Robbk

And rightly so. As an author, I am certainly in agreement that no one should be able to give my copyrighted work away for free, when I need to sell it to earn enough money to live on it.

The US public has no taste. I LOVE their version of "Good Night Irene". That very same attitude is why we didn't get "Suspicion" onto the first (and sadly, the only) "From The Vaults" album. We were very lucky, after a lot of begging, to get a Spinners' and a Majestics' song on it (only after being forced to change The Majestics' name to Monitors, for customer recognition.

I've seen that one before, and other issues in that format as well. One of the pressing plants pressed up some Cadet records using that style label. I'd like to know the story behind it.

That purple plastic Maurice & Radiants has to be some kind of special reissue. I'd be willing to bet the farm that that didn't exist when the record was first released.

You might get a slight bargain on the record, and die soon after from poison mold inhalation! I wouldn't mind having that Shrine Record. I wish I could afford them.

I was listening to Black American music from the age I first had consciousness. My father listened to Jazz and Blues from the '30s and '40s. I first started collecting R&B and Blues records in 1953 in Chicago. I bought records from 1953-1972 (when I moved to The Netherlands). I started loving Soul Music whenever you define it as starting. Some people have a favourite "Top 100". I have a "Top 1,000". I liked "stompers", but also mid-tempos (popcorn) and beat ballads when the Northern Soulies looked down their noses at that stuff. I liked all the good Soul music when it was first released. By the way, I found "Naughty Boy" by Jackie Day, in a record store in Los Angeles in 1965 (the year it was out), in a 2 for $1.00 bin. In 1984, I swapped it to a British friend of mine who broke it at Stafford.

You could be right, Rod, that I told you that "Suspicion" was by The Originals. But, I think when you first heard it at my house, we still didn't know who it was. It was probably between that time and when I sent the tape to you that we discovered, from looking the song up in The Motown Recording Logs, that it had to be The Originals. I don't believe any other artist/group recorded that song (if i remember correctly). I still cannot understand why they didn't release it. It would have been a smash hit.

I seem to remember your getting at least one or two more C90 tapes from me after the first 2. ALL those songs were recordings I had, and wanted to get to you. There are even non-Motown Detroit songs on a couple of those tapes (Royal Ravens, etc.) that were sent only because they had been on my tapes with mainly unreleased Motown, and it was simply easier just to run off the whole tapes, rather than edit them out.

Andrea Henry is listed as the producer on Love Records. H &A Productions (Herman and Andrea) is listed as the Production co. who leased to Wand Records for its national dist. deal. The producer listed on that one is Herman Griffin and Andrea Henry. Griffin was known to have owned labels-AND, more importantly, he had possession of the acetate. I suspect that Love Records was co-owned by Golden World (Ed Wingate/Joanne Bratton (Jackson)) and Herman Griffin (or H &A Productions, with Henry included), and operated as a Golden World subsidiary.

"Sugar's Never Been As Sweet As You"-was clearly Gladys Horton's voice. I can hear it playing in my head right now, and one cannot mistake her distinctive voice. How could any '60s Motown fan have not recognised that? On the other hand, The Originals' lead on both versions of Suspicion is not very recognisable to most normal Motown fans. I can easily recognise Freddy Gorman's voice, but not Hank Dixon, or C.P. Spencer, or the others. That cut didn't really sound like any of their other recordings, so we weren't really listening for The Originals' voices, in any case. Also, The Motown Vaults didn't have a computerised cross-referencing system to find a list of all the artists who recorded a particular song. We could only find the songwriters quickly. It took a fair amount of digging to find out who sang on that recording. We had planned to do that, until the bosses decided that one LP would be the last. Not long after, Tom DePierro left Motown to form Airwave/Altair Records. I joined his firm as a co-owner, and, unfortunately, didn't participate in Motown's subsequent unreleased music release projects in 1982 (1 LP), 1983 (1 LP) and their 25 Year Anniversary LP releases (with much previously unissued material). The almost started over, not using many of the songs we had slated for future LPs, and stuck almost exclusively to the most popular artists (Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Miracles, Temptations, Martha & Vandellas, Gladys Knight & Pips, Four Tops).

I have one of those TamTown Boots with "Spellbound" and "You're Gonna Love My Baby". It was black print on white BG. No red print.

They changed the titles. The only artists we didn't know was "Suspicion". That was taken off a Jobete Music Co, song reference acetate which had no artist listed. We didn't venture a guess as to who it was. We had another in "All I Have Left Are Memories", which turned out to have been sung by Sammy Turner and The Serenaders. But that wasn't a UK concern, as it was a tremendously slow Doo Wop ballad, and so not placed on the tapes I sent to Rod. The backing tracks to "On The Avenue", recorded for Jimmy Ruffin, came off an acetate, mislabeled as "In The Neighborhood", by Jimmy Ruffin. Of course, we now know that both of those songs were just alternate lyrics for the same instrumental song. What a great instrumental track. I like the "In The Neighborhood" lyrics better, but think the "On The Avenue" lyrics fit the music better. We knew that "Sugar's Never Been As Sweet as You" was sung by The Marvelettes. I don't understand why anyone would want to "cover up only" a couple of artists out of 24 songs. That doesn't make any sense.

Yes, Rod, it could have been 1981. That was a long time ago, and I have little in the way of parallel events to reference it. I doubt that my tapedeck was running too fast. I also doubt that the turntable at Motown that I used to record the acetates was running too fast. And half of the unreleased cuts were taken off of tapes. So why would some of those AND some of the acetate recordings BOTH be too fast?

