Motown vs. Philadelphia International

[Disco Funk]

Originally Posted by remicks

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And conversely, what Motown songs if any, did Philadelphia International take and redo into their style ?


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I kept forgetting to reply to this thread after remember a number of Philly covers of Motown tunes months ago.

Electric Indian (early incarnation of MFSB) on Marmaduke - My Cherie Amour, on the Keemosabe LP from '69 (produced by Len Barry).

Sister Sledge on Atlantic or Atco - Neither One Of Us (produced by The Young Professionals, I think)

The Persuaders on ATCO - Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me (produced by either Thom Bell or the Young Professionals), it was not only a song on the LP, but it was also the title of the LP!

Love Committee on Golden Fleece - Darling Come Back Home (cover of an Eddie Kenricks recording)

None of them produced by Gamble & Huff, although I'm not 100% sure with the Golden Fleece material (I thought that PIR subsidiary's material was produced by The Trammps or B-H-Y).

Disco Funk

[DISCODISK]

Originally Posted by remicks

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One thing curious : a general review suggests to me that Motown did not do covers of Philadelphia International songs ... the one big exception being Thelma Houston's remake of DON'T LEAVE THIS WAY .
I can't think of others .... disco experts ... what say you??

o.k remicks what about a motown song sung by an ex motown act released on philadelphia international records....

[Mr.Ree]

the Philadelphia International company did indeed cover several songs from outside of their stable of writers...I own an MFSB album that contains a cover of Porgy and Bess' "Summertime" and a Teddy Pendergrass album that has Barry Manilow's "This One's for You" as its title track. And Pendergrass has covered several songs from former Motown writers Ashford and Simpson.
And Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder did a duet version of Kenny Gamble's "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" on "Motown at the Hollywood Palace" (probably out of print) and Diana Ross, the Supremes and the Temptations also covered "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" on their duet album. It's frequently difficult to tell which record companies have covered which songs unless you own a large amount of their releases.....

[remicks]

Originally Posted by DISCODISK

o.k remicks what about a motown song sung by an ex motown act released on philadelphia international records....

got me DD !! ..... who? what ??? .....

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When looking back and observing that there were these two huge black oriented powerhouses overlapping in the seventies ....one well established and therefore deserving of respect from the other ....the other rising fast and therefore equally deserving respect from the other .... it would be hard to imagine they were working their camps without any regard about the other. It seems to me that Berry Gordy would have been particularly fascinated by this new and so quickly successful competition.

Somehow they got together to do that Eddie Kendricks project ... so that alone is testament for the possibilities that existed between the two. It would be most interesting to learn the inside story of how and why that album came to be ..... Had it done better that might have affected things between the two more so .

But especially after the giant success of DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY ... it would have seemed like in both camps ... certain bell$ and whistle$ would have gone off .

It was not unheard of for Motown to reach out beyond themselves and to be exploratory ... For instance

The Supremes Sing Rogers And Hart .



What if they had taken their mid seventies roster ...Supremes , Temptations, Originals, Dynamic Superiors ..etc .... and assigned them each a Philly song and released an album called

Motown Goes Philly .....



-- And, if the Salsoul Orchestra had time for :

How terrific it might have been had they gone into the studio and put their Philly style to a select group of Motown songs ....TEARS OF A CLOWN .... BALL OF CONFUSION ... I WISH .... I WANT YOU BACK ...etc . .. (let your imagination run wild concerning this) .....


Just one of those things thats fun to reflect on from the era and ponder "what if " .....


*****

[DISCODISK]

Originally Posted by remicks

got me DD !! ..... who? what ??? .....

_______________

cant tell you, well not without at least one small guess
actually this question is probibly quite tough, im not thinking jerry butler either...

[Mr.Ree]

Originally Posted by Disco Funk

Maybe they didn't do any covers of Motown tracks because they didn't want to pay royalties to non-PIR people? I don't recall too many (if any) of the PIR tracks being covers or songs by non-Philly songwriters. They were usually written by Gamble-Huff, McFadden-Whitehead, Wansel, Sigler, T Bell, etc... I guess the exception would be the Philadelphia Freedom LP which contained covers in the form of the title track and War's 'Smile Happy'.

I think Barry Gordy had a similar philosophy with Motown records produced in LA. Most songs were written by Motown people. Not too many covers of non-Motown written songs.

I guess Don't Leave Me This Way was the only crossover.

Disco Funk

Motown released entire ALBUMS of songs from outside their stable of writers. Just a few examples: Stevie Wonder's "Tribute to Uncle Ray", The Supremes "A Bit Of Liverpool" and "The Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart"...The Supremes Sing and Perform "Funny Girl". Marvin Gaye's "Hello Broadway" and "A Tribute to the great Nat King Cole" and that's just a few examples....

[Disco Funk]

Originally Posted by Mr.Ree

Motown released entire ALBUMS of songs from outside their stable of writers. Just a few examples: Stevie Wonder's "Tribute to Uncle Ray", The Supremes "A Bit Of Liverpool" and "The Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart"...The Supremes Sing and Perform "Funny Girl". Marvin Gaye's "Hello Broadway" and "A Tribute to the great Nat King Cole" and that's just a few examples....

Definitely. When they were still in Detroit, they did tons of cover albums. But I noticed that when they moved to LA, that stopped.

Gamble & Huff wasn't totally against having cover songs by non-Philly writers. One of Billy Paul's earliest big hits was his cover of Elton John's Your Song, and one of the MFSB LPs was even named Philadelphia Freedom (it also contained the song of the same name as written by John). But like any major company, they had a good stable of writers they could pull original songs from, like Motown did. Whether not doing many cover versions of each other's songs was a conscious effort on the part of both PIR and Motown is not clear.

