The track listing for October's Cellarful of Motown Vol. 3 has now been posted in the Motown thread of the Soulful Detroit forum, and yet again there have been no Rare Earth tracks included.
Does anyone know why, when so much unreleased Motown material by obscure and well-known artists alike from any era has been circulating for ages among collectors, nothing has emerged by such a successful group as Rare Earth?
Why no R.E tracks have appeared on the 3 Cellarful compilations you should ask Paul Nixon as he is the man who compiles the sets. We all know there is enough stuff in those famous vaults for a 2 CD set called "A Cellarful of Rare Earth" lol.
Regarding all the obscure stuff from the lesser known Motown artists that has come out of the vaults over the years, that question should be put to the hardcore Motown collectors who you would know more than me, it would be very interesting to hear their coments as to why R.E are ignored when it comes to tracks in the vaults. I think the answer is simply this Martin that all the people who obtain these unreleased tracks are soul music fans and are not interested in stuff from a a rock band.
I think some how R.E was black balled in there career..i'm a big fan...to my knowledge..nobody has ever comes close to sounding like this band...maybe i'm wrong
I think the answer is quite simple, I don't think there is anybody at Motown/Universal that is a fan of the band, its obvious that the sales potential of Rare Earth product is far greater than that of a Motown act that had a couple of 45's out on the Gordy label in 1964. There is just no one who makes decisions at Motown who is into the band, so their entire Motown catalogue just sits in the vaults.
I am certain if R.E had been with say Warners, Capitol, CBS, or any other major label in the 70's all our CD racks would be cracking under the weight of all the box sets etc. that would have been reissued. No major label would leave the amount of stuff R.E recorded back in the 70's in their respective archives gathering dust, they would put ithem out and make money on it.
Let's just remind ourselves of the facts. The band recorded 11 albums with Motown, of the 11 only 4 have ever been officially released on CD and only ONE (Ma) of those 4 is currently available, the other 3 being out of print for many years now.
What I am saying is that the tracks that get onto the Cellarful collections consist of the most popular bootlegs of previously unreleased material. No Motown collector I know has even been able to obtain any RE bootlegs, consequently there has never been the opportunity for them to become popular.
When Motown ceased operations in Detroit, people were just coming in off the streets and walking away with acetates, and I believe this was the source of the first generation of bootlegs. On some of these the artistes were unidentified, but there were a variety of styles. I have heard jazz, MOR, pop and rock acts, not just soul. So why no Rare Earth? They must be out there somewhere.
Peter has such a great soulful voice that none of my Motown friends had any difficulty in accepting Get Ready, (I Know) I'm Losing You), and Born to Wander when they were first released. If any unreleased Motown tracks of this calibre were to emerge now, I doubt that the current Motown fan would be too narrow-minded to accept them.
At the end of the day Motown / Universal are surely only interested in making money. For that reason it doesn't make sense that the early part of Rare Earth's career is only currently represented by the usual collection of hits plus the studio album Ma. The Ma album was the one that saw Motown stalwart Norman Whitfield take control of the songs and the production after the company turned their noses up at the Willie Remembers album. Maybe that's why it's the only studio album currently out there. If so, the current staff are just as nieve about the band as those who were running the show at the time. Just my opinion of course.
Maybe Universal feel that its only the big hits that the public want to hear?
I'm 99% sure Richard has already tried this, but why don't we (again) invite Paul Nixon to post a statement on this forum outlining what criteria is used when compiling compilations. At least it would stop us second guessing. Several people on here, including Richard and even Peter Rivera, have implied it's like bashing your head against a brick wall trying to get anything out of Universal. If they have no intention of using the material in the vaults then why can't they come out and say so? It might open the door to a third party buying the material and getting it released this way. This would at least hopefully see an end to those poor quality "2 on 1" bootleg CDs circulating.
Get Ready, Ecology and In Concert did see official release on CD a few years back, so I think that has to be taken into consideration. But its beyond belief that One World (particularly) and Willie Remembers have never followed. I can only assume it's because the names of Smokey Robinson and Norman Whitfield are not mentioned in the sleeve credits so Mr Nixon and co consider them insignificant.
We know that Peter and Ray would like to see re-issue of early material. It would be nice if Gil posted his views.
I'm not sure that record companies are interested in making money, only in maximising directors' salaries. Otherwise the unreleased stuff that is coming out now would have been issued thirty years ago when there was a much greater market-demand for it.
As I write this, I see that the official Motown Monday site doesn't show any releases later than April. If the idea is to maximise profits, surely prospective buyers should be informed of release date information as soon as possible in order to generate a more favourable cash-flow.
I think it is a great idea of yours, Dave, to invite Paul Nixon to post a statement on the forum. As Richard says, there is definitely money to be made in a sensible RE issue programme, and it's about time the band received much-deserved royalties from the material that's rotting in the vaults.
To make matters worse, I bet the band members don't receive any royalties at all from these unofficial "2 on 1" CDS. Ironically One World and Willie Remembers were the two albums that contained most of the self-penned material.
I just want to point out that Paul Nixon is 100% on our side when it comes to Rare Earth releases, its "head office" in America that has the final say.
When Paul asked John and myself to compile the tracks for the Spectrum release The Collection he had no problem at all with the list we put forward, but it was Motown America that then took the project away from him. There was no one more enthusiastic and helpful than Paul Nixon.
Bottom line is it's Harry Weigner who decides what get issued.
I'd just like to say that nothing I have written was intended as any sort of adverse criticism of Paul Nixon, who has done an excellent job for Motown fans in the tracks he has selected for inclusion in the Cellarful compilations.
What I was hoping was that he would be able to let us know whether, when trawling through the vaults, he had come across any RE material suitable for inclusion in future compilations, and, if so, indicate ways in which these could be popularised with a view to release.
I put Harry Weinger into a search engine and look what came up:
http://www.petitiononline/eddie71/petition.html
It seems that fans of Eddie Kendricks feel equally miffed that Motown have failed to re-issue his original albums on CD. I don't know how long the petition has been running, but 1649 signatures sounds pretty impressive. No doubt it will fall on deaf ears but the outcome will be interesting.
Since my complaint six days ago that the official Motown site didn't have any new releases since April, I see it has now been updated. Coincidence...or is somebody listening?
