IVY JO HUNTER
Key Motown songwriter
(1940-2022)
IVY Jo Hunter was determined to avoid the formulaic route at Motown. “If I got a chance to work with an artist, I was not looking for the ‘Motown Sound’,” he explained in 2019. “I took that artist somewhere else. You weren’t going to get a ‘My Guy’ out of me. I just did what came naturally.” The range and quality of his compositions during the label’s classic ’60s era was ample testimony, from The Four Tops’ sorrowful “Ask The Lonely” to Marvin Gaye’s rough-hewn “You”, from The Isley Brothers’ emotionally torn “Behind A Painted Smile” to the effervescent groove of his most celebrated co-write, Martha And The Vandellas’ “Dancing In The Street”.
Previously employed at Detroit’s small Correctone label, Hunter was signed to Motown in 1963 on the recommendation of sax player/producer Hank Cosby. A&R head William “Mickey” Stevenson initiated him as keyboardist in the studio house band, before the pair began writing and producing
