After I posted, I was wondering how well I was remembering that story myself, so over to the zine shelf I go…
OK, so he didn’t say “master” he said “multi-track” which means like a dub of the master and yes, that makes way more sense that he would have that. The interviewer’s excitement that he would have that–a rarity in itself–made me conflate it into something even more rare, I guess. It was also not “one of the big songs everyone knows” but it turns out it was several songs with serious breaks on them. Read from 2nd-to-last question in the left column; “Wait, wait, wait…”
“They gave me the original tapes too, Motown just gave me a copy.” has contradictory phrasing, but I latched onto the “original tapes” part, not the “copy” part, it looks like.
In my defense, I have a negative impression of Motown’s archival practices vis-a-vis master tapes due to a story Stevie Wonder told which I realize now probably overlapped with my memory of the 45 King story. THIS has the “took the well-known hit’s master tape home with me” narrative:
@Israel_B yo, I know you’re sitting on some crates yourself; anything interesting?
