A Return to 'Summer'
MOTOWN MAGIC IN HARLEM — AND, HUH, THAT FINALE?
“Motown was interested in us keeping our integrity, having class, being polite,” said Gladys Knight. “But I knew something very, very important was happening in Harlem that day. It wasn’t just about the music. We wanted progress. We’re black people and we should be proud of this.”
Those words, and that sentiment, may be familiar if you saw Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the remarkable 2021 music documentary directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, drawing on long-lost, historic footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
Gladys & the Pips tear it up in Harlem
It certainly was a music documentary, but so much more, as Knight’s words indicate. She and the Pips were among the event’s featured acts, and Questlove subsequently interviewed her for context and recollections on-screen. He did the same with Stevie Wonder, whose performances in Summer of Soul are among the film’s most exciting. Moreover, Questlove opened his work with an excerpt of Wonder’s explosive drumming that day – and closed it (after the credits) with an engaging exchange between the Motown star and his bandleader.
But which day?
Questlove conjured up the magic from approximately 40 hours of unearthed footage of the festival, which was held on not one, but six ’69 Sundays between June 29 and August 24. The venue was Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York, admission was free and the total audience numbers topped 300,000, if not more.
When Summer of Soul was released four years ago, it was widely praised and garlanded (an Oscar and a Grammy being among its awards), and there was substantial media coverage about how the movie came to be and what it meant. The original festival shows in Harlem were produced and directed by Tony Lawrence, who oversaw the recreation and cultural affairs of New York City’s parks department, and who commissioned TV producer Hal Tulchin to videotape all six. (Lawrence had organised earlier editions of the festival in 1967 and 1968.)
The fact that material from a half-dozen Sundays made up Summer of Soul was not obvious in the film, such was Questlove’s skill in melding the different performances and capturing an overall continuity and dramatic momentum. Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight & the Pips appeared on July 20, whereas the 5th Dimension and the Edwin Hawkins Singers did so on June 29; Mahalia Jackson and the Staple Singers on July 13; Sly & the Family Stone, Mongo Santamaria and Herbie Mann on July 27; and B.B. King, Nina Simone and Hugh Masekela on August 17.
What’s more, the July 20 “soul festival” (as that date was billed) was exclusively Motown-made. In addition to Wonder and Knight, the line-up comprised David Ruffin, Chuck Jackson, Blinky Williams and Willie Tyler & Lester. Ruffin’s stunning, athletic take on “My Girl” was deployed in Questlove’s film, but nothing by Jackson, Williams or Tyler. Also, Yvonne Fair was on hand as a substitute for Williams, but instead took part in the August 17 “blues festival.” On-screen, she wasn’t seen.
This March ‘69 trade press ad invites music industry participation (the August 10 date did not happen)
Tony Lawrence, the Harlem Cultural Festival mastermind, evidently knew people at Motown. Five months earlier, when the Temptations were in New York for a show at Madison Square Garden, he was on hand to present them with a “Harlem Salute” trophy. Lawrence’s primary contact was Taylor Cox, one of the team at Motown’s International Talent Management division.
Just recently, I was fortunate enough to see some of the Motown paperwork associated with the July 20 date. Rehearsals took place one day earlier in Mount Morris Park, with Cox as talent coordinator, Maurice King as musical director, and Gene Kee as Stevie Wonder’s bandleader. Choreography for Knight & the Pips, if not for others, was handled by Cholly Atkins. The internal files also showed that a pair of three-compartment trailers served as dressing room facilities – one for Knight, the Pips and Blinky, the other for Wonder, Ruffin and Jackson. “A mobile dolly must be provided for Stevie Wonder’s drums,” insisted another note.
