Motown History Redux

.....Last year I began covering the history of Motown Christmas recordings as a nod to Black History Month here in the United States. Unexpected delays unrelated to the blog cut that short half-way through the 1960's. I considered peppering them amongst the other months and perhaps turning to the Atlantic labels on the following February (meaning now). The reason I decided against that is that Motown has a history of aggressively repackaging its hits and has done the same with its Christmas music. They have always had a much stronger sense of brand identity than other successfully charting labels, including labels who were also large visible independents in the 1960's and 1970's such as A&M or Island. (All three are now owned by what is currently Universal.) Also, I've been able to use the intervening time to research the few seasonally-related recordings I don't own to fill in the holes in the chronology. This year I'll start at the beginning and mention the material covered last year, possibly linking to those posts rather than retyping them, to create a month long version of the sort of posts I did for James Brown in December. Cross your fingers.