Baby Baby, Ooh Baby Baby

The December Vanity Fair contains a fascinating oral history of Motown records — a good read for casual fans. It’s a bit sketchy for someone like me, but I did enjoy Annie Leibovitz’s accompanying photos of various Motown greats looking happy and relaxed. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, a fulfilling way to get into the pioneering label’s history would be to listen to everything they released chronologically on Hip-O Select’s Complete Motown Singles box sets. I just loaded up iTunes with all six discs from the 1965 volume, and hearing the big hits next to unfamiliar obscurities and weird forays into Country and Easy Listening really paints a vivid picture of where this one-of-a-kind company was at that particular time (Smokey Robinson was the man in ‘65).