When Motown Came To Britain

In 1965, some of Motown’s brightest new stars, including The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, arrived in London for a tour that would change the face of British music history. At that time, pop music fans in the UK were unlikely to hear black music on mainstream radio, and names like Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson still meant nothing to most British people, but thousands of miles away from where these exciting new sounds were being recorded in Detroit, a small group of dedicated British music fans had stumbled across the songs and began championing its artists.

Although I like a lot of the Motown acts that developed, I am not a fan of most of the early stuff, but rather the more polished music that came out later in mid- to late-sixties. If you are more of a fan than I am, or a music history buff in general, you will no doubt have cause to like it more than I did. It was interesting to see that some of the early British fans actually became friends with performers or Motown employees because they were not only on the bandwagon early, but to some extend helped build the bandwagon. For Motown music needed all the help it could get planting its seed and growing in popularity in Britain.