Crosby was born in Detroit in 1928. That made him older than most of the other Motown songwriters and singers he worked with. He served in the U.S. army in the Korean war, then began playing saxophone in jazz clubs in Detroit. He joined Motown when the company was founded in 1959, and became part of the backing band later known as the Funk Brothers, playing on hundreds of hit songs. But he didn't stop there. He became a jack-of-all-trades for the company, branching out as an arranger, producer, and songwriter as well.
His first big success as a songwriter was "Fingertips, Part 2," which he co-wrote with another Motown songwriter, Clarence Paul. Stevie Wonder took it to the top of the U.S. singles chart in 1963. That led to Crosby developing particularly close musical ties with Wonder. If you look at the song list below, a majority of them were first hits by Wonder, even if I used versions by others.
The reason why I'm using versions other than that by Wonder is because Crosby usually co-wrote song with other key members of the Motown songwriting team. The other songwriters have their own Covered albums, and I have often already posted albums with versions of those co-written songs on them. So for instance, "The Tears of a Clown" was co-written by Crosby, Wonder, and Smokey Robinson. I put the Robinson version on a Wonder Covered album, and the hit English Beat version on a Robinson Covered album. So I chose a more obscure version by Petula Clark for this album.
Crosby was involved in co-writing many great Motown hits until about 1971. That's when Motown head Berry Gordy stupidly decided to move the company from Detroit to Los Angeles to in order to get more involved with movies and TV. In the process, many very talented people like Crosby were fired or chose to stay behind, and Crosby was one of them.
Crosby continued to be involved in the music industry. For instance, he produced albums by Blood, Sweat and Tears, Martha Reeves, and the Originals. However, he wasn't involved in writing any more hit songs. The songs here are in chronological order, but all the ones from after 1970 are covers of earlier hits. He died in 2002 at the age of 72.
I've come across conflicting information if Crosby helped write the Supremes hits "Love Child" and "I'm Living in Shame" or not. For instance, the Wikipedia entry on "Love Child" only lists him as a producer, not a songwriter. But the Wikipedia entry for Crosby lists him as a songwriter for that song too. And there were other conflicting sources like that. I ultimately left those two out, since both songs already had at least four other co-writers anyway, and they're included on other Covered albums I made. But if anyone knows if he really helped co-write those songs or not, I'd be curious to hear the answer.
Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:
This album is 42 minutes long.
01 Fingertips, Part 2 (Stevie Wonder)
02 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Nancy Wilson)
03 Lucky Lucky Me (Marvin Gaye)
04 Nothing's Too Good for My Baby (Stevie Wonder)
05 I'm Wondering (Stevie Wonder)
06 Home Cookin' (Jr. Walker & the All Stars)
07 No Matter What Sign You Are (Supremes)
08 My Cherie Amour (Jon Lucian)
09 I Should Be Proud (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
10 Never Had a Dream Come True (Stevie Wonder)
11 The Tears of a Clown (Petula Clark)
12 With a Child's Heart (Michael Jackson)
13 Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Dah-Day (Linda George)
14 I Was Made to Love Him [I Was Made to Love Her] (Chaka Khan)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/cp4JZ7Ws
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/Ei7qTGglXhJbnwG/file
I found a couple of decent photos of Crosby when he was much older, but I preferred one when he was young and writing these songs. The cover photo is taken from a group photo of the Motown backing band "the Funk Brothers" in the early 1960s. It was in black and white, but I colorized it with the Kolorize program. Then I improved it with the Krea AI program. Crosby was looking away, but I moved his eyes to look at the camera using Photoshop.
No comments:
Post a Comment