‘Reach Out’: The 1966 Motown classic nobody expected to top the charts, except Berry Gordy
It was in Detroit that Henry Ford popularised the assembly line production style, and some 50 years later that same fast-paced working environment was replicated by another of the city’s business giants, Berry Gordy, who ran Motown Records like a particularly well-oiled machine.
Whereas, in traditional record labels, artists might be given extensive attention, and their work might be poured over for months to give it the best chance of commercial success, Motown was always far too fast-paced for that approach. Gordy’s roster of songwriters provided his roster of artists with songs, and those artists cut them to wax at the Hitsville Studios.
In many cases, those artists were recording with such regularity and pace that they did not have time to think about where those songs were going, or whether they stood any chance in the battlefield of the charts.
You only need to look at the swathes of previously unreleased Motown masterpieces that have been uncovered in the 21st century to get an idea of just how many recordings were being made daily at the label. In all that chaos, artists were bound to lose track of some of their own recordings, and that is exactly what happened to The Four Tops with a song that went on to become their defining track.
One of Motown’s flagship groups, The Four Tops, was blessed with the songwriting power of Holland-Dozier-Holland behind them, the label’s premier hitmakers, but even that wasn’t always a guarantee of chart success. Back in 1966, the group were working tirelessly to record an album, with little thought about what might happen to that collection of tracks in the post-production realm.
Albums in general were a bit of a rarity for Motown, which dealt almost exclusively in seven-inch, 45 rpm singles. So, rather understandably, The Four Tops assumed that their recording of ‘Reach Out (I’ll Be There)’ would be little more than an album deep-cut heard only by the most dedicated of Motown audiences, or those with enough money to splash out on an entire LP rather than its lead single.
In actuality, Gordy earmarked ‘Reach Out’ to be that lead single, much to the chagrin of the group when they eventually found out. Reportedly, they went as far as to campaign Gordy not to release the song, but luckily for us all in this specific case, the Motown boss often took a cavalier attitude towards listening to the wants and demands of his artists.
In August 1966, just over a month from when the song was recorded, in just two takes no less, ‘Reach Out’ was released as The Four Tops’ latest single, and it became an instant smash hit. Topping the singles charts in both the US and the UK, which was still relatively new to the power of Motown, the song quickly became the group’s defining track, owing both to the songwriting mastery of Holland-Dozier-Holland and the unforgettable performance of Levi Stubbs, whose vocal range was put to the test during the recording.
Berry Gordy made a lot of questionable, often deplorable, decisions during his time at the head of Motown Records, but ‘Reach Out’ proved beyond all doubt that he knew what he was doing in terms of conjuring up hit records. In 1966, he seemed to be the only person at the label with faith in that Four Tops track, and it is fair to say that his belief was vindicated in the wake of the track’s release.
