MUSIC: Motown magic is alive and kicking

Mar 14 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

Philip Key talks to the man who is bringing the American legend to the Liverpool stage

THE Beatles never totally dominated the pop music scene in the 1960s. In the USA, there was another musical force, Tamla-Motown Records.

This was the label that gave the world artists like Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, The Temptations The Supremes, the Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder.

In their own way, they were just as influential in the music world, bringing black music to an international audience.

Just like The Beatles, their music is still played and enjoyed and – unlike The Beatles – some of the old bands are still performing.

The Motown music is celebrated in the stage show, Dancing in the Streets, which arrives at the Liverpool Empire next Wednesday for a four-night run.

The show was created by Keith Strachan, the man who devised a number of rock and roll shows for the Liverpool Playhouse during the time that it was run by Bill Kenwright. Indeed, he has managed to make quite a career out of them.

They include The Sound of Fury, Good Rockin’ Tonight, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Imagine and The Roy Orbison Story. He also composed the music to the TV quiz, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Dancing in the Streets has been one of his most successful stage musicals, having enjoyed a good run in London’s West End as well as a one-night tour of Britain.

The latest tour, however, finds the company spending longer at each date, riding on the back of the success of the London show.

It is all based around the music of Tamla-Motown, not so much a record label as a musical style, created in 1959 by songwriter Berry Gordy Jnr.

Based in Detroit, he originally wrote songs for Jackie Wilson like Lonely Teardrops and Reet Petite before realising that there was more money to be made in pro- ducing records. He bought a property, devised a name – Tamla – and set up the Tamla Hitsville USA Studio, his first signing a group named The Matadors, which became The Miracles when they signed for the new label.

The group’s lead singer and songwriter Smokey Robinson became vice-president of the company and later named his daughter Tamla and son Berry.

By the following year, Gordy had set up a second label Motown (named after Detroit’s soubriquet Motor City) and the Tamla-Motown style was born.

The music had its distinctive soul sound and the acts were groomed to look good on stage, steps choreographed, outfits matched and the performers given a certain stage elegance. It was such attention to detail that made the performers adaptable to stage, television and film and gained them a huge international following.

The British stage show, Dancing in the Streets, sets out to capture that style and excitement.

Keeping it all in some shape is dance captain Robert Grose, one of the longest-serving performers in the show. He also appears on stage as Levi Stubbs, lead singer with The Four Tops and one of The Temptations.

“The show is mostly music and singing,” he tells me in a break from rehearsals. “But there is definitely a lot of movement as well, and as dance captain I am the bloke who keeps it all in hand, precise and up to target.

“Rather than people putting in their own choreography, I keep it as it should be and maintain the show in every possible way.

“The original Motown performers had some choreography, but were left to their own devices, but in this show I have to make sure it stays to the same high quality.”

The steps and movement have all been copied from the originals, he says.

He has now been with the show for more than two years, and was promoted to dance captain last summer. He loves it.

“Keith Strachan liked a lot of songs from Motown and picked some of the best and well-known ones from the era and made a show of it.

“He strung these songs together in a very neat fashion and put in a narrator who hypes the audience and gives them little snippets of information about the performers between the numbers.