It sure sounds like Stevie Wonder playing drums on "It's A Shame" by the Spinners...

OK, I'm Jumping! I never know when the legends are turned off by fawning admirers, so I try to avoid overt fandom, but with your encouragement, Steve, I hereby want to say

THANK YOU BOB OLHSSON!

MOTOWN IS EVERYTHING TO ME.

Kindest regards and best wishes!

 

If and when that happens I can't wait!!! I still can remember how excited I was when I finally found an original V.I.P. copy of "It's A Shame". I literally played the grooves off of it. About a year and a half ago I found another clean mono 45 at a record swap to replace the one I destroyed playing over and over for 15 years.

 

Thank you Bob Ohlsson for sharing your experiences with all of us here at the SH Forum. I loved reading about how one of my favorite songs came to be! Thanks again, and welcome!!!

 

Thanks Bob!

 

I hope Bob comes back and sees that his member status has changed from Junior Member to Motown Legend .

 

Now I'm in trouble! I'm a long time fan of Steve's work.

The stuff sounds the same because we didn't change anything other than to plop an MM-1000 Ampex into the back wall. All the rest of the gear remained the same except for the 16 input monitor mixer.

I've stuck to my guns about Stevie playing the drums because it was such a radical idea at the time that I can't imagine thinking it was the case unless Stevie or somebody told me it was. And the Spinners were always SOOO great.

There's some irony to the story too. They let Stevie produce it as sort of an exam to see what he could do. After the song started zooming up the charts it was discovered that the group's recording contract had expired! Atlantic wound up winning the bidding war so we probably never even broke even on signing the Spinners.

 

Oh, man! I grew up with those Motown records! I AM jumpin'! I only wish we could get MORE posts from Bob Olhsson and other legendary guys about the music that we all love. Yeah, try to get those other guys here, too!

Tom Moulton posts at BSN. He also has a wealth of musical life to tell. I'd also like to get some other mastering guys in here!

 

"It's A Shame"? I can't say enough how much I love that record, especially the MONO single mix! It's so powerful, brassy, and so full of dripping SOUL! It's still hard for me to believe it's the Spinners after being familiar with their smoother Atlantic stuff. "It's A Shame" has got to be one of the best Stevie Wonder productions ever, and so relatively few people know it's his song!

I'm glad you can't wear out a CD because I played that song from the Motown Hitsville USA box over and over!

 

I'm confused now. Is it actually Stevie on those skins? I listened to the song again in my head, and it's starting to sound a bit like his drumming. He has a tendency to repeat fills with precision.

 

Bob,

We are glad that you are here!

Bob

 

The drum issue IS confusing! I walked away from my most unforgettable vocal session 30+ years ago thinking it was Stevie on both drums and "bass" but 30 years IS a long time and I apparently was confused enough in all of the excitement to not wipe my leftover background tracks. On the other hand a "drum accents" track would be very unusual for that time and suggests to me that it was an overdub. Maybe everybody's right and Stevie overdubbed those accents over Pistol, Urial or Andrew Smith who was also playing drums at Motown around then. Stevie or Syreeta might remember. I also don't remember who engineered the original rhythm session.

Funny, 30 years ago we were all just doing another evening's work and a miracle happened that snowballed into something that became a memorable part of many peoples' lives. We were the luckiest people in the world to share that experience.

 

Bob,

I believe that is exactly how miracles occur....quietly and just a part of daily life. It is only later that we fully comprehend the magnitude of the event. Thanks for sharing your 'witness' with us!

Bob