Rare Earth: Naming a Motown Label and a 21-Minute Version of Get Ready

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Rare Earth began in Detroit in 1960 as the Sunliners, a bar band playing Top 40 and R&B covers for nearly a decade. Renamed in 1968, they cut a debut, Dream Answers, for Verve that failed to chart. In 1969 Motown, looking to reach the white FM rock audience, signed them as the flagship act of a new rock subsidiary, and when the band joked that it should be named after them, the label called it Rare Earth. In 1970 their 21-minute album version of the Temptations' Get Ready, written by Smokey Robinson, became an FM staple, and the single reached number 4 and sold over a million copies.

Gil Scott-Heron named Rare Earth in a 1970 poem alongside Tom Jones and Johnny Cash as entertainers who would not soundtrack the revolution. After Motown moved to Los Angeles, the band dealt with alleged mob financing, a Norman Whitfield-produced album, Ma, that flopped in 1973, and a 1974 split that took away its rhythm section. Saxophonist Gil Bridges won the rights to the name and kept the band touring until his death from COVID-19 in December 2021, while hip-hop producers sampled its records.

Bassist John Persh stayed in Detroit when the band moved west.
Rare Earth played the April 1974 California Jam for about 250,000 people, alongside Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and the Eagles.
Peter Rivera and Mike Urso left in 1974 to form a group called Hub, and Rivera later sued over the name.
A 1978 disco single, Warm Ride, was written by the Bee Gees.
Their records were sampled by NWA, Scarface, DJ Shadow and Beck, and I Just Want to Celebrate anchored Ford and AT&T ads.

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