Favorite Motown song

Messrs Mills51 and Womack,

Great calls on Reflections ... first thing I thought of when I read the title of the thread. 4Tops are my favorite group (although their two-CD best-of could be knocked down to a single with no great loss).

Roughly descending order:

Reflectons, DR & Supremes
I'll Be There, 4Tops
I Heard It through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye
Tears of a Clown, Smokey
I Want You Back, Jackson 5 (amazing stuff by the session guys)
I Hear a Symphony, DR & S
Inner City Blues, MG
Heat Wave, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
Tracks of My Tears, Smokey
Can't Help Myself 4Tops

YD&OHS, etc

 

Off the top of my head:

"My Girl"

"Can I Get A Witness"

"I Heard It Through The Grapevine"

 

Possibly, though Sun Records in the early 50s had Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins at the same time ...

 

Ball of Confusion — O'Jays

(Edit: Never recorded on Motown. Major label was MCA.)

 

"Ball of Confusion" was the Temptations on Gordy.

 

Damn well could be. Motown had about a 15-year solid run of hits and reinvented itself a couple of times along the way. When pyschedelic became the big thing in the late '60s, they dabbled in that. They also did socially-relevant stuff when the innocence of "My Girl" seemed to be out of fashion. Berry Gordy didn't just put together a label, it was an organization. In-house writers, an incredible collection of studio musicians, a staff that taught the artists their dance steps and social skills. He got sidetracked trying to turn some of his artists into Vegas acts, which seems lame now but was an important step in the show biz world that existed back then.

Motown was a powerhouse. Look at the number and quality of hits they pumped out in 1964-65 when the Beatles hit and the focus was on everything out of the UK. I suspect the jump the shark moment was when they abruptly moved to LA, but they still had some formidable hits after that.

 

I'd like to throw a vote to:

Cloud Nine.
Ain't That Peculiar? (Twin brother of Can I Get A Witness? Great pull, Huggy)
Trouble Man.

 

Ain't Too Proud to Beg — The Temptations

The kitchen scene from "The Big Chill." Classic.

 

Remarkable lack of love for "Midnight Train To Georgia."
James Jamerson poppin' that bass.
Ahhh....

 

Can't Get Next to You was a great Temps song. Don't hear it much on satellite.

My Girl evokes a lot of memories for a kid coming of age in the late 60s and early 70s. I have a personal story about that song. My oldest niece got married last summer (she was the first-born among myself and seven brothers and sisters, so she's quite the princess). Her future mother in law got family pictures of both my niece and her husband, scanned them to the computer and made a Ken Burns-like montage, beginning with baby pictures. "I should have been a cowboy" was the song for her husband, since he's a U-Texas grad and quite the blue-blood Texan. When we put on the DVD of my niece, that familiar finger-snapping and guitar intro started, then the first line "I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day," with her baby pictures. By the time it got to "my girl, my girl, my girl... talkin' about my girl ... my girl." where wasn't a dry eye in the hosue.

 

Bernadette!

 

That's not Motown. It was after they left and started recording for Buddah. Tony Camillo produced it. If there's any evidence that Jamerson played on the session, I can't find it.