Can you find Tommy Chong in this group shot of Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers?
 
During the musical section of their set at LA’s Novo on Wednesday, Cheech and Chong played a song called “Does Your Mama Know About Me.” Chong wrote the lyrics for the number, which was a hit Motown single in 1968, and which Cheech says he adored before he ever met Chong. YouTube has fuzzy smartphone video of the duo performing it at a 2011 show.

As Cheech tells the story, he moved to Canada in ‘68—not to evade the draft, of course, but to protect Canada from a Vietnamese invasion—and when he was introduced to his future partner in Vancouver the following year, he immediately recognized him as the “T. Chong” credited on the label of that Motown record about an interracial couple he’d spun so many times.
 

 
Chong was one of the guitarists in Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, itself an interracial group which got some press by changing its name to “Four N*ggers and a Chink” during an engagement at Dante’s Inferno; lead singer Taylor is often credited with discovering the Jackson 5. Berry Gordy signed Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers to the Motown subsidiary Gordy Records in 1967. Their recording of “Does Your Mama Know About Me” peaked at number 29 on the Billboard chart in May, 1968, and the Supremes’ version appeared on their Love Child LP, released later that year. This post from Night Flight goes into Chong’s musical career in some detail, but the best source is Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography:

...just before we were discovered by the Supremes and Berry Gordy, I wrote a poem that started our songwriting career. Tom Baird, who was a talented keyboardist and composer, read my poem and put music to it. It was a poem about a black guy asking his girlfriend if her mama knew about him. The song was also about my own experiences with white women. Being half Chinese, there had been times—actually, many of them—when I had to drop a girl off at the end of the block so her parents wouldn’t see who she was dating. That experience saddened me. It hurt to know that my race was a deciding factor for white people.

~snip

Soon the Harlettes discovered the song. They were the all-girl group that sang backup for Bette Midler, Diana Ross, and Jermaine Jackson, and they actually recorded it. The lyrics also changed the way Motown songwriters wrote. Until “Does Your Mama Know About Me?” came along, R & B music had always consisted of love songs. Now songwriters started exploring the color barrier with their songs. “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Love Child” come to mind as examples of this shift.

Berry Gordy loved our song, and after it hit the charts, he put us on the road with Diana Ross and the Supremes. We opened the show and performed part of our club routine, which eventually pissed off Diana Ross so much that she had the tour manager tell us to stop doing it. The part Diana took offense to was a Parliament song whose lyrics we changed to say “Oh, white girls, you sure been delicious to me.” Our song pissed off the promoters, who were unprepared for an outrageous performance from the “opening act.” They had hired Diana Ross and the Supremes, who had become a “white act.” The promoters did not appreciate this unknown band from Canada singing about white girls’ being “delicious,” especially with so many white girls in the audience.

Listen to “Does Your Mama Know About Me” after the jump…

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

Below you’ll find Motor City’s Burning: Detroit from Motown to the Stooges, A 2008 BBC documentary that gives a brief summary of the musical trajectory and evolution of Detroit’s music scene through the riotous decade. It’s a little overly ambitious in scope and far more focused on MC5 and the Stooges then it is on Motown, but it’s worth taking a look as it traces a path from John Lee Hooker to Berry Gordy’s slick Motown production, through the Detroit riots of 1967 and the emergence of the MC5, the Stooges, George Clinton and Alice Cooper. The music scene is necessarily tied to the history of Detroit and the rise and fall of the auto industry and the 1967 Detroit riots.
 

 
There are many luminaries interviewed here including Johnny Bassett, Lamont Dozier, Martha Reeves, Mary Wilson, Mike Davis, Wayne Kramer, John Sinclair, Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Lenny Kaye, Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper.
 

