By Robert Dennis Our Motown Heritage (Part 2)

Building The Sound

My first job at Motown involved drafting. One of the first tasks I had was to complete a set of drawings

for something they were building - an 8 track recorder! By 1963, the largest number of tracks that you

could buy from a dealer was 4. An eight-track recorder had been built by Les Paul, but you couldn't order

one from a dealer. You could get one custom-built by the manufacturer, but at a very premium price.

Motown very much wanted an eight-track, so they were building one.  The money saved from building

the machines helped Motown be able to afford establishing a strong technical engineering crew, that

could keep things working well in recording.  It turned out to be fall, 1964 before the machine was

installed because it was really an adventurous plan.

The eight-track project was not unusual by any means. Throughout my time at Motown, the company

always had more technical engineers than recording engineers. The creative elements of the company

(lead by Berry Gordy) and the recording engineers would want a certain effect or a certain function.

Engineering head, Mike McLean, would get it designed and built for the company. In many ways, this

technical staff helped Motown establish a unique sound and saved them money to boot. But Technical

Engineering wasn't always so efficient.

Motown used to mix every multitrack master several times. There was an average of twenty mixes done

for each tune released. In 1964, a cost cutting Vice President, Ralph Seltzer, noticed that each mixing

session used a full reel of tape and usually only three minutes or so was cut out off the reel and kept. The

Tape Librarian, Fran Heard, used to take the rest of the tape off of the reel and toss it, so that the metal

reel could be salvaged.

Mr. Seltzer asked Mike, "Why can't the tape be re-used?" Mike's response was "If the splice was made

poorly, the level would drop when the engineer tried to record over it." Pushing the issue, the penny-

pinching executive wanted to know if Mike could build a machine that would detect bad splices. Mike,

who never backed down from a technical challenge, agreed to do so.

Back at his desk, Mike figured that the splice would be silent if the dropout was less than 1 dB. Mike

worked on the design for two weeks straight. He designed a tape transport with record and playback

heads. The machine would record a tone on the tape, and then play it back; if there was a drop-out of

more than 1 dB, the machine stopped so that the splice could be redone. After completing the design, he

got his shop supervisor, John Windt, to get it built. It seemed like they were at that project for 6 months.

The machine worked exactly as planned, but Mike found out the rest of the story. It wound up that none

of the recording engineers, no matter how careful they were, could make a splice in tape that didn't have a

drop-out of more that 1 dB. Mike, and Berry, himself, tried with the same result. The machine went under

the work bench to gather dust, until I left Motown in 1968.

By Robert Dennis Our Motown Heritage The Rush Release

At the time the Beatles hit, Motown was establishing itself as the largest independent record company in

the world. The world took notice as the Beatles had three records in the Top 10 in mid 1964 - an unheard

of event. The World was shocked when the Motown Supremes busted though the Beatles, and replaced

them with their #1 record, "Baby Love." The Beatles also took notice and began recording their own

versions of some of the early Motown hits. By fall of 1964, Motown employees had Beatles key chains,

T-Shirts, etc. A strong mutual respect developed between the Beatles, and Motown.

In the Spring of 1964, the 4 Tops had a number one hit - "I Can't Help Myself." Before coming to

Motown, the "Tops" were signed to Columbia Records (Now CBS/Sony). Columbia went into the vaults

in the Summer of 1964, and released a tune they had recorded on the Tops. They were trying to get the

"recorders" off of Motown's hit record. Distributors put in standing orders with record companies that

they will take a certain number of copies of ANY release by a certain artist who has a large hit. Knowing

this, Columbia timed their release correctly to "fill" these reorders.

Berry was pissed! No, Berry was PISSED!

Immediately, all recording and production people were advised that everyone would be working on the

next Tops release and it was to get out TODAY!

The writing & producing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, met chief engineer Lawrence Horn in the

studio at 3PM. With the musicians and the Tops standing by, they wrote "It’s The Same Old Song" on the

spot. The musicians were running the tune down with Brian Holland and Lawrence, as Eddie Holland

was finishing the lyrics and Lamont Dozier was finishing the melody at 3:30 PM. By 5 PM, I received the

first mix from the hands of Robert Gordy, and he waited for me while I cut a reference disk on it. I

immediately began cutting 7 inch records of this mix, and hand-stamping the hand-typed labels with

"MOTOWN." At 5:40 PM, I got another mix from Robert, and he again waited for the test cut.

At 6:00 PM, I got a call to cut a master for a strike-off. A strike-off is a stamper to press out the records

very quickly - you can only get about 1000 pressings from a strike-off, but the stamper can be made very

fast. At 6:05, I received a call to cut a second master and put it in the same box - I was a bit upset because

I had already started packing the first master. By 6:35 PM, someone (probably some "Gordy" person) was

speeding toward Owosso, Michigan, to the American Record Pressing Plant. I was still hand cutting

records.  The plant was about 100 miles away from Detroit, and the closest of the six plants that pressed

records for Motown in the USA.

Between 6 PM and Midnight, I received six more mixes of the tune, each time changing the tape I was

using to hand-cut copies for DJ's. I got an engineer in at 10 PM and another to relive him at 9 AM. I made

sure that the engineer knew exactly what to do and left around midnight. At 8 AM I was making sure all

the hand-cut records were finished (some 300) and handing them off to Ester Gordy.

By 3 PM (24 hours after beginning), Motown managed to have 1500 records in the hands of the key DJ's

in the country, and "It's The Same Old Song" became a hit literally overnight. The record eventually went

#2, and "almost" went gold - not bad for a little company in three houses on West Grand Blvd. The

Columbia release went to #39 and sold a lot of records.

Whenever I listened to the "Same Old Song" Motown release, it sounded "thrown-together" and sub-

standard. I guess I was right to some degree because it only went to #2. I had the disadvantage of

knowing how it was done. Most other people liked it and didn't notice any lack.

Our Motown Heritage (Part 4)

Recording Snowshoes & Shovels

By Robert Dennis

The snow in winter reminds me of the early days of Motown.

In the fall of 1963, Motown was contained in three large houses on West Grand Blvd. These houses were

large enough to have 3 floors, including the basement. Between the two main houses, there was a covered

passageway that shielded you from the cold. The recording studio was an add-on in the back of the main

building. When I went from Engineering to Shipping, there was a hall-sized passageway that was

shielded on three sides.

By the end of 1964, Motown had added a fourth building that housed the mixing suite and more offices.

They also had purchased Golden World Studios on Davison Avenue, about 4 miles from the main studio.

The fourth house was a few doors down from the main building. To do a mix in the Winter, the engineer

sometimes had to sign out the tape in the main building, put on his coat, and walk through a blizzard for a

half-block. To do a session at "Studio B" (Davison Avenue), the engineer had to drive four miles though

the blizzard.

All studios and mixing rooms operated 22 hours a day, shutting down for daily maintenance between 8

and 10 in the morning. So these Winter treks were made at all hours and in the coldest dead of night.

By the end of 1966, just before the company moved its offices downtown, there were 8 buildings up and

down Grand Blvd. As a recording supervisor, I had to take the time cards for my employees down to

"Finance" each week. This Department was a long city block (1/4 mile) down and across the street. In the

dead of Winter, this was quite a walk. I suppose I could have driven, but then I would have had to dig out

the car.

It seems as though there was a lot more snow and cold in the 60's. I lived a block away from Motown in

these years, and I remember at least 5 occasions where the snow was knee to hip high. When Motown

moved to Woodward and the Fisher Freeway in the Summer of 1967, we were so happy to have all the

departments in the same building. We also had elevators.