The same paperwork indicated that Motown’s show was due to begin at 2:30pm on the designated Sunday with a four-song set by Blinky, comprising “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” “Hey Jude,” “Light My Fire” and “God Bless The Child.” Next up was Chuck Jackson, whose turn was to include “I Don’t Want To Cry,” “Do What You Gotta Do” and his forthcoming 45, “Honey Come Back.” Ventriloquist Willie Tyler was banked with a quarter-hour slot, while David Ruffin’s half-hour window was to offer his recently-released single, “I’ve Lost Everything I’ve Ever Loved,” plus “The Impossible Dream,” “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)” and a Temptations medley, including “Get Ready” and “My Girl.”
“[Ruffin] came on stage and really ‘socked-it-to-’em,’ ” wrote Amsterdam News reviewer Raymond Robinson, who was even more taken with Williams: “This little gal can’t weigh over 98 pounds dripping wet, but she’s got a voice that’s just out of sight.” Of “God Bless The Child,” he added, “I’ve never heard it sung better.” In the Alexandria News Leader, another critic praised Blinky (“talented and dynamic”) and also Motown’s ventriloquist (“The ‘soul humour’ of Willie Tyler & Lester really hit home.”)
The entire Harlem Cultural Festival was sponsored by General Foods’ Maxwell House coffee brand, for which Tyler had previously done commercials. In March of ’69, Motown had been involved with a “Miss Harlem” beauty contest, as was Maxwell House. The record company donated albums and awarded trophies to semi-finalists. For the latter task, handsome Chuck Jackson was on hand.
Stevie does his thing, percussively
In Summer of Soul, Gladys and the Pips are seen in a show-stopping performance of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” but that afternoon they also sang “Giving Up,” “Dr. Feelgood,” “It’s All In The Game” and their new single release, “The Nitty Gritty.”
As the headline act, Stevie Wonder turned in “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” “It’s Your Thing” (which yielded the incendiary drum solo seen in the movie), “Sunny,” “Alfie,” “I’ve Got To Be Me,” “For Once In My Life,” “My Cherie Amour” and “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day.” According to the Amsterdam News, he “got the greatest response from his rendition of ‘The Look Of Love.’ The brothers and sisters showed their approval with thunderous applause.”
“I had the feeling the world was wanting a change,” Wonder reflected in his Summer of Soul interview, alluding to the tense social and political climate of the late 1960s, when the U.S. was still mired in the Vietnam War, the nation’s campuses were hotbeds of dissent, and race relations were deteriorating in the wake of Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination. “We were moving into a whole ’nother time and space.” Another interviewee, civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, put it even more bluntly: “ ‘69 was the pivotal year when the negro died and black was born.”
For those whose interest in the Harlem Cultural Festival is more narrowly focused on Motown’s participation, another document from the company’s files is intriguing – and puzzling. Eleven days after its artists performed in Mount Morris Park, Taylor Cox wrote to Tony Lawrence. “It is regrettable,” he declared, “that the temper and mood of the crowd did not allow us to put on what we are sure would have been a most exciting finale.”
Wait, what? In the absence of more information, it’s impossible to know what Cox meant, or what happened that prompted him to make such a point. “The temper and the mood of the crowd”? Perhaps the only person today who knows is the one who saw all the footage from that momentous Sunday and created Summer of Soul.
Over to you, Questlove.
Fair notes: she may not ultimately have taken part in the “soul festival” segment of the Harlem shows, but Yvonne Fair impressed during the “blues festival.” New York’s Amsterdam News identified her song set (“Love Power,” “Since You’ve Been Gone,” “It’s Your Thing”) and wrote that the singer “left the crowd clapping their hands and stomping their feet.”
Lo-Lo notes: the soundtrack of Summer of Soul was made available in early 2022 by Sony Music’s Legacy imprint, featuring 17 of the live performances seen and heard during the festival’s run. (The album can be found on the usual digital music services.) What it didn’t include was “Harlem Cultural Festival,” an instrumental credited to Tony Lawrence & the Cultural Festivals and released on an obscure label, Lo-Lo. The track’s writers were Lawrence and Teddy Vann, the latter a songwriter/producer associated with Calla Records, which distributed the Lawrence 45 that summer of ’69. It was not a hit.