All Turned On! Motown Instrumentals 1960-1972

Old and rare tracks. Great to listen to in the car or just as background sounds.

AWESOME MUSIC AT ITS BEST

A rather peculiarly assembled compilation of Motown instrumentals from 1960-1972, it contains a mix of previously released and unreleased tracks, plus duplicates of tracks that already appeared elsewhere as previously unreleased. It is on the Ace label, via their deal with Motown.The cherry in the cake here is the track by The Funk Brothers who were the house band for Motown, playing on virtually all Motown recordings of the sixties and early seventies including all the classic Motown hits. This is such a great track, you could hear it all day long. It first appeared on a various artists compilation double CD on Motown called Cellarful Of Motown vol 5, containing previously unissued Motown tracks from the sixties. But it now seems as though Motown used the slightly speeded second generation master, and the booklet info in that CD set stated it was going to be given to The Elgins to add their vocals, but it remained as an instrumental. Here, it is obvious that the Ace label used the original session tape, as it lasts a lot longer at the end before it fades; it sounds clearer and drier here, as it does not have that slight overdubbed echo; it has a slight count-in at the beginning, just before the music starts which I have never heard before; and it is slightly slower here, which is obviously at the speed it was recorded at.The Funk Brothers also recorded instrumentals for Motown during the sixties as Earl Van Dyke And His Soul Brothers, three of which are here. Track 3 appeared on their 1965 instrumental album, track 11 appeared on the various artists download only release Motown Unreleased 1969, and track 14 is a previously unreleased track recorded in July 1964. They had seven previously unissued instrumentals on another various artists download only release, Motown Unreleased 1964. Those tracks were really great uptempo tracks. This track here is in slightly different style, not quite as good but easily passable.Tracks 1 and 5 have appeared elsewhere in stereo, but are here in mono. The junior Walker track Good Rockin' appears here in mono but has also appeared in stereo. Both seem to have different endings, as they are only identical for about the first two and a half minutes.The Stevie Wonder track here Let It Loose recorded in 1963 first appeared as one of the previously unissued tracks on his download only release The Complete Stevie Wonder, and is quite a good track. There is a much lesser good instrumental here by Eivets Rednow who Stevie was not quite familiar with, from Eivets' 1968 album.There is an excellent previously unissued brass heavy instrumental by Choker Campbell, The Breakdown, recorded January 1964. Choker went on to do brass arrangements for a number of Motown tracks during the sixties. He has another track here from his 1964 album, an instrumental version of The Supremes' Come See About Me, which is not as good.The two San Remo band instrumentals here are quite good, tracks 1 and 8. Their members did string arrangements for many Motown tracks during the sixties.But the rest of this compilation is very haphazard, virtually all by the unknowns of Motown, and in various styles, much of it a million miles away from Soul music. In fact I hated the Jazz instrumentals from the late sixties by Jonah Jones.But back to early sixties, there is a pointless Jazz piano instrumental by Johnny Griffiths, who went on to become one of the keyboardists in The Funk Brothers.The Track by Nick And The Jaguars is from 1960, and is a straight ahead Rock 'N' Roll guitar instrumental, typical of it's time, and rather average. But as for the two instrumentals by The Mysterions, I think we are in the Johnny And The Hurricanes territory here, but quite good Rocky instrumentals if you like that style. But there is a flaw here. One of their tracks here, Great Google Mook is listed here as previously unissued, but previously appeared as a previously unissued track on a various artists download only compilation Motown Unreleased 1962 - Guys, under the title Call It What You Like. Their other track here is correctly listed as previously appearing on that compilation. But when Motown started, they were signing artists who were to remain unknown, but were creating White fashionable Pop styles of that time, as well as signing Soul artists, obviously as a hopefully easy method of lifting the label up from the ground.This is obviously a first attempt ever at anyone putting together a various artists Motown Instrumental compilation. But musically, it all sounds very disjointed with such diverse styles that don't fit together in one compilation. If I was to have compiled it, many of these tracks would never have come my mind. We could have done with a few more tracks by The Funk Brothers, such as All The Time, Didn't We, and Keep On Lovin', all of which have only appeared on bootleg singles, plus a few more tracks by The San Remo Strings. But to do this project properly, and restricts to Motown instrumentals, there would not be a lot of different good names to conjure with.

Arrived on time. Perfect condition.

All good

Purchased because I am a very big Motown collector a lot of these tunes I hadn’t heard before so I had to buy it a lot of the tunes hadn’t got that sound though so I wasn’t over keen on them but It does show they could do tunes without the sound but it was the sound that made them the greatest.

The sound quality was so bad I turned off half way through which is unusual for Ace whose sound is usually very good

ACE & Motown- always a terrific combination. This latest release of deep instrumental cuts maintains the standard.

I put this Cd on and found NO bad selections, even the songs I was familiar with in their original recording were done with excellence.. Very good audio quality and wish there were more selections as once it finished, I wanted to listen again.

Instrumentaux agréables à écouter.