Who was the first UK artist to join Motown?
Long before the British invasion had unleashed itself onto the Billboard Hot 100, it was Motown that helped beam America’s cultural glow across the Atlantic.
Britain just hadn’t quite shaken off its post-war drab yet. Alongside rock and roll’s plugged-in flashbang, the shimmering soul stompers from Detroit’s hit factory scored everything so alluring about the States to a generation of UK kids stuck in the austerity grey and hungry for the swinging youthquake faintly rearing its head on the horizon.
Motown’s soul and R&B roster would shape one little Merseybeat band’s repertoire early in their infancy. Frequently congregating at Liverpool’s North End Music Stores, The Beatles would harangue their manager Brian Epstein for the latest Motown imports yet to take off over in the UK. Routinely playing live even at Beatlemania’s peak, 1963’s With the Beatles would see the Fab Four take a stab at Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’, The Marvelettes’ ‘Please Mr Postman’, and an admirable effort on ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me’ by The Miracles.
Berry Gordy’s famed label would course through much of the 1960s’ chart challengers, The Rolling Stones enamoured with the old R&B masters, while The Animals virtually invented blue-eyed soul via their Geordie take on the Motown soul formula. Yet, while boasting such transatlantic fans, Motown rarely decided to take on any young hopeful outside North America.
In fact, rarely has an artist ever joined the Motown family outside the States. Across their initial classic tenure, there were only three non-American signings: Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers, R Dean Taylor, and The Boys, all from Canada. Even Chris Clark, heavily marketed for the British audience and cutting her signature material in London, was born and bred in California.
So, who was the first Brit on the Motown label?
It took Gordy a while, but eventually Motown finally took on its first legit UK name in 1970.
Making a name for herself in the Bradford music scene, Kiki Dee began to win session credits with the likes of Dusty Springfield as early as 1963, before dropping a string of singles that barely made a dent in the charts, before the following year’s ‘Why Don’t I Run Away From You’ enjoyed spins on the hip Radio London and Radio Caroline pirate stations. Things were picking up, the I’m Kiki Dee debut dropping in 1968 and starting to pull the mainstream in her direction.
Dee was also piquing attention from Detroit. Invited onto the soul label, Dee became the first ever British signee to Motown as well as the first white artist. The sub-label Tamla would release 1970’s
Great Expectations as well as its promo single ‘The Day Will Come Between Sunday and Monday’, but curiously, the second single ‘Love Makes the World Go ‘Round’ would jump over to Motown’s Rare Earth offshoot.
It wouldn’t last long, however. After just one album with Motown, Dee would sign up to Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s Rocket vanity label, which would oversee her 1970s heyday, including the “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” duet with the original Rocket Man.
