By Robert Dennis Our Motown

Heritage (Part 2)
Building The Sound

My first job at Motown involved drafting. One of the first tasks I had was to complete a set of drawings for
something they were building - an 8 track recorder! By 1963, the largest number of tracks that you could buy
from a dealer was 4. An eight-track recorder had been built by Les Paul, but you couldn't order one from a
dealer. You could get one custom-built by the manufacturer, but at a very premium price. Motown very much
wanted an eight-track, so they were building one. The money saved from building the machines helped
Motown be able to afford establishing a strong technical engineering crew, that could keep things working
well in recording. It turned out to be fall, 1964 before the machine was installed because it was really an
adventurous plan.

The eight-track project was not unusual by any means. Throughout my time at Motown, the company always
had more technical engineers than recording engineers. The creative elements of the company (lead by Berry
Gordy) and the recording engineers would want a certain effect or a certain function. Engineering head, Mike
McLean, would get it designed and built for the company. In many ways, this technical staff helped Motown
establish a unique sound and saved them money to boot. But Technical Engineering wasn't always so
efficient.

Motown used to mix every multitrack master several times. There was an average of twenty mixes done for
each tune released. In 1964, a cost cutting Vice President, Ralph Seltzer, noticed that each mixing session
used a full reel of tape and usually only three minutes or so was cut out off the reel and kept. The Tape
Librarian, Fran Heard, used to take the rest of the tape off of the reel and toss it, so that the metal reel could
be salvaged.

Mr. Seltzer asked Mike, "Why can't the tape be re-used?" Mike's response was "If the splice was made
poorly, the level would drop when the engineer tried to record over it." Pushing the issue, the penny-pinching
executive wanted to know if Mike could build a machine that would detect bad splices. Mike, who never
backed down from a technical challenge, agreed to do so.

Back at his desk, Mike figured that the splice would be silent if the dropout was less than 1 dB. Mike worked
on the design for two weeks straight. He designed a tape transport with record and playback heads. The
machine would record a tone on the tape, and then play it back; if there was a drop-out of more than 1 dB, the
machine stopped so that the splice could be redone. After completing the design, he got his shop supervisor,
John Windt, to get it built. It seemed like they were at that project for 6 months.

The machine worked exactly as planned, but Mike found out the rest of the story. It wound up that none of
the recording engineers, no matter how careful they were, could make a splice in tape that didn't have a drop-
out of more that 1 dB. Mike, and Berry, himself, tried with the same result. The machine went under the work
bench to gather dust, until I left Motown in 1968.

By Robert Dennis Our Motown Heritage

The Rush Release

At the time the Beatles hit, Motown was establishing itself as the largest independent record company in the
world. The world took notice as the Beatles had three records in the Top 10 in mid 1964 - an unheard of
event. The World was shocked when the Motown Supremes busted though the Beatles, and replaced them
with their #1 record, "Baby Love." The Beatles also took notice and began recording their own versions of
some of the early Motown hits. By fall of 1964, Motown employees had Beatles key chains, T-Shirts, etc. A
strong mutual respect developed between the Beatles, and Motown.

In the Spring of 1964, the 4 Tops had a number one hit - "I Can't Help Myself." Before coming to Motown,
the "Tops" were signed to Columbia Records (Now CBS/Sony). Columbia went into the vaults in the
Summer of 1964, and released a tune they had recorded on the Tops. They were trying to get the "recorders"
off of Motown's hit record. Distributors put in standing orders with record companies that they will take a
certain number of copies of ANY release by a certain artist who has a large hit. Knowing this, Columbia
timed their release correctly to "fill" these reorders.
Berry was pissed! No, Berry was PISSED!

Immediately, all recording and production people were advised that everyone would be working on the next
Tops release and it was to get out TODAY!

The writing & producing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, met chief engineer Lawrence Horn in the studio
at 3PM. With the musicians and the Tops standing by, they wrote "It’s The Same Old Song" on the spot. The
musicians were running the tune down with Brian Holland and Lawrence, as Eddie Holland was finishing the
lyrics and Lamont Dozier was finishing the melody at 3:30 PM. By 5 PM, I received the first mix from the
hands of Robert Gordy, and he waited for me while I cut a reference disk on it. I immediately began cutting 7
inch records of this mix, and hand-stamping the hand-typed labels with "MOTOWN." At 5:40 PM, I got
another mix from Robert, and he again waited for the test cut.

At 6:00 PM, I got a call to cut a master for a strike-off. A strike-off is a stamper to press out the records very
quickly - you can only get about 1000 pressings from a strike-off, but the stamper can be made very fast. At
6:05, I received a call to cut a second master and put it in the same box - I was a bit upset because I had
already started packing the first master. By 6:35 PM, someone (probably some "Gordy" person) was speeding
toward Owosso, Michigan, to the American Record Pressing Plant. I was still hand cutting records. The plant
was about 100 miles away from Detroit, and the closest of the six plants that pressed records for Motown in
the USA.

Between 6 PM and Midnight, I received six more mixes of the tune, each time changing the tape I was using
to hand-cut copies for DJ's. I got an engineer in at 10 PM and another to relive him at 9 AM. I made sure that
the engineer knew exactly what to do and left around midnight. At 8 AM I was making sure all the hand-cut
records were finished (some 300) and handing them off to Ester Gordy.

By 3 PM (24 hours after beginning), Motown managed to have 1500 records in the hands of the key DJ's in
the country, and "It's The Same Old Song" became a hit literally overnight. The record eventually went #2,
and "almost" went gold - not bad for a little company in three houses on West Grand Blvd. The Columbia
release went to #39 and sold a lot of records.

Whenever I listened to the "Same Old Song" Motown release, it sounded "thrown-together" and sub-
standard. I guess I was right to some degree because it only went to #2. I had the disadvantage of knowing
how it was done. Most other people liked it and didn't notice any lack.
Our Motown Heritage (Part 4)
Recording Snowshoes & Shovels

By Robert Dennis

The snow in winter reminds me of the early days of Motown.

In the fall of 1963, Motown was contained in three large houses on West Grand Blvd. These houses were
large enough to have 3 floors, including the basement. Between the two main houses, there was a covered
passageway that shielded you from the cold. The recording studio was an add-on in the back of the main
building. When I went from Engineering to Shipping, there was a hall-sized passageway that was shielded on
three sides.

By the end of 1964, Motown had added a fourth building that housed the mixing suite and more offices. They
also had purchased Golden World Studios on Davison Avenue, about 4 miles from the main studio. The
fourth house was a few doors down from the main building. To do a mix in the Winter, the engineer
sometimes had to sign out the tape in the main building, put on his coat, and walk through a blizzard for a
half-block. To do a session at "Studio B" (Davison Avenue), the engineer had to drive four miles though the
blizzard.

All studios and mixing rooms operated 22 hours a day, shutting down for daily maintenance between 8 and
10 in the morning. So these Winter treks were made at all hours and in the coldest dead of night.

By the end of 1966, just before the company moved its offices downtown, there were 8 buildings up and
down Grand Blvd. As a recording supervisor, I had to take the time cards for my employees down to
"Finance" each week. This Department was a long city block (1/4 mile) down and across the street. In the
dead of Winter, this was quite a walk. I suppose I could have driven, but then I would have had to dig out the
car.

It seems as though there was a lot more snow and cold in the 60's. I lived a block away from Motown in these
years, and I remember at least 5 occasions where the snow was knee to hip high. When Motown moved to
Woodward and the Fisher Freeway in the Summer of 1967, we were so happy to have all the departments in
the same building. We also had elevators.