Motown & Michael McDonald

In 1960, a 30-year-old songwriter named Berry Gordy Jr. had his first big hit, Money by Barrett Strong. He used his earnings from the song to establish his own record company in Detroit. And because he came from the then car capital of the world, he named his label, Motown, short for Motortown. It was the beginning of the rise of a melodic, danceable, infectious and more accessible kind of soul music in the hit charts of the world and the resurgence of black performers as pop idols.

The ’60s and the ’70s were not good years for American pop music. The Beatles burst into the music scene and brought about the fabled British invasion. Top US acts like Rick Nelson, Paul Anka and even Elvis Presley, the biggest rock and roll artist of the time, reeled and fell with the onslaught of this new kind of music. It was a kind of rock and roll, which admittedly originated in the US of A but was getting a new treatment from the UK. But Gordy’s Motown was different. He sold soul which the Brits still had to explore and his music and his artists were uniquely American.

Think Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me; the Marvellettes, Please Mr. Postman; Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On; The Supremes, Stop! In the Name of Love; and later Diana Ross, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough; Stevie Wonder My Cherie Amour; The Four Tops, Baby I Need Your Loving, The Temptations, My Girl; The Miracles Ooh, Baby, Baby; The Isley Brothers, This Old Heart of Mine; The Jackson 5, ABC; and later Michael Jackson, Got to be There; the Commodores, The Bump and later Lionel Richie Truly; Rick James, Super Freak and so many others who covered the airlanes with the sound of sweet, glorious soul.

One of those kids who grew up listening to Brit pop rock and Motown soul was the singer and keyboard player Michael McDonald. It is no wonder then that he became one of those guys who very seamlessly melds rock and soul music in one impressive whole. You doubtless remember him as one of the Doobie Brothers, Minute by Minute, Real Love and as the guy who created What a Fool Believes with Kenny Loggins. As a soloist he did Hey Girl, I Keep Forgetting and No Looking Back and his hits with James Ingram Ya Mo B There and Patti LaBelle On My Own.

Now that he has reached the time in his life when he can look back on his music career and say he did things right, McDonald decided to come up with an album he had been wanting to do since his days as a young band vocalist. And that is to sing Motown songs. Everybody sings Motown. We all do but soul is an inborn thing and only a privileged few can do something like I Heard It Through the Grapevine with the same conviction as Marvin Gaye or Gladys Knight & the Pips. I know too, there now exists a kind a music that they call blue-eyed soul. Think Michael Bolton but I am sure you will want to now change that name to Michael McDonald as the best personification of blue-eyed soul.

Impeccable is the only way I can describe the production of this album simply called Michael McDonald Motown. It must have been intimidating to have to go over the Motown catalogue of songs, then choosing the arrangements and then recording these challenging classics in a way that shows respect for the originals but with McDonald also retaining his own distinctive style. It would have been so easy to just lapse into copying the old recordings. But best of all, at a time when adult contemporary music seems to be losing its rock chops and harking back to the days of Andy Williams and the Ray Conniff Singers, along comes McDonald, mature, elegant but with rock sensibility intact.

Listen to this great voice perform I Heard It Through the Grapevine, You are Everything, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours, I’m Gonna Make You Love Me, Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing, Reflections, How Sweet It is (To be Loved by You), Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, All in Love is Fair, I Want You, Distant Love, I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will be Forever) and Since I Lost My Baby.

There is no way you will listen to this album only once or twice. It just plays on and on and I am already wondering, or I should say hoping a Volume Two is already in the near future.