I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Creating Icons: How We Remember Women’s Suffrage— commemorating the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 — is scheduled to be at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. until March of 2021.
TEN YEARS AGO the Erdogan government in Turkey signed a convention banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and tens of thousands marched in the Pride Parade on Istanbul’s main street under police escort. Today very little of that spirit remains: the pride march has been banned, and rubber bullets and tear-gas await those who turn up.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Secret the Cat— a North Carolina kitteh who went missing two years ago … but he was discovered on Petfinder, and just a mile away.
ENERGY NOTES— despite having abundant deserts and sunshine, Middle Eastern countries have relied on oil (with only 3% of its own energy from renewables. That looks set to change: as solar farms are cheaper, faster and safer to build and maintain than oil and gas plants (especially during regional political unrest).
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Callie the Cat— a New Jersey new mother (at a shelter) who was able to nurse Arnie the orange kitten shown when his own mother became ill and unable to lactate … and Arnie is (for now) part of a larger family.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the actor Fred Willard, who has died at the age of eighty-six, and is best-known (in recent years) for Best in Show, For Your Consideration, This is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, Austin Powers and many other films. I also loved Willard’s role as the assistant station controller in the 1976 Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder film "Silver Streak".
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… someone that Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson have described as not receiving his proper due for his efforts in the first eight years of Motown is William “Mickey” Stevenson— the first A&R man (talent scout and artist developer) hired back in 1959. The reasons? He and his wife had a parting of ways with the label in early 1967, he was a song co-writer, often with the song’s performer (and thus not recognizable to the general public), did much of his work behind-the-scenes and after leaving Motown was unable to continue as a purely music man; instead focusing on theatrical musicals. Yet he will receive a major honor next month, so a career overview is in order.
Born in 1937, the Detroit native was (with his brothers) part of a winning song-and-dance act at the Apollo Theater amateur night at age seven. He became active in the Detroit doo-wop and Gospel scene at a young age (even as a stage manager) and in 1959 was recommended to Berry Gordy by their barber as someone who could help him start his company. Stevenson brought Berry the songs he had written, which Berry loved … but not his voice. Instead, he offered the twenty-two year-old Stevenson the job as Artist & Repertoire man, which stunned Mickey:
“Let me get this straight — I can sign anybody I want?”
Berry said, “You’re in charge of the music, you’ve got it … you know the musicians and you know what’s going on.”
Job #1 was to assemble an in-house band for the new Motown singers … and as he truly did “know the musicians”, it was he who hired a group of Detroit-area jazz and blues musicians, in what came to be known as the Funk Brothers— over time, thirteen different, multi-racial musicians who seldom received individual credits (unlike Stax Records’ Booker T & the M.G.’s) yet have received much belated credits, and bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. For this alone, Mickey Stevenson earned his salary at Motown.
He also went on to hire some of the talented songwriters at Motown, including Ron Miller, George ‘Ivy Jo’ Hunter and a songwriter he later named as his assistant, Norman Whitfield (who went on to co-write I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg and other hits). And he helped scout aspiring musicians such as the Four Tops and Martha Reeves, and convinced Marvin Gaye to go from being a pop singer (singing pop & jazz standards) to being an R&B singer.
His first co-songwriting hit came in 1962, with the Marvelettes’ Beechwood 4-5789 (co-written with Berry Gordy’s brother George, and Marvin Gaye, who played drums on the tune) that reached #17 in the pop charts. Stevenson co-wrote two other songs for Marvin (Stubborn Kind of Fellow and Pride & Joy), two tunes co-written by George Ivy Jo Hunter (Ask the Lonely by the Four Tops and Can You Jerk Like Me by the Contours) and his biggest hit at the label: the Martha and the Vandellas’ Dancing in the Street (written along with ‘Ivy Jo’ Hunter and Marvin Gaye) reaching #2.
Stevenson also produced several of the artists who performed songs by the label’s other songwriters, with two of them including Jimmy Ruffin’s What Becomes of the Brokenhearted and Stevie Wonder’s Uptight. Mickey Stevenson married fellow Motown star Kim Weston, and his final hit with Motown was a song he co-wrote with Sylvia Moy: a duet for his wife and Marvin Gaye entitled It Takes Two (a #14).
Stevenson at this time (late 1966) felt that he had maxed-out at Motown, and wanted to start his own company. Though they later divorced, he told Weston she could stay-on at Motown … yet she was dismayed at the royalty structure (eventually suing the label and winning) and so she went with him to MGM — where he was offered complete control of their subsidiary Venture label.
Alas, he had little success in his new venture — and Kim’s records (for the flagship MGM label) floundered due in part to a lack of promotion. Eventually they split maritally and professionally, and Kim Weston went on to an irregular career.
Stevenson went into the stage musical field, and some of his subsequent works include The Gospel Truth and 1999’s Sang Sista Sang— a tribute to Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson and Dinah Washington — where he was reunited with his old Motown alum Smokey Robinson. Currently, Stevenson is working along with Smokey on a play entitled “Azusa Revival,” a musical based upon the origins of the Pentecostal movement.
Mickey Stevenson released his autobiography in 2015 and at age eighty-three is scheduled to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame next month.
One song that I was unaware that he co-composed: was one written along with the song’s original performer: Frederick “Shorty” Long (barely five feet tall) who was signed to Motown’s subsidiary label Soul (intended for blues-oriented performers, near to Berry Gordy’s heart).
Long was someone Marvin Gaye felt was overlooked at Motown, admonishing the label’s songwriting teams (like Holland-Dozier-Holland) to focus more on Long … to no avail. Shorty Long had only one major hit (#4 R&B, #8 Pop), 1968’s Here Comes the Judge (based on the comic Dewey ‘Pigmeat’ Markham’s Laugh-In skit) and he died in a Detroit River boating accident in 1969, at only age twenty-nine.
In 1964, Shorty Long released the original version of Devil With a Blue Dress— his ode to his much taller girlfriends — as was his wont: in a slower, rollicking blues style. It failed to chart, yet was heard throughout the Detroit metro area … including by a young Mitch Ryder, who had a #4 hit with it two years later in 1966 (by making it an up-tempo song) in a medley with Little Richard’s Good Golly, Miss Molly. You can hear Mitch Ryder’s version at this link, but below is the original, slower version by Shorty Long (co-written w/Mickey Stevenson).
Fee, fee, fi, fi, fo-fo, fum Looking down the street, here she comes Wearing her wig and shades to match High-heel shoes and an alligator hat Wearing pearls and diamond rings She's got bracelets on her arms and everythingHer perfume smells like Chanel No. 5 Got to be the finest thing alive Walks real cool, catches everybody's eye The cats are too nervous and can't even say “Hi” Not too skinny, not too fat Real humdinger and I like it like that