The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
‘Diana Ross? She sang baby songs’
Motown legend Martha Reeves tells Mick Brown why Detroit wasn’t big enough for two soul divas
During the 10 years she recorded for Motown, Martha Reeves was one of the biggest stars in the label’s firmament. Her hits – including Nowhere to Run, Dancing in the Street and (Love is Like a) Heat Wave – were heady, exuberant records filled with the promise of love and excitement that made you feel glad to be alive.
But the memory that makes Reeves laugh the loudest and warmest is of her first recording session, in 1962, as a backing singer, along with her friends the Vandellas, on Marvin Gaye’s first hit single, Stubborn Kind of Fellow. At the time, Gaye had yet to make his mark as a solo singer at Motown, and was mostly utilising his talents as a drummer.
“I’d never got a good look at Marvin Gaye before then,” Reeves says. “He used to wear a hat pulled down over his eyes; he wore sunglasses all the time, and he always had a pipe in his mouth – don’t ask me what was in that pipe! You couldn’t see how goodlooking he was. But when we went in to sing on Stubborn Kind of Fellow, he took off that hat and those sunglasses and pipe, and we went ‘Doop do-doop, wow! Yeah, yeah, yeah!’ ”
Reeves gives a pitch-perfect rendition of the song’s opening chorus, then dissolves into laughter. “Because he was so fine! I think he was the handsomest man I ever got close to!”
Now, 54 years later, the 75year-old Reeves remains an indomitable, and highspirited, force: eloquent and opinionated on the subject of Motown, given to gossip and gales of laughter.
She is presently in the throes of what has become an annual tour of Britain. And, this week, she can be heard on BBC Radio 2 presenting Martha Reeves’ Soul Christmas, two hours of Christmas and gospel songs from such artists as Al Green, Mahalia Jackson, the Four Tops and Nat King Cole.
Gospel is in Reeves’s blood. The third of 11 children, she had a grandfather who was a pastor; a mother, Ruby, who sang in the church choir; and a father, Elijah, who worked as a labourer but also played the guitar, “woodshedding” with John Lee Hooker – Detroit’s leading bluesman. Reeves started singing as a teenager with friends in a vocal group, the Del-Phis, working in various jobs by day and at night singing in Detroit nightclubs – while observing her father’s strict rule to be home by midnight.
In 1961, after being spotted by Motown’s A& R manager Mickey Stevenson, who handed her his business card, Reeves turned
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“He said, answer this phone – it was ringing off the hook – and I’ll be right back. And three hours later, when he came back, he gave me the job as A& R secretary. I was working in that job for three months before I got paid!”
Founded two years earlier by Berry Gordy, Motown was a family business on the way to becoming a hit factory, quartered in a small two-storey building in a run-down area of Detroit. Drawing on a well of young talent from around the city, Gordy shaped a creative hothouse of performers, songwriters and producers.
“I didn’t meet Berry for three months,” Reeves says. “I just knew that everybody revered him. You’d hear the different producers talking – ‘Hey man, Berry really likes it but he says we’ve got to put horns on it…’, do this or that. Everything was moulded to Berry Gordy’s taste. He’s the man that created the Motown sound.”
Martha and the Vandellas recorded their first single for Motown in 1962, and their first hit came the following year with Come and Get These Memories. As with every act on Motown, Reeves was put through the label’s famous “artist development” process: lessons in singing and music theory with the performance coach Maurice King; choreography classes
‘Marvin Gaye was so fine! He was the handsomest man I ever got close to’
with Cholly Atkins, a former vaudeville dancer; and etiquette lessons with “Professor” Maxine Powell, Motown’s “Miss Manners”. She taught her young charges everything, from which cutlery to use at a formal dinner to how to exit a limousine elegantly.
“I call her professor because she taught us self-worth; she gave us dignity. She’d talk about ‘class that would turn the heads of kings and queens’ when she was giving us our lessons. We’d all joke about it, but we did perform before kings and queens, lords and ladies – all the royalty of the world.
“We were the first generation that was allowed to sit at lunch counters as black people, to go in restaurants and hotels. Berry Gordy knew that many of us came from rough means, and we had to learn how to be socially accepted, because our music crossed over. It wasn’t just for black people. Our music was for the world. They perfected us, I’ll put it that way. And it was at Berry Gordy’s insistence.”
Reeves left Motown – or as she puts it, “Motown left me” – in 1972, when her contract expired and the company moved, almost overnight, from Detroit to Los Angeles. “I had been touring England. When I got back I called and asked what was my next assignment, and the receptionist said, ‘Girl – don’t you know Motown has moved to LA?’ That’s when I realised my contract was up. I felt deserted.
“I used to be able to get good credit here because I was on Motown. Suddenly I couldn’t