Once again, I'd be surprised if you've heard of these people. Stevenson is probably a little bit better known, because he was one of the main leaders of the Motown Records company. He joined Motown in 1959, the year the company was founded, and quickly became the head A&R person. That meant he was in charge of finding and recruiting new talent. But it seems most everyone who worked at Motown had musical aspirations - that's why they worked there instead of somewhere else. For instance, several famous singers got started as secretaries there. Stevenson fancied himself a singer, but he failed his audition. So instead he turned his attention to writing and producing songs while still leading the A&R department.
Hunter joined Motown a few years later, in 1963. He was trained in orchestral music, mainly playing trumpet and keyboards. He started out as a session musician, but he soon developed a talent for songwriting. Early on, Stevenson and Hunter became a songwriting team. They almost always shared songwriting credits 50-50, even though most of the time one or the other actually wrote the song alone. It seems Hunter did most of the songwriting, but I don't know the breakdowns of who wrote what exactly. (However, I do know their best known classic hit, "Dancing in the Street," was a genuine collaboration between them, with Marvin Gaye contributing as well.)
Generally speaking, this songwriting duo was considered second tier, and usually only wrote and/or produced songs for less famous Motown acts. The really big acts got songs from the most successful songwriters, like Smokey Robinson and the Holland-Dozier-Holland team. In some cases though, they did songs before famous acts got really famous, for instance writing songs for Marvin Gaye and the Four Tops before they really hit it big.
Stevenson got pushed out of his key A&R job in 1966, apparently because Eddie Holland wanted the job, and company head Berry Gordy wanted to appease Holland, since he was part of the company's top songwriting team, Holland-Dozier-Holland. Stevenson stayed a couple more years, but got a job as the head of MGM's soul and R&B section in 1969. However, he had far less success as a songwriter after leaving Motown, or perhaps he didn't write as many songs.
After Stevenson was gone, Hunter lost influence in the company, since he wasn't adept at playing company politics like Stevenson was. He was pushed out altogether around the time Motown moved their headquarters to Los Angeles in 1972. He stayed in the music industry for many years afterwards, mostly as a producer, but didn't have nearly the same success he had while working for Motown. (I'm repeatedly astounded by how Motown practically seemed to be trying to lose most of their talented people around that time. Gordy moved the company to L.A. because he wanted to get involved with making movies and TV shows. That had limited success at best, but it blew up the company's Detroit hit-making machine.)
Here's the Wikipedia entry about Stevenson:
William Stevenson (songwriter) - Wikipedia
and here's the entry for Hunter:
Furthermore, I randomly came across this article about Hunter, which is worth checking out:
The Ivy Jo Hunter Story by Rob Moss - Soul Source (soul-source.co.uk)
As I write this in 2024, Stevenson is still alive at the age of 87. But Hunter died in 2022 at the age of 82.
As usual, the songs are in rough chronological order by year. But while most of the choices are the original hit versions, a few are not. That's because some songs were written with other Motown songwriters I'm also highlighting in the Covered series, especially Sylvia Moy. In order to avoid having the same versions of the same songs on different albums, I've tried to use alternate versions whenever they existed and were worthy. So "He Was Really Sayin' Somethin'," "You've Been in Love Too Long," "Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever," "Playboy," and "It Takes Two" are later versions.
Aside from those five, most of the rest are Motown recordings, but there are a couple exceptions. "Devil with the Blue Dress" was a Motown song at first, but the non-Motown band Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels had a big hit with it in 1966, so I used that version. And "Footsteps Following Me" was a very late effort. It was written by Stevenson and Hunter in 1991 for a British company that was trying to revive the Motown glory days. It was minor hit there.
This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.
01 Beechwood 4-5789 (Marvelettes)
02 Stubborn Kind of Fellow (Marvin Gaye)
03 Jamie (Eddie Holland)
04 Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye)
05 Fire (Gino Parks)
06 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
07 Oh Lover (Marvin Gaye & Mary Wells)
08 Dancing in the Street (Martha & the Vandellas)
09 My Smile Is Just a Frown [Turned Upside Down] (Carolyn Crawford)
10 Lucky Lucky Me (Marvin Gaye)
11 Needle in a Haystack (Velvelettes)
12 Once Upon a Time (Marvin Gaye & Mary Wells)
13 Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead (Marvelettes)
14 Ask the Lonely (Four Tops)
15 I'll Always Love You (Spinners)
16 I'll Keep Holding On (Marvelettes)
17 Nothing's Too Good for My Baby (Stevie Wonder)
18 Devil with the Blue Dress - Good Golly, Miss Molly (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels)
19 It Should Have Been Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
20 Behind a Painted Smile (Isley Brothers)
21 You (Marvin Gaye)
22 She Said Yes (Wilson Pickett)
23 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Band)
24 You've Been in Love Too Long (Bonnie Raitt)
25 Sweet Understanding Love (Four Tops)
26 Playboy (Charity Brown)
27 He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' (Bananarama with Fun Boy Three)
28 It Takes Two (Tina Turner & Rod Stewart)
29 Footsteps Following Me (Frances Nero)
https://www.upload.ee/files/17294328/COVRDSTEVNSNHUNTR1962-1991_atse.zip.html
alternate:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/r927G5gd
That's William 'Mickey' Stevenson on the left, wearing a tie, with Ivy Jo Hunter on the right.
I had a very difficult time finding decent photos of Stevenson and Hunter when they were young. Both pictures used in making the cover art were colorized by the Palette program. The Hunter one was especially rough, but I used the Krea AI program to enhance it.
No comments:
Post a Comment