User:FuriousFreddy/notes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Plot
As in the original stage musical, the plot of Dreamgirls is broken up into two acts: the first taking place in the 1960s, and the second taking place in the 1970s.
[edit] Act I
The film begins in Detroit, Michigan in 1963, as an amateur Black girl group known as The Dreamettes enter a local talent competition. Backstage, the three girls - full-figured lead singer Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles) and Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) - meet Curtis Taylor, Jr., an ambitious Cadillac dealer with plans of breaking into the music business. Placing himself as their manager, Curtis arranges for the Dreamettes to tour as backup for a regional R&B star, James "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy). The tour takes the company - also including Effie's songwriting brother C.C. (Keith Robinson) and Jimmy's manager Marty (Danny Glover) - across the country on the chitlin' circuit. The experience convinces Curtis that black artists deserve the opportunity for crossover success.
Curtis starts his own record label, Rainbow Records ("The Sound of Tomorrow"), out of his car dealership's office, and makes C.C. his head songwriter. However, when Rainbow's first single fails after a white pop group releases a cover version, Curtis and his sidekick Wayne (Hinton Battle) turn to payola. By paying the right people, Curtis manages to get Jimmy and the Dreamettes to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and into a headlining gig at the Apollo Theater. Offstage, Effie is quickly becoming infatuated with the slick-talking Curtis, and Jimmy - a married man - begins an adulterous affair with Lorrell, who becomes equally as lovesick as Effie.
Marty becomes increasingly frustrated by Curtis' plans to make Jimmy's image more pop-friendly, to the point that he walks out on Jimmy, both his client and best friend. However, when Curtis finds that he cannot completely remake Jimmy Early into a pop act, he shifts his attention back to the Dreamettes. Feeling that Effie's voice is too "churchy" and her figure too large to attract white audiences, Curtis appoints the slimmer Deena as the lead singer of the Dreamettes. Deena protests, and Effie feels betrayed by Curtis, but C.C. is able to convince his sister to go along with Curtis' plans.
With the aid of new songs and a new more glamorous image, Curtis and C.C. transform The Dreamettes into The Dreams, a top selling pop act whose popularity rivals that of The Beatles. However, the betrayed Effie does not take kindly to being reduced to Deena's backup, and begins acting out. Effie becomes even more unruly when Curtis begins to turn his affections away from her and towards Deena. When Effie does not turn up to rehearse for the Dreams's debut in Las Vegas, Curtis can take no more, and replaces Effie with his secretary, Michelle Morris (Sharon Leal). Effie arrives at the Caesar's Palace venue just as Michelle does, and after a nearly violent argument, finds herself without her group and without Curtis.
[edit] Act II
By the early 1970s, Effie has become an alcoholic, and is raising her seven-year-old daughter Magic (Mariah I. Wilson) alone on welfare in the burnt-out inner city of Detroit. On the other hand, Rainbow Records has moved to Los Angeles, where it prospers with a roster of top-selling pop acts. Deena Jones & the Dreams - as the group is now known - is the most successful of these acts, and Deena in particular is an international superstar. As suspected, Curtis and Deena were having an affair behind Effie's back: the two are now married. Wanting to expand the Rainbow empire into film, Curtis plans to have the unwilling Deena star in a Black prequel to Cleopatra. Hoping that the struggling Cleopatra will never get off the ground, Deena begins secretly meeting with other studios to take a part in another film.
Jimmy Early's star has long faded, and Curtis has little interest in revitalizing his career. Unsatisfied with both his wife and his long-term mistress Lorrell, Jimmy turns to cocaine and heroin for affection. C.C., although in an ironic relationship with Michelle, continues to reach out to Effie, who stubbornly ignores the letters and money he sends. Eventually, Effie swallows her pride and, with Marty's help, returns to singing and secures gigs at a small Detroit club.
