Motown

(On Cable TV, August 2021) There’s no need to introduce Motown or explain the epochal contribution that the label made to American pop music — even fifty years later, some of their songs are instantly recognizable by everyone. What Hitsville: The Making of Motown does is take us back to “the Detroit years” of Motown, before it moved to Los Angeles and lost its distinctive identity. Detroit-based Motown was a family affair — talent being gradually developed, with a strong core group that defined Motown’s musical identity and relied on in-house musicians to produce hit after hit. Charmingly located in a residential neighbourhood (where a museum now stands — and you can be sure it’s on my list of things to do in Detroit), Motown was a local business and a tangled web of relationships, with friends marrying each other along the way. Motown could only come from Detroit, as the city’s factory-line ethos made its way to producing hit records. As a documentary, Hitsville effectively mixes interviews with relatively sophisticated animation and infographics to make its points, adding a big dose of terrific musical snippets along the way. It’s a wonder that so many of the principals are still around sixty years later to talk about that 1958–1970s era (and in one case recall the company song!), with some stunning period footage to provide additional material. The social aspect of Motown, as a black-owned company churning out massive pop hits, is certainly not forgotten along the way, even if the reward for that success was to move to Los Angeles, lose a few stars, and dilute the peak Motown identity. I strongly suspect that Hitsville doesn’t quite completely portray the truth about the era — it’s self-congratulatory, unwilling to poke at some grey zones (such as the turmoil that followed the move to L.A., or the growing political engagement of its stars despite the record executive’s wishes) and sings from the same music sheet. Still, the charming nature of the narrative is compelling and it’s impossible to highlight just how good the music is here — complete with a look at how some anthemic pieces were put together. Hitsville may or may not be the entire truth, but it’s a great watch.