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Post by MikeNYC on Jan 5, 2003 15:01:14 GMT -5
David Hinckley reports about a new book on Motown,by Gerald Posner,has anyone else heard about it,? Jonel? Janesbe ?  |
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Post by SoulStirrer on Jan 5, 2003 15:53:11 GMT -5
So Mikey,
Who did you-know-who pull a gun on?
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Post by MikeNYC on Jan 5, 2003 15:57:02 GMT -5
I heard about a knife,now a gun.........  |
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Post by SoulStirrer on Jan 5, 2003 16:03:07 GMT -5
I know it's hard because the trail has gone cold on a lot of this stuff. So many people are gone and some of the ones still with us won't say anything( I can think of THREE significant people who won't tumble). But there is a difference between a knife and a gun... |
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Post by iratherlikeme on Jan 5, 2003 20:15:39 GMT -5
I read an excerpt at the House of Paul Williams a couple of days ago. It was about Paul, and it basically went over everything that's already been said. If I'm not mistaken, he hinted at Paul having Mafia connections, Paul being right-handed and having a bullethole on the left side of his head, and stuff like that. I also read that he got his information from other Motown books and some anonymous sources.
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Post by iratherlikeme on Jan 5, 2003 20:18:18 GMT -5
 My mistake. What I read at HOPW was about Diana Ross. Another site had the piece about Paul. |
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Post by iratherlikeme on Jan 5, 2003 20:20:45 GMT -5
From EUR:
MOTOWN MEMORIES
Ross stories abound in book.
In more Diana Ross news, a new book talks in detail about her diva tendencies. The book is called "Motown: Music, Money, Sex and Power," and was written by Gerald Posner. Apparently, Miss Ross has had other notable driving experiences other than her recent DUI incident. In the book, as Hollywood Star News reports, Posner says Ross once became so enraged with Gladys Horton of the Marvalettes that she almost ran her over. "Ross irritated Horton by sending her handwritten messages, threatening to 'kick her behind.'" writes Posner. "One night, after a concert, Horton walked through the parking lot. Unknown to Horton, Ross was sitting behind the steering wheel of the station wagon the artists shared. She flipped on the ignition and floored the gas pedal, racing the car, with its headlights off, toward Horton. Ross slammed on the brakes, and the car screeched to a stop a few inches short of a terrified Horton. Ross rolled down the window just enough to put her hand out and flip Horton the finger before she sped away."
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Post by SoulStirrer on Jan 5, 2003 20:26:15 GMT -5
Hinckley's review was, for the most part, right; most of these stuff was not new. It's a nice piece of research, using a lot of info from other sources, but you know a lot of the stories in this book.
Soulsville USA is a better book on the music industry.
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Post by kalisa2 on Jan 5, 2003 21:50:06 GMT -5
I got my copy today (well, actually yesterday but I wasn't home). Haven't had a chance to dive into it, and wasn't breathless that it had gotten here as I suspect most of his sources will be sources I've already read since the most interesting principals are either dead or not talkin'.
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Post by SoulStirrer on Jan 5, 2003 21:54:01 GMT -5
And that's the deal. Most of the people involved are dead or won't talk.
Too bad we won't know more about the Tempts vs ...
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Post by MikeNYC on Jan 7, 2003 6:11:36 GMT -5
The Tempts !
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Post by iratherlikeme on Jan 7, 2003 11:58:05 GMT -5
LOL. Mike never gives up. ;D
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Post by Aba21 on Jan 7, 2003 21:45:20 GMT -5
K2...I'm probably going to get it cause I get everthing anyway. Maybe ther will be something to connect a dot or two somewhere in there. And sometimes I like a different writer's approach to the subject matter.
