The album also was one of the last Motown works recorded at the label’s famed Studio A. Members of the imprint’s venerable Funk Brothers session band got pink slips, and Marlene Barrow-Tate-a member of The Andantes, a band that sang backup on recordings by The Four Tops, The Supremes and countless other acts-told the Detroit Metro Times in 2013 that the singers picked up their final paychecks in January 1972. And perhaps because of the unrest, the label finalized its move from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1972. In the wake of the 1967 riots, Detroit was a murkier place than it had been back in 1959, when Motown was born. Even with the song’s liberal use of effects, the percussionist noted, “It’s a subtle, a very subtle sound. Hold On,” a statement-making cut laden with avant-echo and phasing famously sampled by hip-hop producer J Dilla on his 2005 album Donuts. But Dougans’ chops noticeably propel “My People. Even the producer, Frank Wilson, said, ‘We wanted to get away from that.’”Īt the time, The Young Senators only had issued a 7-inch single. They locked into that, and that’s the Motown Sound. “If you listen to any Motown records, they had a certain rhythm, a certain groove. “We took Motown away from the Motown Sound,” Young Senators percussionist Jimi Dougans, 74, said recently about the pivotal 1972 Kendricks album. And while Kendricks’ album wasn’t as sizeable a hit as Gaye’s, People managed to spawn a major single, the 7-minute workout “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind.” People was issued on Tamla in late spring 1972, about a year after Marvin Gaye’s opus, What’s Going On. It also marked a change for Motown Records (and its affiliate labels, Gordy and Tamla), the company Kendricks had released music through for more than a decade. ensemble’s contributions to People, though, would help move the singer into a new stage of his career. The Young Senators toured extensively with Kendricks during his early solo performances, despite not having played on his 1971 disc.

Hold On, he enlisted a new raft of players to back him. The vocalist’s first solo effort, 1971’s aptly titled All By Myself, still hued toward classic Motown, so when Kendricks was set to record its follow-up, People. Eddie Kendricks (1939–1992) (Photo: DownBeat Archive)īy 1972, Eddie Kendricks, the Temptations singer who led the ensemble through classics like “Just My Imagination,” was ready for a new sound.

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