The MC5
 
Some of the best commentary in film talks about the dichotomy between views of the city in the sixties. Inner-city African Americans had a clearly different experience from the largely suburban white acidheads freaking out to the likes of the MC5 in places like the Grande Ballroom (shown in contemporary footage and in complete dilapidated abandon) where the MC5 had a residency. John Sinclair, the MC5’s headline grabbing manager and White Panther Party founder, discusses the fact that white kids came to inner city Detroit looking for “urban adventure.”  African Americans on the other hand felt intimidated and provoked by white police and increasingly infuriated over the ghettoization their neighborhoods. While groups like the Motor City 5 lived right in the middle of the unrest, their largely white audience often did not.
 

Iggy
 
John Sinclair’s arrest for two joints and the John and Yoko support concert is discussed, while Iggy Pop talks about the early Ann Arbor scene, and there’s good footage particularly of John Lee Hooker, MC5, the Stooges and George Clinton throughout the film.

The documentary leaves a lot to be desired with kind of Cliff’s Notes oversimplification but it has some notable anecdotes and perspectives. If you’ve got an hour to kill or you just don’t know much about the Detroit musical phenomenon, one could find a worse primer.
 

 
For five years the gracious Maxine Powell ran the only in-house finishing school at any American record label. Most people have probably never heard of Powell, who died this week, but music fans have unknowingly enjoyed her handiwork at Motown since the ‘60s.

As Mrs. Powell explained:

When I opened up, in 1964, the finishing school, the purpose was to help the artists become class, to know what to do on stage and off stage, because they did come from humble beginnings. Some of them from the projects and some of them were using street language. Some were rude and crude, you understand, but with me, it’s not where you come from, it’s where you’re going.

The petite former actress, model, manicurist, cosmetologist, and African-American finishing school-modeling agency founder was hired by Motown to help the label polish its artists’ public images. She met Berry Gordy through his sister, who was one of Powell’s models, and his mother, who took one of Powell’s self-development courses. Her official title was “artist development,” but her duties were broader than that.

It was Powell’s job to teach the likes of Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, Martha Reeves, Tammi Terrell, The Marvelettes, The Velvelettes, and Smokey Robinson how to present themselves charmingly during interviews, performances, and off-stage public appearances. When they were in Detroit, Motown singers were required to attend two-hour session with Powell, learning public speaking, posture, walking, stage presence, etiquette, and personal grooming. Powell had studied African-American cosmetology at the renowned Madam C.J. Walker training school in Indianapolis.

Powell toured with artists on occasion, acting as counselor and unofficial bartender after shows. One of her mottos was “I teach class, and class will turn the heads of kings and queens.” She meant that literally. She wanted Motown’s artists to be able to comport themselves appropriately if they were ever invited to the White House or Buckingham Palace.

Perhaps more immediately useful was the instruction on how to sit in a limousine or on a stool (in a bar or on a talk who) in a short dress. Trying to act in a “ladylike” fashion is, let’s face it, like aiming at a constantly moving target. Even Diana Ross rejected the idea that shorter false eyelashes were classier than long, spidery ones.

Unlike Sharon Osbourne’s, Mo’Nique’s, and Ricki Lake’s Charm School candidates on VH-1, Powell’s students avidly listened to her and didn’t argue.

Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas, told The New York Times, “Mrs. Powell was always a lady of grace, elegance and style, and we did our best to emulate her. I don’t think I would have been successful at all without her training.”

Although Powell left Motown in 1969 she left a lasting impression on the artists she had helped. For example, prior to a national TV appearance she counseled The Supremes to dance with their knees, not their buttocks (“Do not protrude the buttocks” was one of her maxims). “You’re not out on the streets here,” she advised them.

Powell’s memorial service and funeral are taking place in Detroit today.
 

 
Below, Maxine Powell on her approach to teaching “class” and how she motivated her students:

 
Motown bass deity James Jamerson had more talent and soul in one finger than in any of his peers’ standard ten. Literally. He was known amongst his colleagues as “the hook” for his single digit yet fluid as a river plucking. He also never changed his strings or messed with the controls on his instrument. Everything simply turned up to ten. I mean to feature a few isolated tracks from some of his best known sessions which are new to me and as delightful to listen to as you might imagine but I had to lead off with this already widely seen but marvelous clip of our man backing Marvin Gaye in 1973:

 
And the studio version, Jamerson’s