In 1974, Rainbow Records hosts a tenth anniversary TV special, featuring all of the label's stars. Midway through his performance of a pop-friendly love song, Jimmy, tired of his white-washed image, breaks out into a wild James Brown-esque funk number and drops his pants on live TV. Curtis resultantly terminates Jimmy's contract, and Lorrell, weary of their eight-year affair, leaves Jimmy behind as well.
Soon afterwards, a frustrated C.C. walks out on Curtis and Rainbow Records, going back to Detroit to find Effie. The two siblings reconcile and work together to produce Effie's comeback single, "One Night Only". Just as the record begins gaining radio play, however, Curtis strikes. Using payola, Curtis forces radio DJs to play a disco cover of "One Night Only" by Deena Jones & the Dreams instead of Effie's original. Deena finds out about Curtis payola schemes, and calls Effie and C.C., who arrive at the Rainbow offices with Marty and a lawyer, threatening legal action. Hoping to avoid being reported to the FBI for payola, Curtis works out a deal with the lawyer: Rainbow Records will fund a new label for C.C., which will allow Effie's record national distribution. Curtis confronts Deena, only to find that Effie's victory has inspired Deena to leave him and make it on her own.
As a result, Deena Jones & the Dreams give a farewell performance at the same Detroit Theater where they first met Curtis, Jimmy, and Marty twelve years ago. At the conclusion of the concert, Effie joins Deena, Lorrell, and Michelle onstage, and the reunited Dreams give one final performance of their signature song, "Dreamgirls".
[edit] Establishment of "Hitsville USA", 1959 - 1963
Berry Gordy, Jr. got his start as a songwriter for local Detroit acts such as Jackie Wilson and the Matadors. Wilson's single "Lonely Teardrops," cowritten by Gordy and Roquel Billy Davis, became a huge success; however, Gordy did not feel he made as much money as he deserved from this and other singles he wrote for Wilson. He realized that the "real money" of the business was made producing records and owning the royalties.
In 1959, Billy Davis and Berry Gordy's sisters Gwen and Anna started Anna Records. Davis and Gwen Gordy wanted Berry to be the company president, but Berry wanted to strike out on his own. Therefore, in 1959, he started Tamla Records, with an $800 loan from his family. Gordy's is first signed act was The Matadors, a group he'd written and produced songs for, who changed their name to The Miracles when Tamla signed them. Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson became the vice president of the company, and many of Gordy's family members, including his father Berry Sr., brothers Robert and George, and sister Esther, had instrumental roles in the company. By the middle of the decade, Gwen and Anna Gordy had joined the lalbe in administrative positions as well.
Also in 1959, Gordy purchased the property that would become Tamla's Hitsville U.S.A. studio. The photography studio located in the back of the property was modified into a small recording studio and the Gordys moved into the second floor living quarters. Scouring the local Detroit nightclubs for talent, Gordy assembled a brain trust of studio musicians led by Joe Hunter. These musicians, who would later dub themselves The Funk Brothers, became a crucial element of Motown's success, and performed the instrumentation on most of the label's hits for over a decade.
Tamla Records' earliest artists included the Miracles, blues artist Mabel John, male R&B singers Marv Johnson and Barrett Strong, and female pop singer Mary Wells. Gordy and Robinson handled most of the songwriting production for the label's earliest releases. Johnson's "Come to Me" was the label's very first release, while Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)" was Tamla's first bonifide hit, reaching number-two on the Billboard R&B Singles chart. Shortly afterwards, Gordy started Motown Records as a sister to Tamla; because of its association with "Motor Town" Detroit, the Tamla and Motown names soon switched in importance.
In fall 1960, The Miracles scored the label's first number-one R&B hit, "Shop Around". However, Berry Gordy had loftier aspirations – he wanted to cross over to the white pop market and sell records beyond R&B's traditionally black audience. Within a year, Tamla/Motown newcomers The Marvelettes achieved Gordy's dreams of crossover when their first single, "Please Mr. Postman", reached number-one on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. By mid-1962, Motown had made stars out of The Miracles, The Marvelettes, Mary Wells (who broke out with her 1962 hit "The One Who Really Loves You"), and The Contours (known for their hit "Do You Love Me") New songwriters and producers, including William "Mickey" Stevenson, Clarence Paul, Brian Holland, Norman Whitfield, and, changing careers, Barrett Strong, established themselves as important figures within the company.
