Who was the first Motown act to appear on US national TV?
While The Ed Sullivan Show might be the one that’s been most immortalised, there were dozens of variety programmes and musical showcases on American television in the early 1960s, many of them broadcast only by regional networks.
Up-and-coming rock and R&B acts were booked on shows like The Record Hop on WGN-TV in Chicago, Upbeat! on WEWS-TV in Cleveland, Swingin’ Time on CKLW-TV in Windsor, Ontario (right across the border from Detroit), and Bandstand on WFIL-TV in Philadelphia.
In 1957, the popularity of Bandstand in the Philly market inspired the ABC Network to make it a national broadcast, rebranding it as American Bandstand, with Dick Clark as the show’s host. The timing was perfect for the explosion of the teen-aimed record market, as hundreds of new pop groups and rock bands appeared on the show to give fans their first opportunity to hear their favourite radio hits paired with a moving visual image.
Just two years into the show’s national run, Tamla Records was established in Detroit by Berry Gordy Jr, with a teenage sensation named Smokey Robinson among the first members of the label’s roster. By 1960, the single ‘Shop Around’ by Smokey and The Miracles had notched Tamla its first mega-hit, peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in September of that year. Around the same time, Berry Gordy had rebranded his budding empire under the banner of Motown Records.
Television was still a nascent medium in 1960, and the ability to see artists moving, grooving and dressing themselves to fit the structure of songs listeners had only ever been exposed to through a radio speaker or jukebox, was transformative for teenagers in millions of American households at once. For Motown, whose acts were being carefully groomed by in-house choreographers and etiquette coaches, national television was the ideal stage for a cultural meeting point.
America’s most exciting new label and its most popular new music show finally came together on December 27th, 1960, as Smokey Robinson and The Miracles played ‘Shop Around’ on American Bandstand, marking the first national TV appearance by a Motown artist, the first of many to come.
The Miracles’ TV debut isn’t widely remembered in the way The Beatles’ massively hyped appearance on Ed Sullivan spelt a cultural shift four years later, but in retrospect, it was certainly symbolic of an equally significant changing of the tides.
Soon, American Bandstand became just one piece of a larger tapestry that helped make Motown a household name. The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Marvin Gaye would all appear not only on Dick Clark’s programme but also on Shindig!, Hullabaloo, and The Ed Sullivan Show, where Diana Ross and company’s string of number one hits made them a Sunday-night fixture. These appearances were more than promotional as they cemented Motown’s crossover appeal, showcasing Black performers to predominantly white audiences at a time when racial integration was still contested in much of the United States.
Smokey and The Miracles may have been the first, but by the mid-1960s, Motown was the sound and look of young America. Without the reach of television, the label might still have thrived, but with it, many of Gordy’s stable of artists were able to become instant race runners, broadcast straight into millions of living rooms across the nation.
