We all know Motown's marvellous music – but this inspirational documentary celebrated the great spoken-word hit albums
• Speaking in the Streets
It's not often you listen to a radio documentary, run fresh with inspiration to the internet and lay down a small fortune buying up the reference points. But *Motown: Speaking in the Streets* is special for two reasons: first, for bringing our attention to the famous label's much lesser-known spoken word imprint, Black Forum – home to Langston Hughes, Bill Cosby and Stokey Carmichael – and second, because breaking up Radio 4's monotony of voices is no bad thing.
Alvin Hall takes listeners back to Detroit in the late 1960s, to Berry Gordon's Motown HQ in its glory days: the hit factory churning out an assembly line of gold – Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles all drift in and out of earshot. He sets the scene for the civil rights movement, the rise of the Black Panthers, and King's assassination.
"Berry himself was a businessman, not an activist," explains Pat Thomas, author of Listen Whitey!: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975. But, says Professor Suzanne Smith: "He was under pressure to step up and make a political statement" and so Black Forum was born. Smith, the author of Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit explained Gordon's real dilemma: how to keep growing the mainstream white audience without alienating his black fans? Black Forum became the answer in 1970, releasing eight rare albums over three years. African-Americans fighting in Vietnam were recorded, talking about their experiences. A three-day, sold-out festival of poetry, put on by producer Woody King Jr (interviewed here) at the Apollo Theatre in New York, became the album Black Spirit.
My favourite story came from Elaine Brown, a Black Panther who recorded the label's last release: "Huey Newton [co-founder of the Black Panthers] had been listening to cassettes of my songs in prison ... He basically ordered me to make another album and to make it at Motown. I had no idea how this was going to happen, but when you got an order from Huey Newton, you just figured it out." Brown marched into the vice-president's office, flanked by two 7ft bodyguards, and "terrified" her way into a deal. Storytelling at its most powerful. Reported by guardian.co.uk 22 hours ago.
• Speaking in the Streets
It's not often you listen to a radio documentary, run fresh with inspiration to the internet and lay down a small fortune buying up the reference points. But *Motown: Speaking in the Streets* is special for two reasons: first, for bringing our attention to the famous label's much lesser-known spoken word imprint, Black Forum – home to Langston Hughes, Bill Cosby and Stokey Carmichael – and second, because breaking up Radio 4's monotony of voices is no bad thing.
Alvin Hall takes listeners back to Detroit in the late 1960s, to Berry Gordon's Motown HQ in its glory days: the hit factory churning out an assembly line of gold – Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles all drift in and out of earshot. He sets the scene for the civil rights movement, the rise of the Black Panthers, and King's assassination.
"Berry himself was a businessman, not an activist," explains Pat Thomas, author of Listen Whitey!: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975. But, says Professor Suzanne Smith: "He was under pressure to step up and make a political statement" and so Black Forum was born. Smith, the author of Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit explained Gordon's real dilemma: how to keep growing the mainstream white audience without alienating his black fans? Black Forum became the answer in 1970, releasing eight rare albums over three years. African-Americans fighting in Vietnam were recorded, talking about their experiences. A three-day, sold-out festival of poetry, put on by producer Woody King Jr (interviewed here) at the Apollo Theatre in New York, became the album Black Spirit.
My favourite story came from Elaine Brown, a Black Panther who recorded the label's last release: "Huey Newton [co-founder of the Black Panthers] had been listening to cassettes of my songs in prison ... He basically ordered me to make another album and to make it at Motown. I had no idea how this was going to happen, but when you got an order from Huey Newton, you just figured it out." Brown marched into the vice-president's office, flanked by two 7ft bodyguards, and "terrified" her way into a deal. Storytelling at its most powerful. Reported by guardian.co.uk 22 hours ago.
