for his arrangements, he boasts a considerable portfolio of song writing credits. Best known is probably ‘What Becomes of the Brokenhearted’, which became a major success for Jimmy Ruffin in 1966 and went on to become one of the most ‘covered’ songs in the Motown catalogue. His memory of the song’s conception is interesting, “Most arrangers will use a piano when writing arrangements, but I never do. I use a piano only to compose. I had this series of chords I’d written and I would carry them around with me not really knowing what to do with them. One day I had a session for the Spinners with two producers, William Weatherspoon and James Dean. It was a three-hour session, which was usually enough time to do three songs. Spoon and Dean had two songs, which the Funks completed in two hours, but we still had an hour left so I asked them if they wanted to hear these chords I had. Motown was like a Research and Development department all the time — people were always trying new things and experimenting. So they agreed and the Funks played Spoon and Dean the chords. No title or lyrics, just the chords as I had written it. Weatherspoon and Dean came up with the melody and the lyrics and I did all the music. Jimmy Ruffin put the vocals on. He was one of the quickest guys to pick up a song, that’s why producers used to use him to demonstrate songs for other artists. “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” became one of Motown’s biggest songs.” Paul Riser and McKinley Jackson Paul Riser was contracted to Motown between 1965 and 1973, in which time he provided arrangements for, literally, thousands of songs and musical works, including hits for artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Supremes, Gladys Knight and the Pips and scores more. His classical foundation and the experience gathered at Motown catapulted his reputation around the world which resulted in him providing arrangements and musical direction for a list of artists as diverse as the Carpenters, Phil Collins, Doobie Brothers, Tom Jones, Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, Quincy Jones, Luther Vandross, Carly Simon plus many more. In more recent times he was instrumental in creating hit albums for artists like Raphael Saadiq and R.Kelly, and continues to work and teach in a variety of settings around America and Europe. His musical legacy to the world may never be eclipsed. Rob Moss Oct 2012