The singles from early in Marvin Gaye's career are some of my very favourite recordings. Along with Smokey Robinson, he bridged the gap between the fifties and sixties, and pointed the way forward for Motown. Unlike many of the singers that became stars at the label, Gaye came to Motown an accomplished musician, originally as a session drummer, and having sung with the doo-wop group, the Moonglows. His charisma, and the fact that he could translate his rhythmic abilities to singing, soon put him in front of the band, where he remained for the rest of his great recording career.

The first song co-written by him to make the charts was 1962's "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", which might contain my choice for all-time best opening of a pop single (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmuDfPBTGDg). The string of r&b masterpieces that followed in the next few years included "Hitchhike", "Pride and Joy", "Can I Get a Witness", "You're a Wonderful One", "Baby Don't You Do It", "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar". They can all be heard on YouTube, but here are links to the last two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umuSuOlX1xg / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfpzePp5y8s. By the way, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" (linked above) features Gaye on piano and drums, and Martha and the Vandellas on backups.

It's no earth-shaker to say that Motown is the greatest pop and/or r&b record label. If you look at the list of artists they produced, and the number and variety of hit records they made, or more simply, if you listen to the quality of the writing, the arranging, the singing and the playing that these recordings contain, it's hard to find a candidate around which you could build an argument to the contrary. (I'll be writing about two that could be considered as challengers, Atlantic and Stax-Volt, in the days ahead.) No, the unbelievable success, both artistically and commercially, that the label achieved is a given; what has to be explored is how they did it and what the story can teach us.

A good place to start for anyone who wishes to do so is the film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002), which tells the story of the label from the perspective of the musicians. The central cast of whom were known as the Funk Brothers, accomplished jazz musicians playing in clubs around the Detroit area who were recruited by label founder Berry Gordy to form a session band which could record in a number of styles at a rapid rate, with a high level of quality and, perhaps most importantly, with the capability of making on-the-spot creative contributions to the songs. And the plan worked. Because of them, the interaction that is heard on the records is at a level much higher than that heard on any other pop or r&b recordings (right up to and including the present, to my ears). Their ability to process information and to play with rhythmic power as well as high degrees of sensitivity and subtlety came from their jazz backgrounds, where these qualities are expected.

A few days ago, I wrote that many of the best bands were racially integrated, which the Funk Brothers were as well, and proudly so. And yesterday, in writing about the Foundations, I mentioned that they were integrated in terms of both race and age. Motown could be considered as having gone even a further step, in a way, by integrating high-level jazz musicianship with equally excellent pop/r&b songwriting, singing and performing. The results sound like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz-UvQYAmbg.

I've always felt that the Foundations' 1968 hit "Build Me Up Buttercup" is one of the most beautifully constructed pop songs - and the fact that David Johansen, who has impeccable taste, covered it on his 1982 Live It Up concert album kind of clinches it for me. It could be argued that the writers were trying to emulate the Motown sound, but my response to that would be "Great!" (I'm a huge Motown fan). The song contains all kinds of interesting harmonic ideas - including secondary dominant chords and chords taken from the family of subdominant minor - that give it forward motion, and perhaps the most sought-after of compositional qualities: inevitability. The group, formed in London in 1967, was integrated not only racially but also in terms of age: the range went from 18 to 38. They had an interesting career, with a lot of good records (including another smash, "Baby, Now That I've Found You" from 1967), but for me, this one's alone at the top. It's one of my very favourite records. Here's the best-sounding link I could find (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bhrVXStJIM), but the person who put it up used a picture of the Temptations by accident - so here's a shot of the real group: http://www.amazon.com/Very-Best-Foundations/dp/B000R02JSO

James Jamerson, the virtuosic Motown bassist, probably did more for the success of the label than anyone. There are several reasons for this, the most vital being that music is usually "polarized" in nature, by that I mean that the melody or soprano voice (on top) and the bass line (on the bottom) are the two most active parts in the majority of music. The inner voices, the alto and tenor, have their moments certainly, but for the most part their role is to fill in the middle in the most sonorous way possible. Ergo, the two most important musicians on most pop records are the singer and the bassist. Now Motown's singers have become among the most famous in history (Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, etc.), but the musicians who played on the records didn't. There was an attempt at redressing the situation with the 2002 film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (which took its title from a 1989 book about Jamerson's life and work), and it did to a large degree - it's a great movie, by the way - but it came too late for many of the musicians, and particularly the most accomplished and most important artist on the label's roster. I'll be writing more on him in the days ahead, but for now here's a good example of his brilliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JmVrkRcTgo