The Definitive Stereo Singles Part 1 (1956--1962)

Looks like it's already been put to rest - they didn't start using 8-track until after the song was recorded. As such, it was a 3-track recording.

 

Recently, Bob Olhsson wrote:

Obviously, you missed these two quotes. It has NOT been confirmed.

 

Keep in mind the quotes I posted (that Baby Love was 3-track and that they didn't start using 8-track till January 1965) are from the same person who produced the Temps box set...

And just about every other Motown reissue these days as well.

 

Baby Love

 

Re: Baby Love

Care to elaborate a bit on this information?

 

Harry Weinger, who replied on the other forum, HAS handled the tape recently so if he says it's 3-track, nobody's in a better position to know. The only thing I know for sure about the transition is that "Where Did Our Love Go" was on the first 8-track rhythm session. Motown was the first to produce music on an 8-track rather than just using it for backup the way 3-track had been used. I understand that Les Paul congratulated John Windt, our shop foreman, on getting it to actually work before he could.

Again, unlike most labels, we did not use 3-track to record live stereo performances. We overdubbed mono tracks between two 3-track machines building up our arrangements in sections and punching in parts exactly like a motion picture soundtrack. Berry Gordy had begun recording rhythm tracks at home in mono and then taking them to United Sound in Detroit to overdub the singers. After he had some success, he added a second mono machine and eventually two 3-tracks to his own studio. Most of the record industry didn't start working this way until a few years later with 4-track.

Many of us have very mixed emotions about the style of production we created that evolved into the mess we have today.

 

Thanks for the update, Bob. However, are you sure about Where Did Our Love Go? That would have been LONG before the 8-track was rumored to have been introduced (January 1965). WDOLG was cut in, what, July of 1964 or so? Why would that song have been cut on 8-track when tracks like Baby Love and My Girl were cut on 3-track several months later?

Thanks again for the update.

 

Some quotes from Ed Wolfrum over on the Soulful Detroit Forum:

And:

 

Berry Gordy was primarily a music publisher and artist manager who started his own record label in partnership with Smokey Robinson. He had offices in New York and LA that were actively recruiting songwriters and recording male and female demos in a variety of styles for pitching our writers' material to other labels and artists.

Virtually every New York and LA session player of the era has performed on many of these demos as part of the 18 or more songs they typically recorded almost every day. The New York and LA offices were also signing and recording new artists and would frequently record songs that had previously been hits for "B-sides" and "album cuts." Brenda Holloway was by far the most successful of these to have not been recorded in Detroit. (While it has been reported that she never recorded in Detroit, a friend just told me the only time he ever worked directly with Berry Gordy was in Detroit with Brenda changing a couple lines of a song.) Anyhow, to the best of my knowledge virtually all of the Motown hits prior to around 1970 were recorded in Detroit by the Detroit musicians. Even there it is hard to say exactly who played on what because different versions were recorded for different artists and sometimes even the same artist if they found a different key or tempo was needed.

 

There could be quite some time between when a song was started and it was completed. A fair amount of stuff also started on 3-track and was bounced to 8-track. John Windt told me about the huge smash "Where Did Our Love Go" being on the very first 8-track session. I didn't get there until the fall of 1965 and didn't get out of the mastering room and into the studio until around 1969. I'm pretty sure the 8-track was in use well before January of 1965. I remember Mike showing me the machine the first time I visited Motown which would had to have been in the late summer of '64. I'll never forget seeing both the eight track and half speed cutting for the very first time that day.

 

Baby Love

>>>Luk and Bob.

The tape may very well BE three Track, I'm just relating what Hal said in an interview a couple of years back.

He said, specifically that he was called to do a last minute session at Western, he got there 5 mins before the session was to begin, and the song turned out to be The Supremes Baby Love. Why it was recorded in LA is lost to history, maybe The Supremes were doing a TV appearance there (it seems like they did HUNDREDS of TV shots), or maybe Berry just wanted the Wrecking Crew for that record. Who knows?


