In the summer of 1961, at the age of 21 years, Andrew ‘Mike’ Terry prepared to go on the road with Joe Hunter’s band to back Jackie Wilson. The tour did not go well, and it wasn’t long before he returned to Detroit.

“It was just after he had been shot and he was still recovering, so he only performed on weekends, and we had to look after our own hotel bills and keep our places in Detroit going too. They just didn’t pay us enough.” 

Having decided that touring was not for him; Terry returned to the rarefied atmosphere of the recording studio(s) and concentrated on what he knew best.

He did work on the road again however, in 1962, with the first Motortown Review, which toured the country for 10 weeks culminating in a gruelling ten-show stand at the famed Apollo Theatre in New York, but never toured again after that.

He spent the next few years honing and perfecting his skills on scores of recording sessions around the city, but still didn’t feel that he was being adequately compensated. “By 1962/’63 we were recording over 25 songs a week. It was tough. I took whatever I could get. It’s odd, but if I had refused there probably would not be a Mike Terry. Maybe not even a Motown!”

None of the musicians felt that they were being adequately compensated, nor recognised, for the increasingly important roles they would all play in the creation and delivery of scores of hit songs that generated millions of dollars for the company (Motown). Many also felt that their skills were being restricted by Motown’s policy of single role deployment, where musicians were only allowed to play on sessions and not get involved in other areas like production, writing or arranging songs. This inevitably led to many musicians ‘moonlighting’ for other studios to earn more money, and specifically led to Terry enrolling, with Willie Shorter, at the Detroit Institute of Music Arts to study music arrangement.

Joe Hunter and Dave Hamilton had left Motown, completely, in 1963 for the same reason, choosing to remain free agents and expand their abilities as producer/arrangers as well as musicians.

Mike continued to do session work around town, while attending the Institute, clocking up scores of sessions. “Yeah, I was really busy then. I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t have done it if I had been married though, I can tell you that! I was working at Motown too, remember.”

Commenting on the preponderance of dance songs that seemed to dominate the recordings in Detroit at that time, Terry shares many of the musicians’ views. “We didn’t like the slower songs because it meant we had to hold the notes longer …they were aiming at teenagers who wanted to dance I think.”

In 1965 Terry teamed up with fellow Motown musician, Jack Ashford, to write and produce their own material. They had formed a strong personal bond while working on ‘outside’ sessions, particularly at Ed Wingate’s Golden World/Ric Tic set up, and were beginning to look in different creative directions. Neither were contractually obligated to Motown, so were free to make their own arrangements. 

According to guitarist Dennis Coffey, “Ed Wingate used Motown staffers on midnight sessions at Golden World, and placed saxophonist Mike Terry and percussionist and tambourine player extraordinaire, Jack Ashford on weekly retainers.”

Ashford recalls how their relationship developed. “Mike and I sort of gravitated toward each other because we wanted to achieve the same goals. Our conversations were usually about the record industry and cashing in on our talents. We didn’t see much opportunity at Motown. We had grown weary of Motown’s insensitivity towards our individual creative development and advancement.” Ashford was not his only song-writing collaborator however. Terry wrote with Dusty Wilson, George McGregor, Jo Armstead and Leon Ware at different times in the 1960s and 1970s.

music: ""Headline News" - Edwin Starr (RicTic114a)

[soundbyte displays Mike Terry's bari sax]

Continued