ChrisC
Proud Member
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2010
- Messages
- 3,296
- Points
- 63
Re: Motown
My question was not, why are they so many J5 outtakes. But I appreciate the effort.
My question was why are there some for J5 and MJ but none for Jacksons. The Jacksons recorded just as many studio albums at Epic as Michael did solo.
Because Motown does that with a lot of their classic era artists. They release endless compilations with the same songs on them too. Motown has pretty much been a catalog label since the 1980s. Their last really popular act was probably Boyz II Men in the early 1990s. Also Motown had their 1960s and early 1970s acts constantly recording, so there was a lot of excess material. They didn't just record songs for an album. Back then it was somewhat common to release non-album songs as singles or use extra songs as a B-side of a single.
In the early 2000s, Harry Weinger said there was close to 300 unreleased J5 songs including an instrumental solo album by Tito. I think there was some solo songs by Marlon too, but don't know if it is enough for an album. Mike said once he didn't remember recording some songs on one of his Motown solo albums because they were in the studio so often. That's a lot of songs, especially considering there may be multiple takes of some of them. I saw an interview with one of the Funk Brothers and he said that they sometimes just recorded instrumental tracks and had no idea of what the song was going to be called or who was going to sing on it until the record was released. Berry Gordy was said to want Motown to be run like an assembly line at the car factories in Detroit.
I don't think The Jacksons were as prolific as the J5. They probably just recorded enough songs for an album, maybe with a few songs left over.
My question was not, why are they so many J5 outtakes. But I appreciate the effort.
My question was why are there some for J5 and MJ but none for Jacksons. The Jacksons recorded just as many studio albums at Epic as Michael did solo.