Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Record producer and entrepreneur who founded Motown Records, creating a hit factory that launched stars like Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, and the
On the island
Eight records
I was a dreamer and Nat King Cole spoke to me. I always tried to be like Nat King Cole.
Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2
I wanted to learn the basics of music. And so I went to him to teach me how to play the piano. And I was just fascinated by Rach Maninoff's C sharp minor, because I didn't think anyone's hands could go that fast. It was complicated. It was hard. It was incredible.
Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens
Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five
It just kind of helped me to realize that music is all over the place. There's Rachmanoff, you know, there's love songs, there's comedy songs. And so I incorporated all of that into my repertoire of musical thinking.
I went to my sister's house and told her that I didn't have a home because my wife had kicked me out and she said, 'What did you expect?' ... that day I sat down at her piano and I wrote the song To Be Loved. ... Easiest song I've ever had to write because I just thought about what was happening to me.
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
This was a day that kind of changed my life. ... Smokey was always a great, great poet. But he came to me one day and he said, 'I have a song that I think you're going to like finally' ... it's called I'll Try Something New. ... It scared me actually and I felt bad because I said he can write songs better than I can.
She was such a great figure in my mind. ... It taught me, you got to have your own, you need to be independent ... That spoke to me and it in some ways changed my thought about life.
I Hear a SymphonyFavourite
This is I Hear Symphony. ... And it is just extremely special to me because Diana Ross and I had this wonderful relationship that turned into a great love relationship. But I was more intense and interested in making her the biggest star in the world ... when I hear I hear a symphony, when I think about her, and it was kind of our song together.
This particular song was written by me and a co writer called Michael Lussmith. And in my life with the Motown People, the truth is that many of them were bought away by these companies with the power and the money. Including Diana Ross, who left for $20 million to go to RCA ... they all came from wherever they were in the world ... to come back and honor me. And I wasn't going, and how sad that was. And it turned out that I could not close the door on these people.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:56Given your experience, given the breadth of your musical knowledge, given the songs that you've written and the stars that you worked with, how on earth did you go about choosing your eight discs for today's program?
Not very easily. So I went about thinking through the history of my life and came up with uh the various songs that I thought meant something to me in different ways than anything else that I could have there.
Presenter asks
2:27Many, many music lovers, and interestingly many people of the younger generation are still listening to a lot of stuff that Motown made. What is it about a piece of music that enables it to maintain its freshness throughout the decades? If we listen to a hit from forty, fifty years ago and it still punches us in the stomach, what is it about it that keeps it fresh?
That hasn't changed. It's about truth and love and inspiration. So my songs were based on my feelings. You know, when I needed money, I wrote money. 'You'll love to give me such a thrill, but you'll have to pay my bill. I need money.' And when I couldn't dance and I learned to dance to get girls, you know, I wrote a song called Do You Love Me? Now that I can dance? You know? But that was sort of what it was. It wasn't following the crowd or the bandwagon. And I would never jump on a bandwagon. If it wasn't going somewhere I wanted to go. If it was going somewhere I wanted to go, I'd be glad to jump on.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
I would take a poem that represents a book to me. It was like The Book of My Life by Rudyard Kipling.
Presenter asks
5:38So nineteen twenty nine then when you were born, just a few weeks after the Wall Street crash, were you aware that money was tight? Was money tight?
Not to me. We never felt the the depression. My father was a hustler and he was always out working ... I used to get up and go to work and plaster walls and carry heavy bags of cement. At Christmas time we sold Christmas trees. He was a hustler and the summertime we were on a truck selling watermelons.
Presenter asks
11:47You were twenty-three when you opened a little record shop in Detroit. It didn't go well. You had to close it down after a couple of years. Why did it fail, and what did you learn?
I was heavily into jazz, and so I opened up this jazz record store and uh in Detroit, the people that came in there were asking for the blues. They were factory workers and they wanted something to soothe themselves. ... And I tried to educate these poor people because I felt that, you know, jazz is hip. You should not be listening to this other stuff. And they said, well, you know, I want to hear Muddy Waters. ... And the first thing I know, I had no money and I had to go bankrupt in my business. And so then I realized it was that simplicity in music that I would try to get without making them all the same chord changes.
Presenter asks
13:25You were only in your mid-twenties then when you decided to quit the Ford production line and to take up songwriting full time. You were married and by that time I think you had three young kids. What did your wife say about your decision to quit your job?
What did my wife say? Yes. Two words. Get Out.
Presenter asks
15:51Did you have reservations about molding these young black performers to make them, let's say, 'acceptable' to a highly prejudiced industry and also a highly prejudiced audience? Did you worry about that?
No. I didn't worry about it because I was always believed in the principle that I could get it done, I could do it. I always felt my father was right. People are people. They have hearts. They laugh the same, cry the same, bleed the same ... There's good people and there's bad people.
“when I started off, I didn't know that I wanted to be a mogul or a big songwriter or anything. I just wanted to write songs, make some money, and get some girls.”
“My father was a hustler and he was always out working ... At Christmas time we sold Christmas trees. He was a hustler and the summertime we were on a truck selling watermelons.”
“I went to my sister's house and told her that I didn't have a home because my wife had kicked me out and she said, 'What did you expect?' You know, you quit your job. I said, 'Well, I can do something much better.' I got these songs that I've been writing and that day I sat down at her piano and I wrote the song To Be Loved. ... Easiest song I've ever had to write because I just thought about what was happening to me.”
“Dr. King ... came by and we talked and he told me that my music was bringing social integration while he was trying to bring political and intellectual integration with people. And as he would hear people react to my music and stuff, he just felt it was just something that we should be able to do together because we're doing ... we're on the same path.”
“I have a son who I think is a genius, and he's teaching me things. But the advice I give my kids is how to be a good person, how to do the right things right, not the wrong things right or the right things wrong, but the right things right, if they can.”
“It turned out that I could not close the door on these people. You know, if it had been me and their situation, and somebody offered me $20 million, you know, I might have gone too.”