Various Artists – The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 3: 1963

By the end of 1963, Billboard had temporarily ceased publishing an R&B chart because, as Craig Werner explains in the liner notes to Volume 3 of The Complete Motown Singles, “it was pointless to print the pop list twice.” Motown played a key role in this confluence of pop and soul, a position of importance the label would actually expand in 1964 — a year that otherwise was maniacally Anglo-Uber-Alles.

1963 was a breakout year for Motown. The label released such future oldies radio staples as Martha Reeves & the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave” and “Quicksand”, the Miracles’ “Mickey’s Monkey”, and Marvin Gaye’s “Pride & Joy” and “Can I Get A Witness”. There was also the success of Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips, Pt. 2”, which made Motown the first label have the #1 pop single and the #1 album at the same time.

This was a transitional period at Motown, and consequently there was still room for anything that might scare up a hit — for jazz and gospel, for big-band pop, for novelty records such as “Dingbat Diller” by the Chuck-a-Lucks (which, swear to God, sounds as if it should’ve topped the Nashville Sound hit parade). All of this music is instructive, and some of it — Funk Brothers pianist Jimmy Griffith’s hard-bop trio sides, for one, and the Wright Specials’ “Ninety-Nine And A Half Won’t Do” for another — holds its own with all but the best of some undecidedly un-Motown-identified genres.

All the while, Motown was releasing singles by the about-to-be-famous Temptations and Supremes and the never-to-be-famous Eddie Holland and Mabel John. Some of these were downright weird — “(The Man With The) Rock And Roll Banjo Band” is not the Supremes’ best record — but many were borderline sublime. Indeed, one thing The Complete Motown Singles series has already proven, even with almost a decade’s worth of 45s to go, is that, with only Atlantic Records excepted, Motown made more swell but mostly unheard music than any other independent label in the history of American popular music.