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Post by Jonel on Jan 7, 2003 22:48:15 GMT -5
 Thanks for the Info Mike! I need to add this to my Motown library.... New York Daily News - www.nydailynews.com Motown without pity By DAVID HINCKLEY Saturday, January 4th, 2003 MOTOWN: Money, Power, Sex and Music By Gerald Posner Random House, $25.95 If you don't want to read either Mary Wilson's or J. Randy Taraborrelli's entire book to learn how badly Diana Ross can behave, or Tony Turner's book to know how extensively the Temptations abused drugs, then Gerald Posner's "Motown" is your ticket — one-stop shopping for the nastiest dirt that's shaken loose over the years from the legendary Motown Records and its founder, Berry Gordy. Many of the tales are unflattering at best and often flirt with genuine tragedy, including the disintegration and death of the Supremes' Florence Ballard. Few, however, are new, and where Posner has fresh details, their impact is often diluted by a tone that suggests his mission is to present the seamiest details in the most lurid light. Truth is, we've known for 35 years that the marvelous Motown music machine did not run on well-adjusted artists happily sharing creativity in an atmosphere of full appreciation and reward. Motown was a business, like any other record label. Gordy was out to make money, and while his love for music seems genuine, it interested him most as a product. Posner's new details come largely from court records in Motown lawsuits, which reveal less hard information than one might hope. Posner seems close several times to major accusations, notably that Motown used "suitcases of cash" to buy radio airplay, but they turn out to be unproven if not unprovable. Some of the bad-behavior tales are interesting, such as Eddie Kendricks pulling a gun on a fellow Temptation or Marvin Gaye provoking a fistfight with Gordy. But around the time Posner starts reciting LaToya Jackson's sordid accusations against her father, most readers will probably want to pause and remember serious dysfunction among artists is hardly unique to Motown. Without minimizing personal tragedies, the enduring story of Motown is that one man dogged his dream until a black-owned independent label gave the world the Temptations, the Supremes, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas and Marvin Gaye. While Posner acknowledges the music, he doesn't seem to be all that much of a fan. He certainly isn't a music historian. One of his few historical references ties seven major early R&B artists to labels for which none of them ever recorded. "Motown" fills in a few blanks, but it leers too hard to be a definitive behind-the-scenes history. If we're going to hear the same old song, let's take it from the grooves.
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Post by Jonel on Jan 7, 2003 22:52:41 GMT -5
BOOKS: Behind the Motown sound
How Berry Gordy built label, groups that churned out hits
Steve Dollar - For the Journal-Constitution
Sunday, January 5, 2003
NONFICTION
Motown: Music, Money, Sex and Power. By Gerald Posner. Random House. $24.95. 256 pages.
The verdict: A careful, attentive and remarkably pithy history of Motown's rise and fall.
When former pop prodigy Michael Jackson started melting down in a Los Angeles courtroom recently --- literally, as a flap of puttylike substance appeared to peel away from what remains of his oft-modified nose --- it was as if another wayward drop had spilled from the faded House of Wax that was Motown.
As great as even the greatest American institutions, and fraught with an excess of genius, drama, greed, ambition, sweat and tears, the homegrown Detroit recording label defined "the sound of young America," as founder Berry Gordy famously declared. But the exceptional vision of its vast stable of writers, producers, singers and studio musicians, and of Gordy himself, ultimately fell to ruin.
This, even as the songs yielded by the label --- hundreds of hits that ranged from the ecstatically banal (the Jackson Five's "ABC") to the socially profound (Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On?") --- would never lose their favored status on the nation's psychic jukebox.
Though nostalgic enough by 1983 for director Lawrence Kasdan to wistfully celebrate in his yuppie-reunion drama, "The Big Chill," the classic Motown tunes of the 1960s and '70s have lost little of their spin even now. And, in one sense at least, Gordy's pioneering aesthetic continues to shape American pop consciousness. He reversed the Elvis syndrome. Elvis Presley, as his producer Sam Phillips notoriously asserted, was a white man who could sing as though he were black. This opened up unlimited commercial potential in the mid-1950s, when the color bar was powerfully evident in the Deep South.
During the 1960s, in the urbanized, industrialized North of Detroit, Gordy took untested, young black hopefuls and turned them into sharp, dynamic talents whose smooth vocal skills and charismatic style could be sold to a mainstream white audience. He created a model that continues to prosper, flipping and flopping across racial lines that Motown's sound itself helped to erase.
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