Since our man Steve Hoffman has Tuesday morning access to Hal, I think this might be a good thing to ask him.


I would bet Hal played on other Motown songs as well. Hes done everything and everybody that was popular in the 60s!! Even Wayne Newton, for Christ Sake!!


Mikey

 

This topic has just amazed me-how were they able to keep a secret so long of the Wrecking Crew's involvement of Motown recordings? It saddens me in a way, because I am a huge James Jamerson fan, and now it appears that he did not play bass on one of my favorite Motown tunes, "Reach Out I'll Be There". Carol Kaye has recently said she played bass on this number. Can anyone come up with a list of which songs were recorded by the Detroit crew, and which by the L.A. players?

 

Well, there's no doubt the 8-track was under *development* at the time. However, it seems as if the unit didn't go into *production* until later.

WDOLG was cut and released several months before either Baby Love or My Girl, both of which were 3-track recordings.

Could you ask John about this again, in light of these facts?

 

>>>>>>Well Matrix, from what I've read, Berry Gordy was no slouch, and The Wrecking Crew was absolutely, the best session players in the country. So its only natural that Berry would seek to use their talents to get an "LA Soul Sound" on certain things, especially after Motown had the money to do it.

I know we all have this picture in our minds of those great Motown hits being recorded at Hitsville , in the nice little tube studio, thumbing their nose at the recording establishment, ect, but real life often doesnt work that way.

For years, I thought Gary Lewis was the last drummer to have really played drums on all HIS hits. He even says in interviews that he did.
Then Hal spilled the beans, Hal played on everything up to "Shes Just My Style", on which Jim Keltner played. So theres another example of our recorded legacy not being what we think.

 

Well, I think we really need a bit more than a single quote from Hal to go by to say that a lot of stuff was cut in LA with the Wrecking Crew rather than at Hitsville. I'm not saying *nothing* was cut in LA, but there's a lot of evidence in favor of the majority of sessions indeed being at Hitsville.

 

>>>>>Luk, my friend, I agree with you. I'm sure most of the classics WERE cut at Hitsville. They really did have a sound of their own.

My guess is that a few of the biggies were cut in LA and NY for various reasons. Maybe Berry wanted a different sound occasionally to make things more diverse.

Hey, if its drowned in hiss from bouncing, sounds overcompressed and distorted, you know it came from Hitsville!!

Mikey

 

Well, then again...wasn't Baby Love?

 

Baby Love

>>>>>Nah....Baby Love, to me, is cleaner than most Motown sonic disasters. I've always thought that with Baby Love, they were cleaning up their act.

 

Luke, I missed your post. I did nose around that site-good site too-and I didn't see the thread.

There still seems to be a conflict of opinion of if "Baby Love" is four or eight track, and no clear-cut proof of when they got an eight track AND when it was in operation.

 

Just look for the "MIKE MCLEAN" threads.

Actually, there doesn't seem to be much conflict at all. Harry Weinger himself said:

And:

And Ed Wolfrum said:

All of that perfectly jives with the sound of the mixes - they simply SOUND like 3 track recordings when heard in stereo. Listen sometime!

 

All of this discussion about recording still does not sway the fact that neither of the stereo mixes match the mono mix.

Thanks for the links though, great site.

 

Well, I'll let you have that!

 

FWIW I mixed a backing track for British television of "Reach Out" from the 8-track session tape around 1970. It was very obviously a Detroit session. There is a tom tom overdub that doubles the bass rhythm making it sound a bit like a picked bass but the bass is definitely James. Why people insist on taking credit for things when the musicians, engineers, producers, tape boxes and A.F. of M. contracts ALL say otherwise is simply beyond my comprehension.

As for when the 8-track was first used, I was shown the machine installed in the control room running 1" tape during the summer of 1964. Apparently the earliest tape boxes are dated January, 1965 for some unknown reason.