From the World to West Grand
OF DUBLINERS, DEFECTORS AND DUTCHMEN
Australia, Mexico, Ireland. France, Holland, Jamaica. Russia, Canada, the United Kingdom.
Singers and musicians from all these nations have, at one time or another, had records released by Motown. A handful even made their music in Detroit. Most of them, it must be said, did not light up the American charts. Even so, there are some interesting stories among them, and one or two head-scratchers.
The most obvious of the latter involves Ireland’s Abbey Tavern Singers, whose album We’re Off To Dublin In The Green went to market via Motown’s V.I.P. subsidiary in February 1967. Its contents are as you’d expect from the title: traditional Irish airs offered in a sing-along manner, including the title track, “Twenty Men From Dublin Town,” “The Orange And The Green,” and “The Boys Of Wexford.” The whole escapade was recorded live at – where else? – the Abbey Tavern in Howth, Dublin. The sound of young America, it’s not.
The Abbey Tavern Singers: helping to sell beer
Leaving aside the music, the album’s acquisition by Motown was the work of Toronto-born Ron Newman, one of the firm’s salesmen. “He was taking care of the tapes and so forth,” the late Barney Ales once told me – that is, Motown’s LP releases on 8-track and cassette. “He and Al Klein had an apartment in Detroit that we paid for. We used to call him Captain Fun.”
The nickname derives from Newman’s ability to drink champagne. On his head. That is, upside down. “He would do it on the escalator as it was coming down,” added Ales.
A traditional Irish song from the early 20th century, “We’re Off To Dublin In The Green” gained initial popularity in Canada when used in a beer commercial on television. The spot was filmed by Carling Breweries at the Abbey Tavern, and made newspaper headlines (“IRA Folk Song Helps Sell Beer”) when aired in the spring of ’66. Toronto’s ARC Sound subsequently acquired and released the track as a single, with sales exceeding 100,000 copies.
Several years ago, Billboard’s former Canadian bureau chief, Larry LeBlanc, found ARC executive Bill Gilliland on my behalf. After the local success of “We’re Off To Dublin In The Green,” the Abbey Tavern Singers’ 45 crossed the border. “I licensed the single to HBR Records in Los Angeles,” said Gilliland, “who managed to get some chart action in Boston, which took [the record] to No. 94 on the Billboard Hot 100. HBR had an option for the album, but decided not to exercise it.”
At which point, Captain Fun stepped in, cutting a deal for the V.I.P. release of the album. “But,” concluded Gilliland, “it was a non-event.” Barney Ales concurred, joking that perhaps he’d had a drink or two at the time of agreeing to Newman’s plan. The LP achieved no significant U.S. sales, but entered the history books as one of Motown’s most curious LP releases.
NO ROCK ALLOWED
As unusual in its own way was the self-titled album by Black Russian, issued by Motown in May 1980, although it gained more attention for the band’s backstory than for the commercial impact of their R&B-styled rock. The trio was, indeed, Russian – or Latvian, to be precise: Natasha Kapustin, her husband Serge, and her brother, Vladimir Shneider. They were dissident Jews who fled the Soviet Union in 1976, abandoning successful music careers there: the Kapustins had been in a state-sponsored orchestra known as Sovremennik, while Shneider produced and played keyboards for a popular group, the Singing Hearts.
Black Russian: “the best way to fight the Soviets”
“We’d sing 37 songs about how good the Communist Party is,” Shneider told David Gritten at People magazine, “and at the end – if we were lucky – we were allowed to play a mellow song like ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ or ‘Ain’t No Sunshine.’ But never rock.”
During those Cold War decades, tales of citizens defecting from (and decrying) the U.S.S.R. were attractive to American media. Motown certainly made the most of that in their bio. “We listened to the Voice of America broadcasts, the major European radio stations, got records from our Western friends, and bought records on the black market,” it quoted lead singer Natasha as saying. To People, husband Serge declared, “Just put 100 rock ’n’ roll radio stations along the Soviet border. You’d kill off Russian Communism – snap – just like that.”
