Motown Classics 2: 1972-1998

At the beginning of the '70s, Motown moved its H.Q. to L.A., and the legendary assembly-line era was over. Not only had key artists — think Marvin, Stevie, Smokey, and Diana — grown professionally, they'd also grown artistically, demanding more independence. Though Gordy & co. still turned to them for hits, they also groomed new artists as their potential replacements. While the Commodores built their rep as make-out music masters on Lionel Richie's chrome-plated pipes, it's Walter Orange's nasal, funk-dripping growl that drives "Brick House" to the pinnacle of discofied nastayness. Funk-fortified superfreak Rick James dials the thermostat up to smoldering with protégé/partner/superfreakette Teena Marie on "Fire and Desire." And Boyz II Men took their hip-hop doo-wop harmonies to the top of the charts for 14 weeks with "I'll Make Love to You," only to knock themselves from the top spot — something that hadn't happened since Beatlemania's heyday.

In Next Steps, we hear from an artist who started out as "Little," but ended up a giant; a singer whose "distant lover" brought a whole coliseum to its feet; and a guy who no longer needed Miracles to make miraculous hits.

Despite the move (and all the newcomers to the Hitsville family), Motown still raked in bushels of hits from the legends who'd turned it into a musical powerhouse. The man once known as "Little" Stevie Wonder couldn't have gotten any bigger than when he cut his triple- GRAMMY®-winning performances on Songs In the Key of Life, including the chart-topping cauldron of hip-bumpin' funk "I Wish (Single Edit)." One of the smoothest of smooth grooves ever rolled out within the confines of a recording studio, Marvin Gaye's "Distant Lover (Live Edit 1974 Oakland-Alameda Coliseum)" took on a whole new level of seduction in front of an audience packed with women who — quite vocally — demonstrate their eagerness to aid in Marvin's sexual healing. But where Gaye's ballad ripples with the dark undercurrent of s-e-x, Smokey Robinson's sugar-spun "Being With You (Single)" glides along, light and fluffy as a cloud of love. And it became the biggest hit of his solo career.

In Deep Cuts, we'll hear from a musical family once thought to be the Jacksons' heirs, a Temptation gone solo, and the sparkle-gloved King of Pop himself.

Ex-Temptation Eddie Kendricks didn't exactly invent disco, but his bass-blastin', dance-floor-fillin' "Boogie Down" set the stage for the white-suited polyester revolution that soon took its place under the mirrored ball's twinkling lights. At a time when most kids are still popping wheelies and shooting hoops, Michael Jackson was already marching toward (pop) world domination and singing way beyond his age, in terms of both poise and material, with "I Wanna Be Where You Are." And by the '80s, Motown was angling for a band to replace the departed Jackson 5, and another quintet of siblings, DeBarge, almost inherited their crown. Lead singer El DeBarge floats a whipped-cream-smooth vocal on top of an air-kiss promise of everlasting love in the group's 1983 crossover hit, "Time Will Reveal." But the story doesn't end there; half a century removed from its humble beginnings, Motown's still making memories, still making history…and still making hits.

What happens when Motown leaves Motown? In 1972, Hitsville moved to Hollywood, and while the assembly line didn't entirely shut down — plenty of hits still proudly bore the Motor City's most famous imprint — the Motown Sound did change. It had to. Some artists had left the label. Others grew up. And the world they all lived in was a very different place than it was when Berry Gordy bought the house that hits built — and the house that built hits — on West Grand Blvd. From classic-era superstars like Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross to second-generation funk, soul, and smooth-groove masters like Boyz II Men, the Commodores, and Rick James, we've got all the sounds of a label reinventing itself in a shifting sonic landscape.