Tamla Motown: The Stories Behind The UK Singles

Tamla Motown is a name that’s gone down in music history. Yet few realise it was, in fact, a label that never existed in America, but was formed by Berry Gordy in 1965 to release US recordings in the rest of the world, the Detroit-based soul Svengali having set up a series of labels to service the home market. The 45rpm seven-inch single was the stock in trade, and many of the soulful ‘three-minute symphonies’ to bear the Tamla Motown label remain classics today. The period between 1965 and 1976 saw the likes of the Supremes, Four Tops, Temptations, Marvin Gaye and many more make their indelible mark on the music scene. This book provides a complete discography of Tamla Motown’s UK singles, telling the stories behind each in fascinating detail. Terry Wilson’s painstaking research means that even soul experts will find facts they weren’t aware of as he takes a popular music phenomenon and, for the first time, examines it from a UK perspective. Artist summaries, plus sections on statistics, facts and feats and an index of tracks, make this the first definitive guide to the UK output of Berry Gordy’s legendary US labels.