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Motown: The Sound Of Young America
by
The music of Motown defined an era. From The Jackson 5 and Diana Ross to Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, Berry Gordy and his right-hand man, Barney Ales, built the most successful independent record label in the world. Motown not only represented the most iconic recording artists of its time and produced countless global hits, it created a cultural institution that rede
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Hardcover, 400 pages
Published
September 13th 2016
by Thames & Hudson Ltd.
(first published September 2016)
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An opportunity missed. The pictorial side of the book is wonderful - brilliant photos, montages of album covers, adverts and so on - and is almost worth the purchase price alone. However, the text is leaden (a thing happened and then a thing happened) and is almost entirely focussed on the story of Motown as a corporation rather than as a creative force. Given that it was written in conjunction with Barney Ales (head of sales for Motown), it is heavily slanted towards distribution deals, sales a
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The Motown sound is the music of my youth. I received an early introduction from my older sister and grew through the music of the 60's. I began the journey learning about the two men Berry Gordy and Barney Ales who are responsible for the development of the sounds of my time. Shroud businessmen and partners in transforming a generation through music and lyrics. The great tragedy is what has happened to Detroit during the past sixty years. The photographs are remarkable and stir vivid memories o
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Lots of beautiful pictures and album covers accompanying the story of Motown's creation, rise, and demise. Well, less a story than a mostly "this happened, then this happened" chronicle. I was excited to learn about Motown after reading Robert Gordon's excellent
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion
on Motown's funky sibling record company in Memphis, but was disappointed that this lacked the narrative depth and cohesion of the Stax book. Still, a beautiful visual history of
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For the most part, the photographs were great, but the photos and the text did not line up. The author of the book is English, since he devotes a lot of pages to Motown acts on the British tv show Ready, Steady, Go and the sales of Motown product in England. The rise and fall of Motown is an interesting story, the source of television shows, movies and Broadway musicals. The book is good, but not great.
Very interesting book with lots of anecdotes about the singers and the back-room people (Berry Gordy etc...) Lots of photos, so lots of heavy pages-- book was unwieldy to hold! My favorite photo was the Supremes meeting the Queen Mother!
High quality coffee-table book with a competent narrative but perhaps lacking real analysis of both the artists and the times. But worth it for the pictures which are for the main part excellent and occasionally spectacular.
Marvellous photos - weak text.
Loads of fabulous pictures but a barebones narrative clearly ‘authorised’. A wasted opportunity.
Jan 15, 2017
MirandaLeest
rated it
really liked it
Shelves:
gelezen-in-2017,
gelezen-in-het-nederlands
Prachtig boek, vooral vanwege de schitterende foto's. De tekst is helaas wat minder prettig leesbaar.
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A fascinating account, the history of one of the best known record labels in the history of popular music with loads of great photographs too.
Beautiful book!
Nov 04, 2016
Joy
added it
this is an amazing coffee table type bk. it has so many photos of people/places from the time period it covers--but so many of these people continued on making music. even if this is not your style--it is worth looking at. you could play group games trying to guess who did what--when. even pulling up music on your phone/computer. beautiful book with music people you never heard of & those who still make things happen today.
Adam White joins Motown founder Berry Gordy and Gordy's right-hand man Barney Ales to deliver a wonderfully written history of Motown. Hitsville U.S.A., an incredible building that housed the sounds of Motown, is featured upfront. A compilation of absolutely stunning iconic photographs of the stars of Motown plus album art and lavishly illustrated posters pay a tribute to the music that revolutionized a generation.
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Gorgeous photos and spreads. Loved all the Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye photos. Information is rather dryly presented. Best for skimming the paragraphs and poring over the pictures. I need to spend some extra time learning about the 1967 Detroit uprising.
I won this book through Goodreads. A wonderfully written book filled with tons of information. A great look into all these great musicians and people.
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