Tamla Motown - You could get arrested for that.

June 10th – Are there many Soul lovers out there? That reads like an advert for Beelzebubbians to come calling so, to rephrase; are there many Tamla Motown (TM) lovers out there?

I was never a devotee, never really got it. I was too much into the psychedelic music scene; Hendrix had captured me heart and vitals. I think the difficulty I had with Soul was that it seemed to be too much about the performer and not about the music. That seems a bit of a foolish statement (this is me writing this stuff, y’know, so foolish is a given) for if Jimi Hendrix or Black Sabbath or, heaven forbid, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown can't be classed as showmen then the word doesn't exist; Arthur Brown…now there’s a suitable case for treatment. 

Some of the TM singles, I guess, can be given the moniker of classic. Singles like, Hold On (I’m Comin’) by Sam and Dave or Knock On Wood by Eddie Floyd; great dance tunes that have stood the test of time. I don’t, however, put Try A Little Tenderness by Otis Redding or My Girl by The Temptations…or anything by Gino Washington and the Ram-Jam Band...into that bracket. No, thank you; way, way, way too much Soul for me, I'm afraid. 

I used to go to a pub/club called The Wilson’s Arms...in Knowle, I think it was… I can remember it was where I first discovered the effect of UV light on a mouth full of capped teeth; not a pretty sight…where the whole night of dancing was filled to the gunnels with Tamla… Hundreds of what seemed like thousands of bodies’ were boogieing the night away to Sam and Dave or The Four Tops or The Supremes as I stood on the periphery of the dance floor saying to myself;

“Look at ‘em. Don’t know good music from bad…if they’d play summat decent, I’d go and ask that lass, the one dancing round her green handbag with her two mates, I’d go and ask her for dance…if they’d play summat decent”,

knowing all the time that the possibility of this DJ playing anything even approaching what I’d class as decent music was as rare as rocking-horse poo, and that also removed the almost certain outcome of me being embarrassed by a refusal, so a lose-lose situation really.

The other thing about Tamla stuff was that it spawned a whole new set of dance moves. Dance moves perpetuated and refined by the various groups of the time, all twisting, turning and clapping in unison as if they were con-joined marionettes. As an addition to this, I also think they did a disservice to their ilk and provided the world with a stereotype they’re still hauling around after all this time, but that’s for another discussion and needs to be done face-to-face. This meta-movement black-extravaganza meant I was never quite at home on the dance floor as I was with rock ‘n’ roll or jiving. For me, I’d happily have melted all those records down and turned them into vases.

However, I have to say that when Eddie Kendricks of The Temptations was arrested by the cops, on this day in 1991for non-payment of child support, that it was taking a dislike of Tamla Motown and soul music general a little too far; the arrest took place at the funeral of fellow Temptations star David Ruffin (was he Jimmy’s brother?).