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MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS - (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave (1963)
It would take a tone-deaf, leadfooted hater to resist every radio-friendly salvo fired from the Motown cannon since Berry Gordy Jr. incorporated his brand a half-century ago today.
50 years on, Gordy’s $800 gamble still stands as one of the most successful independently operated enterprises in entertainment history, a cultural achievement of staggering import and a one-stop shop for some of the most outstanding examples of popular songcraft ever.
Darwinism has cut away much of Motown’s facile, third-drawer stuff, meaning what’s available on the most-recent rounds of artist compilations (the “Definitive Collection” series, “Number Ones” and the 2CD “Gold” sets) is of the must-have variety. Motown and its affiliated labels (Tamla, Gordy) surely produced some cheese, and I can attest to the amount of padding on some albums (not as much as received wisdom has it, but yeah, there’s some). But it’s amazing how long it takes to absorb all of the good and great songs recorded over the years, particularly during the 1962-1973 heyday.
And here’s a tune that never sounds shopworn, no matter when nor where I hear it, the delightfully jaunty, evergreen “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave,” a #4 U.S. hit for Martha And The Vandellas in the summer of 1963.
Martha Reeves was a semi-professional nightclub singer who accidentally fell into secretarial work at William “Mickey” Stevenson’s Motown office when she showed up for an audition on the wrong day. Through 1962, Reeves booked artists and sang backup on a handful of early Marvin Gaye singles (“Stubborn Kind Of Fellow,” “Hitch Hike” and the Top Ten “Pride And Joy”). Late in the year, Reeves and her singing mates Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard earned their shot when they filled in for an absent Mary Wells on a demo that Gordy turned into a single. “I’ll Have To Let Him Go” didn’t do anything on the charts, but one of the great singles acts of the 1960s was born in the process.
By the end of 1967, Martha And The Vandellas had turned out 12 U.S. Top 40 singles, including the deathless “Dancing In The Street,” a #2 hit that serves radio stations and car stereos every spring as a clarion call to the coming summer season. (In 2009, U.K. monthly Mojo chose “Street” as the greatest Motown song of all-time. Two-thirds of its writing team were Stevenson and Gaye, one of countless tasty factoids about the insular Motown collaborative process.)
“Heat Wave” predated “Street,” and marked the first time the Vandellas found themselves in the Top 20. They toured England with the rest of the Motown stable in March 1965, which is how they ended up lip-synching on the tiny Ready! Steady! Go! stage in the clip provided above. The exposure must’ve worked, because a year later The Who recorded a high-octane version for their second album, which begat The Jam’s immensely likable copycat cover in 1979.
I dunno what I like best about the song. The youthful “woo oo-oo-oo-ooo” backing vocal is a highlight of all three versions, but ”Heat Wave“‘s exuberance comes out clearest in the Vandellas original, with that rope-skipping bass-drum-guitar-piano pulse, and two-note baritone sax glissando elbowing in on the one. Reeves’ keening lead is both assured and hopeful, like she’s felt the heat before and can’t wait to get there again. And when she gets a little gritty in the playout, the call-and-response bit with her BFFs, it’s seismic. Motown’s best singles teemed with trembling, trebly excitement, and this one is unstoppable.
Berry Gordy started the Tamla label in January 1959, so Motown-related 50th anniversary celebrations have been in full swing for a year. And Martha And The Vandellas actually recorded on Gordy, which didn’t start until ‘62. But Motown Records Incorporated hit the tarmac on April 14, 1960, and the date shouldn’t pass without a little love.
