** This is just a short biographical summary – for the full story, check out this artist’s reviews! **
Frederick Earl “Shorty” Long (so named because he was 5ft 1 inch tall), universally called “Bad Shorty”, was the loose cannon of the later Motown canon: hard to pin down, a guy who recorded pretty much whatever he wanted to record. One of only a handful of Motown artists granted the privilege of writing, recording and producing their own material, Shorty came to Motown as part of a job lot when Harvey Fuqua’s Tri-Phi/Harvey labels were folded into the empire. He quickly found work compering at Motortown Revue live shows and carved out a niche recording his own brand of raucous blues-jazz-rock-R&B-boogie-woogie music, a sound quite unlike anyone else at Motown.
Much-loved, he even managed to score a couple of significant chart hits, but was probably too eclectic to win a mainstream audience. He was killed in 1969 in a boating accident on the Detroit River.
Review Archive: Shorty LONG (4 items)
We have 4 reviews for Shorty Long currently available here on Motown Junkies – click the link above to see our archive for more details.
