Motown Records

Right.

So a lot of the Motown stuff, you know, you'll – Brown Eyed Girls is going to happen.

Margaritaville is going to happen.

But then again, of course, Earth, Wind & Fire, Brick House, The Commodores.

Warner Music is the largest of the independent music companies that have been consolidated into much larger entertainment companies.

The biggest labels in music, Abbey Road, which used to own the Beatles music, Motown, have essentially sold off those album rights and become artifacts, historical artifacts.

The music retail business is dead.

There used to be stores that sold music.

more unsung and maybe somewhat underrated

Motown greats of the original 1960s era band.

We'll also take in some other things like found recordings by the Saints and The Question that are only being released now, even though they're well, well from the 70s and 80s.

You know, the usual show.

But the A-side's even better.

They could easily have covered Nowhere to Run.

It's a Holland, Dozier Holland song, probably the premier songwriting team at Motown, apart from, say, Smokey Robinson, who was a lone wolf, although they had many good writing teams there.

Barrett Strong and Whitfield, they were obviously a really good team as well.

Is there a particular composer or particular style of that you learned about in terms of her early her early training that you hear coming through in her later work

so much of this was revelatory for me just in terms of how much was in detroit at that time like that johnny hooker was recording not far from where she lives Barry Gordy, the future founder of Motown, is her next-door neighbor for the most part, and those families are very close through most of her life.

And just, you know, the seeds of Motown are sort of just in that community of Paradise Valley and Black Bottom.

I think it was really kind of

also enlightening for me to kind of understand the people who were kind of just before her, like the harpist Dorothy Ashby, another bebop pianist, Terry Pollard, who is very much a mentor and a big sister to her.

Detroiter, songwriter, legend, she collaborated with Earth, Wind & Fire's Maurice White and Al McKay on this fall classic, September.

Willis, who died in 2019, spoke with CBS News that year about her musical background.

I grew up in Detroit when Motown was coming up.

But is definitely a big name historically.

She was actually the first white British artist to be signed by Motown and later released her first single in 1970.

But her big break came in 1976, where she recorded a duet with a very famous other British artist.

And very famous enough that she performed this song for the rest of her career.

So I want to know who this person is here.

One half of a very famous duet.

Want to know who it is? First white British woman to be signed to Motown hit 1976 love song duet.

Who is this?

But is definitely a big name historically.

She was actually the first white British artist to be signed by Motown.

And later released her first single in 1970.

But her big break came in 1976 where she recorded a duet with a very famous other British artist.

One half of a very famous duet.

I want to know who it is.

First white British woman to be signed to Motown hit 1976 love song duet.

Who is this?

I listened to it and it's brilliant.

He's really kind of Motown style.

It sounds like a sort of modern Motown.

It's really good.

I love his style.

But business was different then, too.

Like, Motown and Michael Jackson and the Beatles and all these pe- like, that's owned by financial groups now, so it gets used in movies, and it gets pushed out in commercials versus, like, you know, some, some stuff from the '20s or '30s that m- might just be damn good songs.

It's like-

Right