‘Do I Love You’: How an obscure Motown song defined northern soul
Motown Records produced an unparalleled number of hit records during its heyday. Label boss Berry Gordy seemed to have a Midas touch when it came to soul music, making superstars out of previously unknown artists. For a considerable portion of the 1960s, the American charts were chock full of artists like Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, and Smokey Robinson, to name only a few. However, the impact of Motown was certainly not limited to its hit singles.
From its very beginning, Motown – originally called Tamla Records – was a revolutionary label. Local music mogul Berry Gordy recognised that his surroundings in Detroit were rich with musical quality, but the major labels of America weren’t listening. Upon releasing its first single, Marv Johnson’s ‘Come To Me’, Motown succeeded in bringing Detroit soul to a national audience, and that only continued as the label grew exponentially. Between 1961 and 1971, Motown achieved 110 top-ten hits in the US, an impressive record for any label but an almost impossible feat for an independent label.
For as many hit singles as Motown produced, there were just as many flops that faded into obscurity. Gordy’s attitude towards publishing music was to release as much music as humanly possible and hope that at least some of them made it to the charts. The unexpected result of this policy was that Motown had an overabundance of obscure and forgotten singles that nobody in America wanted to listen to. Across the Atlantic, however, young people across the United Kingdom were becoming infatuated with the Motown sound and would soak up all that they could get their hands on.
Motown had become almost inseparable from the mod subculture in the UK during the 1960s, with legions of amphetamine-fueled youths dancing all night to the sounds of Gordy’s label. Eventually, this off-shoot of mod culture blossomed into the northern soul scene, populated by groups of soul-obsessives packing clubs across the north of England. Drawn to the most obscure and unknown soul records out there, the northern soul scene witnessed a resurgence in the popularity of countless long-forgotten soul stars like Sandi Sheldon, Willie Tee, and many others.
As a result of this adoration of the obscure, northern soul DJs became obsessed with the idea of uncovering Motown or Motown-adjacent recordings that nobody else had heard of. This made Frank Wilson’s ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’ the ultimate holy grail for collectors.
Originally, Wilson recorded the track in 1965, and 250 demo copies were pressed for Motown. However, Berry Gordy was not a fan of the song and did not like that Wilson – usually a producer rather than an artist in his own right – was moving into recording.
So, all demo copies of the track were destroyed – or, at least, they were thought to have been destroyed. Seemingly, a handful of copies survived this unjust cull and even more bizarrely, one made its way over to the north of England. Quickly, ‘Do I Love You’ became the definitive sound of northern soul, and record collectors everywhere desperately tried to find another copy.
Eventually, the single was pressed on Motown’s subsidiary, Soul, but it still remained an obscure cult favourite beloved by northern soul fanatics and ignored by virtually everyone else. In fact, the single is so sought-after that, in 2009, an original copy sold for a whopping £25,742; not bad for a single that was initially rejected by Gordy and Motown.
