In 1963 two fanatical R&B fans from Bexleyheath set out to bring the Sound of Motown to the attention of Britain’s teenagers, after discovering the label a couple of years earlier. At the time the Detroit record company was hardly known outside of the United States and only a handful of their releases had been issued in the UK on import labels, their records were largely ignored by the music press and vinyl sales were modest due to a lack of publicity.

Dave Godin, assisted by Clive Stone began by setting up the UK’s first ever Tamla-Motown Appreciation Society from Godin’s suburban Kent bedroom. Godin then contacted Motown’s Berry Gordy, who was excited by this initial interest from England in his fledgling label, and invited Godin to Detroit for talks. Imagining the fan base was a lot bigger than it turned out to be, Gordy quickly organized the first Motown tour of the UK in 1965 and with the aid of EMI started the Tamla-Motown label. Godin publicized the tour and kept UK fans up-to-date with all the Motown news, he also arranged informal meet-and-greets with the labels stars for the TMAS members, however other than a few devout Mods, the tour had very poor turnouts and was concluded to be a flop.

Forgotten about for over 50 years, a box was recently discovered in Clive’s loft containing an array of Motown-related ephemera and artefacts ranging from a novelty key to the Motor City to an autographed program for the 1964 Motown Company Christmas party held at the Graystone Ballroom in Detroit, all dating from Clive’s days in the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society. There were also three Kodak photograph wallets and four folders of negatives in the bottom of the box, many of them covering that untimely first tour of 1965. These unique photos had been briefly shown to family and friends at the time, with a few being given to Dave Godin for the fan club’s magazine, but were never actually published or have been seen since the day they left the developers.

In conjunction with *MODUS The House of Soul, the Horse Hospital is proud to present a remarkably evocative exhibition of those unseen photos featuring the now big names of Motown playing and meeting fans in British pubs and small unlikely venues well before they became famous. The photos feature alongside a whole host of supporting ephemera including a rare recording of personal messages by Motown stars to the society. The Exhibition will also see the launch Keith Rylatt’s extraordinary book ‘Hitsville’ which chronicles the entire story from Stevie Wonder’s fleeting visit in 1963 through to the Four Tops’ sell-out show at London’s Saville Theatre in 1966 – credited as being the point when the Motown Sound finally entered Britain’s pop mainstream. Beautifully presented in full colour, the book includes previously unpublished photographs taken by Clive Stone and other TMAS members, rare memorabilia and many pages from the society’s highly collectable magazine Hitsville USA.

EXHIBITION: SAT 3RD DEC – THURS 22ND DEC, WED – SAT, 12 – 6PM
OPENING: FRI 2ND DEC RSVP CLICK HERE (ADMISSION FREE BUT LIMITED AVAILABILITY)
DJ NIGHT: FRI 16TH DEC (ACTS TBC) FREE

The Horse Hospital

Colonnade, Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1HX