I knew Bob Cattaneo, and he was a big Motown collector, in addition to an serious R&B collector. But, I didn't know that Tom dealt with him. I thought Soussain got some acetates from someone inside Motown, but I didn't think that person was Tom. But, I was living mainly in The Netherlands then (as I still am -well, only 1/2 year now), so I didn't know what Tom was doing a lot of the time. I don't want to speculate on how all those acetates (from The Vaults), plus all the really rare Motown 45s left Motown(Frank Wilson, Andantes, etc.) (many were lifted out of The Motown and Jobete Record Files). But, I had no part in any of that. By the way, I don't live in that flat in L.A. anymore, that I kept for 32 years (spending only about 1/3 of the time there).

I've heard at least 3 versions of that song, with 2 different vocals two different instrumental versions, and the third one a different mix of one of those 2 different instrumentals. The interesting thing is that, in my opinion, Motown chose the weaker of the two versions to release on CD (on "Cellarful of Motown"). The version sitting on You-Tube now, is NOT the version Rod took back to UK in the early 1980s. He took the better one, and I believe it was the better one that was played on The Northern Scene and was booted then. I believe the version on You-Tube is the one released on the legit CD, and was "discovered" when its acetate was auctioned off. I assume that all three master tapes are still in The Vaults, andthat was the source of the CD recording.

I've seen millions of 45 records in the '60s and '70s. I did NOT see ALL the Chess numbers from, say, 1900-1966 on the dark blue. It seems to me that the dark Blue design ended LONG before 1966. It seems to me that 1966 was released first when the Black design was ending, and the yellow/orange design was coming in. There was a VERY long overlap. The yellow//orange design didn't last all that long before the light blue design started. I don't have ANY Dark Blue labels after 1900 But, I DO remember a few selected ones. Maybe they represent one pressing plant's run of a few re-issues as a special order, when they didn't have any of the newer designs handy? And, likely, they hadn't been used by Chess in a couple of years.

Tom DePierro and I "discovered" "Suspicion" first in 1977 on an acetate (Jobete Music reference acetate (different from the one scanned above)) while perusing The Motown Vaults for candidate songs for a proposed Motown vinyl unreleased albums series _"From The Vaults". I had it on tape (1st generation off the acetate) at home (along with many other cuts)). I played them for Rod Shard in 1980. He must have told Dave W. to see if he could get a tape directly from the source, which prompted the latter's trip to Motown's offices. The album project ended up with only the one album (released in 1979), as the first one sold virtually none retail, having no marketing push, and being releases on Motown's budget LP line, "Natural resources". So, we were unable to get the Originals' songs out. The Bosses wanted only the main, popular Motown groups on the first album, for best name recognition. We were lucky to get a Spinners and a Monitors cut on it. "Suspicion", and most of the Motown Vault cuts that were booted in UK and played on The Northern Scene in the early 1980s had already been slated by us for release on the proposed future "From The Vaults" albums.

So, they named the label after "Phlecky". Did the latter run the label, while Johnny was working at his law practise?

Andy, - That acetate is the same title and same Columbia pressing plant code # as the Diane Lewis cut that was released on Golden World-distributed Love Records. It was published by Myto Music, and "acted" like a Golden World subsidiary label. I guess that Ed Wingate and Joanne were, at least co-owners with someone else on Love, if not sole (100%) owners. Does anyone here know why that record was released on Love, and not on Golden World, Ric Tic or Wingate? Could it be that Lewis' manager or another party partly financed it?

I recognise Johnny Jr. The older couple must be Johnny Sr. and Jr's mother. Who is the younger woman. Is that Jackie Day? Doesn't seem to look quite like the photos of her I've seen.

I swapped my copy to Rod Shard. If I remember correctly, the writers on the slow side were the same as on the A (fast) side. But that was almost 30 years ago that I last saw it. So, I can't be sure. Maybe Rod knows who ended up with the record?

Now that I think about it, I've only physically seen the Lee Jennings on the multi-coloured label. I've seen references to a multi-coloured Johnny Hampton, but, I don't even remember seeing a scan of it.

I have only the yellow issue, but I have also seen an alternate label design with a creamy white background, with several coloured circles, one blue, one pink, one light green, one yellow, one red. They were sort of polka dot style, but different sizes, and differing distances from each other, like bubbles coming out of a bubble pipe.

Bump up, as I answered someone's question, but I post in the middle of your night, and by your morning, many new posts bury mine.

Well, many of you who've been in US and Canadian record shops, looking for Soul records, know how the shops were in the '70s. They were much the same in the '50s and '60s. They usually had tables all over the main floor of the shop, with deep boxes in them, to hold vertically stacked LPs. They usually had a long counter where 2-4 people could stand helping customers, and behind that was a wall of record shelving, with vertical compartments for 45s and 78s, in the 1950s, and just 45s, in the 1960s. Often, shops would reserve 30 compartments for their city's main R&B radio station's Top 30 hits, changing the order each week. The single records were rarely out where customers could look them over. That only happened when the store would have special sales. They always had cheap bins for records that were slow-moving (5-4-3-2 for $1.00). Those you could look through. Once in a while they'd sell off a few thousand 45s, cheaply. Then, they'd place them in horizontal stacks of 50-100 atop a few selected flat (non-boxed) tables. The stores had record players to listen to LPs, and you could play 45s on those as well. Sometimes they were just on wall counters, but the fancy ones would have one or two listening booths. Sometimes record companies had their own promotion posters or sales displays (Chess, Atlantic, VJ, King,Modern, Blue Note), where they promoted their companies current releases. Those would usually be near one end or the other of the sales counter. I remember quite a few different Chess and VJ displays. Once in a while artists would make appearances at the bigger, more well-known record shops to promote their new record. They autographed copies of their record that people would buy at the store. I remember seeing adverts for many personal appearances for local artists. In the '50s, these appearances were usually connected with a local radio station, and a DJ would MC the appearance, with the artist singing. Sometimes this was on live radio, other times it was taped.