to do the hair of a woman named Margaret Gordy, who was Berry Gordy’s ex-wife. So, our guy talked to Margaret while he was doing her hair, and talked her into coming to see us at a club. She came, and a couple of other Motown people came, and through our manager, they let us come to the Motown stu- dio and make some music for a week. After we finished in the night club at 1 a.m., we would pack up our gear, then we’d drive over to Motown and unpack it, and by about 2:30 we were starting to record. We had to quit by about 8:30 or 9 o’clock in the morning be- cause that’s when all of the administrative staff came in and that staff worked in the same area that the studio was in, so we had to quit. We did that for a week and recorded the Get Ready album. But it was moistly word of mouth that got us in at Motown. Now, Berry Gordy did not want us to be on his two labels, Motown and Gordy. So, this Italian guy who was President of Motown named Barney Ales decided to open a new label, and he didn’t have a name for it. We suggested that he call it Rare Earth Records, and he did! They went to Europe and signed about five acts, so when he released the label, he released Rare Earth on Rare Earth Records and about five other groups. The Pretty Things and four others. None of them did anything but us, so we stayed on that label for our entire career, until we finally broke up in 1976 or ’77, and they stopped the label.
Did you guys have any problems getting along with the black acts on the label? I mean, this was during a time when there was so much unrest between the races in America. Well, we were a novelty to Motown. The ad- ministrative staff, they didn’t know what to think of us there. Here we come, white guys on a black label – but all of the artists, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Tammy Terrell, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles – they all treated us great. They were always happy to see us. They used to call us the blue-eyed soul brothers. So many of them would come into the studio to listen to us record. There was never a racial undertone or overtone. And the administra- tive staff really didn’t say bad things either, they just weren’t really that friendly. But the artists were. That didn’t bother us at all. We just kept working with Barney. I recall Berry had a record out called “Shop Around,” by Smokey Robinson. It sold lots of records in the South. But they would not pay Gordy be- cause of the race issue. That’s when Berry hired Barney Ales, who was an Italian and a local record company promotions man in De- troit. He took a couple of guys and went down South, and he got Berry’s money for him. So, Berry made him the Vice President of the company. Later on, when Ales was working with us, Gordy did not want us in that com- pany. Barney convinced him that they needed to have us because of the new format called “FM Rock,” album oriented rock. He said they were missing a lot of the market share by going strictly with the A.M. stations in the major cities. That’s when Gordy said, “Hey Barney. You do it.” So, Barney brought us in and launched Rare Earth records. And we made a lot of money for Berry Gordy. But over the years he was still not interested in becoming any kind of personal friends with us. But that was okay. Honestly, I didn’t care. We didn’t go into Motown looking for prob- lems, so we didn’t find any. We were nice guys. There was no reason for anyone to be
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