As earlier artist such as Mabel John departed, newer stars such as Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, and The Supremes were being groomed. The inaugural Motortown Revue package tour introduced audiences across the nation to the Motown performers. More tours followed, and by 1963, new stars such as Martha & the Vandellas and Stevie Wonder had joined the ranks of Wells and The Miracles. Motown's records inspired many outside artists, most notably British bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who added covers of several Motown songs to their repertoire.
[edit] "The Sound of Young America", 1963 – 1967
Nineteen sixty-three also saw the formation of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team: a songwriting and production team made up of Brothers Brian and Edward Holland and Lamont Dozier. This team, alongside Robinson and Whitfield, established themselves as Motown's top producers, and crafted a distinct style, known as the "Motown Sound", for the label's releases. The "Motown Sound" is identifiable by several elements: a 4/4-time rhythm section, prominet bass guitar lines, the prominent uses of tamborine and rhythm guitar alongside the drum tracks to accent the beat, a distinctive melodical and chord structure, singing settled between gospel and pop vocalization styles, and a call and response singing style also originating in gospel.
During 1964 and 1965, Motown went from being a reasonably successful label to a cultural phenomenon and a major force in the music industry. The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and newcomers The Four Tops and Jr. Walker & the All-Stars all began releasing strings of pop hits. In 1965 alone, The Supremes, Four Tops, and Temptations dominated the number-one position on the Billboard Pop Singles chart for nine weeks, and they, Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, and Marvin Gaye dominated the top position of the R&B Singles chart for twenty-two weeks.
Unlike earlier black R&B and rock-and-roll musicians such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry, who saw white artists appropriate their styles and become pop successes, Motown became the first black record label to become a major music industry player. Motown artists became international stars, and several of them began playing supper club venues previously barred to black artists. Berry Gordy began marketing each Motown-owned release with the slogan "The Sound of Young America", underscoring the label's success amongst American teenagers, reguardless of race.
By this time, the Motown Record Company had expanded to include subsidiary labels dedicated to gospel, jazz, and even country music. The singular complex at Hitsville had grown to include several adjacent houses on West Grand Boulevard; private homes which were purchased and converted into mixing studios, rehearsal spaces, and administrative offices. In addition, Motown began purchasing a number of outside labels, taking over their catalogs and artists. Edwin Starr, Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, Shorty Long, and brothers David and Jimmy Ruffin all came to the label by way of Motown absorbing their record labels.
[edit] Behind the scenes
[edit] Artist development
Artist development was a major part of Motown's operations. The acts on the Motown labels were fastidiously groomed, dressed and choreographed for live performances. Motown artists were told that their breakthrough into the white popular music market made them ambassadors for other African-American artists seeking broad market acceptance, and that they should think, act, walk and talk like royalty, so as to alter the less-than-dignified image (commonly held by white Americans in that era) of black musicians.
Most of these same artists often went on tour together each year on the "Motortown Revue", which was popular first on the "chitlin circuit", and later around the world. The tours gave the younger artists a chance to hone their performance skills, and also to observe the more experienced artists. The success of the Motown artists inspired several outside acts, most notably Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, to follow their lead, eschewing the rough, sweaty image and sound of early R&B for a smoother image with more crossover appeal.
[edit] Production process
Motown's music was crafted with the same eye towards pop appeal. The many artists and producers of Motown Records collaborated to produce numerous hit songs, working fro man adapted model of the assembly line system Berry Gordy had become familiar with while working at the Lincoln-Mercury auto factory. Described as factory-like, such as the Brill Building, Motown adhered to a strict caste system in the 1960s: songwriters and producers held the creative control, and artists were to record and perform the material they were given. The exception to this rule was Smokey Robinson, who maintained creative control over The Miracles' releases.
