Motown Greatest Hits

Product Information

This intuitive grasp of his own talent was never better illustrated than on 1965’s rip-roaring Shotgun. We provided an appetiser to the career of Brenda Holloway with “The Early Years - Rare Recordings 1962-1963”, issued on CDCHD 1241 in 2009. Behind the heavenly love and dreams of elopement we find Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) while Smiling Faces Sometimes pretend to be your friend.

Pretty much a straight-ahead instrumental soloist, he took an even more direct route as singer, aiming for visceral connection and power. Lovers of Detroit soul have long rhapsodised about the Fantastic Four, one of the Motor City’s most admired vocal groups of the 60s and 70s. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye hired their own bands; ubiquitous LA session men backed Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, The Supremes and the other stars who remained; Norman Whitfield followed Holland-Dozier-Holland through the out door and quit, as did four-fifths of The Jackson 5.The Detroit quartet’s cancelled Motown album released at last – with 13 bonus tracks, many previously unissued.

Plus, a special bonus disk of The Best of Motown the 1970’s featuring: Rick James, The Commodores, The Jackson 5, Rare Earth, Edwin Starr and others - Over seven hours of soul-pop classics! The promise of Gaye’s sophisticated loving is all in his voice, coarser than the crystalline angeltone he employed on What’s Going On, but no less exquisite, and similarly augmented by a crosstalk of Marvindubs and brilliantly inventive backing vox (the impressionistic, dove-like coos from 3:50 in Let’s Get It On are astonishing). In January 2023 under Chivon Dean's new leadership as president and CEO, Motown has been divested from the Capitol Music Group while remaining under the Universal Music Group. My Girl Has Gone, the fourth US hit single, follows with its dramatic crashes of orchestration on each chorus, contrastingly sharply with each gentler, more ruminative verse.Ever keen to push the sonic boundaries of his most treasured outfit he introduced the vocal group to the expansive sensual high of the love-generation psychedelic and set in motion the new sound of Sky’s The Limit, a lush, epic journey up to the apex of celestial soul. For the most part, when these unreleased tracks come out, they are as new to me as they are to my fans. Also of note: Cloud Nine, one of the few songs Knight was never able to get “inside”, she felt, because she had no experience of drugs. The “Artistry” album was issued in mono and stereo, but the stereo version is much rarer today, so we have decided to go with that for our CD reissue, with one exception. The album’s final groover, Ain’t That The Truth, leads us directly back to the Motown Sound right down to the signature tambourine snappin’ on the offbeat.

Irrespective of the source, all of our collectables meet our strict grading and are 100% guaranteed. Best is You Sure Love To Ball, bathed in warm fuzziness, guitars getting it on with harps with such empathy that they become almost indistinguishable, and Madeline and Fred Ross’s gasping and moaning errs just the right side of Lil’ Louis’s French Kiss.

Like all legends, it’s probably rubbish, but listening again to this euphoric heat-haze of an album, it kinda makes sense. In recent years many of my unissued Motown recordings have been released for the very first time, most of which I had completely forgotten about. or healing the world’s pain with the sheer exultation of this album’s mightily comforting, all-encompassing bear-hug of a title track.