Disco Funk

[Mr.Ree]

Originally Posted by remicks

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What I 'm wondering is , how fierce was the competition between the two ? Were they arch enemies .... two fiercely competing recording camps .... or something much more congenial ??


One thing curious : a general review suggests to me that Motown did not do covers of Philadelphia International songs ... the one big exception being Thelma Houston's remake of DON'T LEAVE THIS WAY .
I can't think of others .... disco experts ... what say you??

And conversely, what Motown songs if any, did Philadelphia International take and redo into their style ?




*****

I don't know what happened to the answer I posted on this subject recently so I'll post it again: I have 2 recordings of Motown artists covering a Kenny Gamble song: Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder did a live duet version, and Ross, the Supremes and the Temptations did a studio version of the same Kenny Gamble song called "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me."

[eddie]

Got it and surprised I didn't think of it sooner.

Jean Carne at PIR covered the Martha and the Vandellas "Love makes me do foolish things" which was also performed by Kim Weston and Diana Ross and the Supremes.

[Mr.Ree]

Originally Posted by Disco Funk

Definitely. When they were still in Detroit, they did tons of cover albums. But I noticed that when they moved to LA, that stopped.

Gamble & Huff wasn't totally against having cover songs by non-Philly writers. One of Billy Paul's earliest big hits was his cover of Elton John's Your Song, and one of the MFSB LPs was even named Philadelphia Freedom (it also contained the song of the same name as written by John). But like any major company, they had a good stable of writers they could pull original songs from, like Motown did. Whether not doing many cover versions of each other's songs was a conscious effort on the part of both PIR and Motown is not clear.

Disco Funk

did you know that Gamble and Huff offered Daryl Hall and John Oates positions as staff writers at PIR? Hall and Oates turned them down, saying they didn't want to be "part of someone else's sound".

[drlove]

Re: Mr.Ree's comment:

* * * * *
did you know that Gamble and Huff offered Daryl Hall and John Oates positions as staff writers at PIR? Hall and Oates turned them down, saying they didn't want to be "part of someone else's sound".
* * * * *

And fast forward roughly 10 years, when Hall/Oates record with & briefly tour with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin, and you get . . ironically . . . . . . both PIR and Motown connections for the most successful (in terms of most #1, top 10 and top 20 hits) recording duo in rock history.

[Disco Funk]

I have a few records which Darryl Hall is credited as writer or as a musician that were recorded with the future MFSB guys, but I didn't know Gamble & Huff asked both Hall & Oates to join the staff at PIR. Thanks for that info.

You can hear a number of the projects Hall worked on on the Funkadelphia CD & LP called "MFSB Muthafunksonofabitch". Just looking at the credits, he mainly worked through John Madara, playing piano on tracks by artists like Race Street Chinatown Band, Alliance, and Cupit.

Disco Funk

[Westwood]

Originally Posted by remicks

got me DD !! ..... who? what ??? .....



-- And, if the Salsoul Orchestra had time for :

Oooohhhh, thank you for posting this album cover and track listing!
What were The Salsoul Strings? A different moniker for The Salsoul Orchestra? On The Anthology of The Salsoul Orchestra released by suss'd in earl 2000s there are a couple of Saturday Night Fever covers that the orchestra did. On this album of the Strings there is another Bee Gees cover. I would like to get together a list of all their albums, but now I discover there is a Strings thing? How many albums did they do?
Most of all I am interested in YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE.
After discovering this song, sung by Loleatta Holloway, which I think is unbeaten by anyone, I would love to hear the Strings' version. Is it instrumental?

Also, after careful inspection of the Loleatta Holloway Anthology put out by Suss'd around that same time, the tracks on the "Love" cd (the second cd of the anthology) I have found that the tracks that I love a great deal more than the others on that disc were all produced by Floyd Smith.
I think his production is fantastic, and coupled with Loleatta's fine vocals, he did wonders. The only other great pairing of that sort that I can think of is the wonderful Shirley Bassey lps from the early 70s (great orchestrations and the vocals, I Capricorn, Something...).
Has this Floyd Smith done other work for great female vocalists?

[eddie]

Unidisc just issued this album on CD and copies of Salsoul Strings on Lp are abundant on ebay. I heard some of those covers on Salsoul Orchestra's Anthologies and they aren't much to my ears. I like their originals much more and I bought every other disc that Unidisc reissued except this one.

Here the link the allmusic's Salsoul Orchestra discography!

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p...frxqr5ldke~T20

[markydefad]

Originally Posted by Westwood

Also, after careful inspection of the Loleatta Holloway Anthology put out by Suss'd around that same time, the tracks on the "Love" cd (the second cd of the anthology) I have found that the tracks that I love a great deal more than the others on that disc were all produced by Floyd Smith.
I think his production is fantastic, and coupled with Loleatta's fine vocals, he did wonders. The only other great pairing of that sort that I can think of is the wonderful Shirley Bassey lps from the early 70s (great orchestrations and the vocals, I Capricorn, Something...).
Has this Floyd Smith done other work for great female vocalists?

Hi Westwood,

Floyd Smith was a prominent jazz guitarist who, later in his life, married Loleatta Holloway and became her producer. He was born in 1917...so he was much older than Loleatta, who was born in 1946. He and the Salsoul Orchestra had a minor dance hit with a tune titled "I Just Can't Give You Up" that sounds very much like a Barry White record.

You can listen to a sample here:

allmusic ((( Salsoul Presents: Crossover Flavas > Overview )))