Having settled in Los Angeles in 1978, they were able to get a demo tape into the hands of Motown’s vice president of studio operations, Guy Costa, and were signed. The group wrote and arranged all the music on Black Russian, aided by local lyricists, including Allee Willis; they co-produced the album with Costa at the Hitsville studio in Hollywood. Session players were also drafted, such as drummers Ollie Brown and Ed Greene.
Accompanied by a single, “Leave Me Now,” Black Russian was well-received by critics in the summer of 1980, and the musicians’ background was publicised widely, with Rolling Stone among the curious. “The best way to fight the Soviets,” Natasha told the magazine’s Kurt Loder, “is to buy our records here.” That, however, didn’t happen, and the trio eventually broke up. Remarried, Natasha performed in a couple more bands, Walk The Moon and Eleven, and moved in other music circles and in acting. She died in 2008.
DINNER WITH THE TOPS
Ten years before Black Russian’s Motown moment, there were the Cats, hugely popular rockers from Holland, who were signed to a local record company, Bovema. The latter’s affiliation with EMI Records helped to bring the five-piece to Motown’s attention as it was filling the tank of its new rock imprint, Rare Earth. In September 1970, the label released a compilation of the Cats’ homeland hits to date under the title of 45 Lives.
The album was marketed without first-hand promotional help from the band. “The Cats had already scored four Number One hits in our own country,” Arnold Mühren, their bassist and primary songwriter, told me, “so we had become very busy with a very heavy live performance schedule. We were fully booked a year ahead.” He added, “The connection to Rare Earth was strictly from record company to record company.”
The Cats: a special dinner invitation
As with most other non-American musicians on Rare Earth – including the Pretty Things, Love Sculpture and Toe Fat – the Cats made no impression on the U.S. charts, although a single, “Marian,” garnered some airplay (hail, WSPT in Stevens Point, Wisconsin). “And the release of 45 Lives caused quite a lot of publicity in our own country,” recalled Mühren. “It was boasted that the Cats were among the very first artists on Motown’s new ‘white’ label. I don’t know if there was any truth in that statement, but the Dutch newspapers and teen magazines loved it.”
(The low country’s media became almost as excited when singer/songwriter Waylon caught the attention of 21st century Motown, leading to its release of his debut album. “We’re very proud to welcome Waylon as the first Dutch solo artist ever on Motown,” announced then-president Sylvia Rhone. Clearly, she was advised of the firm’s history well enough to avoid saying “first Dutch artist.”)
The Cats’ Motown association brought at least one other benefit. “We had dinner with the Four Tops while they were in the Netherlands for a TV show,” Mühren said. “We were great fans of theirs, as well as other black artists like Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, the Drifters, Tina Turner, Otis Redding. In our early days, when we listened to, and played, that kind of music, we called it ‘Negro music.’ The names ‘R&B’ and ‘soul’ were unknown to us at that time.”
Such comments were typical of artists from abroad who were honoured to have music released by Motown in America, and to be close – metaphorically, at least – to their heroes. Perhaps even one or two of the Abbey Tavern Singers mentioned it to their grandchildren, accompanied by a smile if they knew anything about Captain Fun.
Geography notes: other Brits were signed to Motown besides those mentioned above, of course, including Kiki Dee, Keef James, Albert Finney and Phil Cordell. Naturally, there were Canadians, with R. Dean Taylor perhaps the most successful, as outlined here. From Australia, there were the Easybeats; from Mexico, Pedro Montero; and from Jamaica, Bob & Marcia. And the first European to be affiliated with Hitsville? That seems to have been France’s Richard Anthony, recalled in this West Grand edition, even though he never actually set foot in Detroit. But if I’m wrong, or if others deserve a place in this roll-call, please get in touch. Hey, maybe there can even be a corner of the upgraded Motown Museum devoted to this chapter of the company’s history.