The legendary Motown label celebrates its 50th birthday this year. Tuneraker brings you our totally subjective and highly danceable Top 20 Motown Tracks Ever.

Motown is the company that whisked Soul music out of Black clubs and brought it into White homes and - arguably even more crucially - across the Atlantic as the conservative Fifties gave way to the restless Sixties. Before Motown, only a few insiders knew about American Rhythm & Blues records in Europe. Marketed as Tamla-Motown in the UK and later beyond, the label’s records filled dancefloors and created an obsession that swept Europe and would last for years to come - in some cases up to now.

Motown was the creation of Detroit based ex-boxer and budding songwriter Barry Gordy. Fed up with receiving peanuts for his songs he took a close look at his sisters’ business, the fledgling Anna label, and decided around 1959 that having artists record his songs for his own label would boost his income.

Strictly speaking, the Motown label itself didn’t appear until later. Gordy used a whole bunch of different label identities over the years to market different styles and/or artists: Tamla, Gordy, Motown, V.I.P. and Soul. Gordy’s first release, Barrett Strong’s ‘Money’ actually appeared on Anna in 1959. But technicalities aside, ‘59 is as good a starting point for the Motown empire as any.

The label started off with Gordy’s trademark style, competent but fairly standard Rhythm & Blues. Gordy’s real talent lay in finding artists who would pour more than your average soul into the recordings. Incendiary Motown recordings of songs like ‘Money’, ‘Mr. Postman’ or ‘Heatwave’ inspired R&B loving bands like The Beatles and The Who to endless covers in the first half of the Sixties.

The label only got its unique sound after Gordy ceded production duties to in-house teams of sharp go-getters who sped up the beats and brought drums and bass to the fore, creating the first custom made dance records. The famous, fast and stomping ‘Motown Sound’ was born circa 1964.

Which single started the Motown Sound is debatable. My favourite would be the Andantes’ ‘(Like A) Nightmare’, a Holland/Dozier/Holland production from 1964.

Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland became the most famous Motown production team. Other early pioneers of the Motown Sound were Ivy Jo Hunter and William Stevenson and the sublime Frank Wilson.

A host of singers got to voice the classic rhythms laid down by Motown house band The Funk Brothers, few shot to stardom but many remain known to Soul fans only. Kim Weston and Brenda Holloway are regular floor fillers at Soul allnighters to this day, but their careers were curtailed at Motown in favour of artists who found mainstream approval, such as The Supremes.

The ’stompers’ had their heyday between 1964 and 1967. After that, the core Soul market demanded funkier, more downtempo tracks. In stepped the late Norman Whitfield, who single-handedly updated the Motown sound as the Sixties gave way to the grittier Seventies.

But the dancers still wanted their regular high energy fix. Motown continued to issue the odd stomper well into 1973 (Frankie Valli, Eddie Kendricks) after which production petered out. Dancers with a taste for speed drifted off into the Northern Soul scene, dancing to rare recordings by highly talented but criminally overlooked Motown copy-cats and the odd unreleased Motown test pressing.

Picking a few favourites out of the Motown catalogue is tricky business. Let’s say my selection is dancefloor oriented and focuses on the core period of 1963-1973, with the exception of Mary Wells whose single dates back to ‘61. There’s later stuff by Rick James, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder that’s pure class but that could have been made for any label.

The Top 20 below are all records I love and that have taken their toll on the soles of various loafers and brogues over the years…

Tuneraker’s Motown Soul Top 20
…in no particular order:

The Supremes - ‘My World Is Empty Without You’
Frank Wilson - ‘Do I Love You’
Andantes - ‘(Like A) Nightmare’
Kim Weston - ‘You Hit Me (Where It Hurt Me)’
Edwin Starr - ‘War’
Mary Wells - ‘Bye Bye Baby’
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - ‘The Night’
Martha & The Vandellas - ‘You’ve Been In Love Too Long’
Temptations - ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’
Supremes - ‘Stoned Love’
R. Dean Taylor - ‘There’s A Ghost In My House’
Kim Weston - ‘I’m Still Loving You’
Eddie Kendricks - ‘Keep On Truckin’
Vandellas - ‘Heatwave’
Frances Nero - ‘Keep On Lovin’ Me’
Bobby Taylor - ‘Blackmail’
Temptations - ‘Cloud Nine’
Four Tops - ‘The Same Old Song’
Brenda Holloway - ‘When I’m Gone’
Edwin Starr - ‘25 Miles’

There’s a dozen or so tracks that I feel really bad about leaving off the list but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Tell us about your favourite Motown tracks in the comments section!