Motortown Revue: Roped-Off Dance Floors and Fingertips Live at the Regal

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Through the 1960s Motown loaded its roster onto buses for the Motortown Revue, a package tour where early headliners Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, Barrett Strong, the Contours and closers Smokey Robinson and the Miracles were supported by unproven acts: Marvin Gaye, a young Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and the Supremes, then nicknamed the No-Hit Supremes. The newcomers watched Robinson from the wings every night. Touring revenue mattered, so the buses followed the chitlin circuit deep into the segregated South.

There, venues demanded separate shows for white and Black audiences or split one room with a rope guarded by police. The artists were refused service, attacked, and had their buses shot at. The episode argues that Motown's backbeat pulled crowds together until the ropes fell. The bus also served as a writing room: Robinson wrote The Way You Do the Things You Do and My Girl on the road. Stevie Wonder's 1963 No. 1 Fingertips Part 2 was recorded live during a Revue show at the Regal Theater in Chicago. Footage filmed at the Apollo in December 1962 has never had an authorized public showing.

Non-Motown acts such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding sometimes joined the bill.
On Fingertips, a newly arrived bassist can be heard shouting "What key?" as Wonder returned to the mic.
The Apollo audio became The Motortown Revue Volume 1 in 1963 and reached No. 75 on the Billboard 200.
Motortown Revue in Paris, recorded at the Olympia in 1965, reached No. 3 on the UK R&B albums chart.
A four-CD 40th anniversary box set came out in 2002, and a 2015 Paris deluxe edition added a dozen unreleased tracks.

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