Berry Gordy used weekly quality control meetings and veto power to ensure that only the material and performances with the most sales potential with would be released. The test was that every new release needed to "fit" into a sequence of the top 5 selling pop singles of the week. As individual producers released hits on a certain artist, that artists became exclusive to that producer; for example, The Supremes and Four Tops worked almost exclusively with Holland-Dozier-Holland, The Temptations with Smokey Robinson and Norman Whitfield, and Stevie Wonder with Clarence Paul and Henry Cosby.
The Hitsville studios remained open and active 22 hours a day (closing only for maintenance), and artists would often be on tour for weeks, come back to Detroit to record as many songs as possible, and then promptly set back out on tour again.
[edit] The Funk Brothers
- For more details on this topic, see The Funk Brothers.
In addition to the songwriting prowess of the above individuals, one of the major factors in the widespread appeal of Motown's music was Gordy's practice of using a highly select and tight-knit group of studio musicians, collectively known as "The Funk Brothers", to record the instrumental or "band" tracks of the Motown songs. Among the studio musicians responsible for the "Motown Sound" were Johnny Griffiths and Joe Hunter on piano, Joe Messina, Robert White, and Eddie Willis on guitar, Eddie "Bongo" Brown and Jack Ashford on percussion, Uriel Jones and Richard "Pistol" Allen on drums, drummer Benny Benjamin, keyboardist Earl Van Dyke, and bassist James Jamerson.
[edit] Trouble from both sides
Despite its success, Motown was still the subject of much criticism, from both inside and outside the studio. Sectors of the African-American community charged Gordy and his artists as being "sell-outs" for several reasons, the least of which was Gordy's removal of the "grit" from his labels' soul music. Motown artists were barred from politics and social activism, and the label itself sought to avoid potentially controversial political positions. Although the label flourished during the depths of the Civil Rights Movement, much of its participation in the movement was limited to its issuing of recordings by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on album and participating in King's Poor People's Campaign. Martha & the Vandellas' 1964 hit single "Dancing in the Street" was adopted as an anthem for the movement, although neither the artists nor the label intended or condoned such an interpretation. In addition, while Motown's artist roster was almost completely comprised of black artists (notable exceptions being Chris Clark, Debbie Dean, and R. Dean Taylor), itssales and distribution offices, headed by Barney Ales, were filled mostly with white employees.
Within the Motown offices, an environment both supported and troubled by the practices of nepotism and favoritism developed. Since Motown had begun as a small family company, Gordy developed close ties with a number of his artists and employees, and the departure of stars such as Mary Wells (who left in 1964, lured by 20th Century Fox) affected him both personally and professionally. Motown artists considered each other and the administrative and creative staffs "family", and worked in an environment where the label was omnipresent in every aspect of their careers. In what would today be deemed direct conflicts of interest, Motown acted as each artist's accountant, agent, and personal manager (through a subsidiary, International Talent Management, Inc).
Instead of being allowed to manage their own money, the label gave its artists allowances (with compounded interest), drawing against future record sales royalties to issue paychecks. Not all acts were able to pay back ther advances, as the average Motown contract started an artist at three-percent royalty rate, meaning that ninety-seven of the artist's proceeds went to the label. Motown's financial department rarely opened its books to artists, and filed its artists' tax returns for them. Many Motown artists, beginning with Martha Reeves in 1969, were involved in protracted lawsuits with the company concerning their finances.
Those artists who were closest to Gordy were often favored for songs and promotion over the other acts: The Miracles because Smokey Robinson was Gordy's best friend, The Temptations by association with Robinson, Marvin Gaye because he had married Gordy's sister Anna, and The Supremes because Gordy was infatuated with their lead singer, Diana Ross. Artists who were not a part of the inner circle (The Contours, Brenda Holloway, The Elgins, The Spinners, and established performers The Isley Brothers and Gladys Knight & the Pips) were not given as much attention. Several of these acts (most notably The Isleys, The Spinners, and Knight & the Pips) departed Motown for success elsewhere. Others worked in other areas of the company as administrative workers, gofers, and even chauffeurs.
