Esther Gordy Edwards, who died on 24 August at the age of 91, was known as "the Mother of Motown", writes Pierre Perrone, not only to her brother Berry Gordy Jr, the founder of the label that defined the Sixties as much as The Beatles, but also to artists like Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes, whom she chaperoned on tour.

In the late 1960s, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell were Motown's sweet songbirds, duetting on the romantic ballads "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", "Your Precious Love", "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "You're All I Need to Get By". These odes to the undying, eternal power of love were tailor-made by Nick Ashford and his writing partner and later wife, Valerie Simpson, and mirrored their enduring and happy relationship, the flip side to the tragic fate that would befall Terrell, who died of a brain tumour in March 1970, and Gaye, who was shot dead by his father in April 1984.

Nick Ashford, one half of the legendary Motown songwriting duo Ashford & Simpson that penned elegant, soulful classics funk hits for the likes of Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye and Chaka Khan, has died at the age of 70, his former publicist said.

The glory of Federer is that at the age of 29 he remains ultimately committed to the imperative of winning. The beauty of his game is a mere by-product

An affecting account with a GSOH

Question: how much does a rap mogul pay for his cardigans? Answer: $2,500 (£1,600). I know this fact because Sean Combs, the hip-hop hyphenate variously known as Puff Daddy, Puffy, P Diddy, and more recently, plain old Diddy, has just instructed his wardrobe man, Dave, to lend me an item of knitwear to cope with the sub-zero temperatures in the Mojave Desert, where he's making the video of the track "Yesterday", from his new album Last Train to Paris. Its price tag flutters in the breeze. "Make sure you give it back," says Dave. "And try not to get it dirty."

"Now that I am about to go under the sod," Geoffrey Dutton remarked a few years ago, "I find when I look back I'm glad, as I wrote in one poem, that at one time, I tried to compose music. No more than that. It's nice to be able to believe that you had tried to compose music."

Over the last 100 days, we've been counting down the best moments in World Cup history, and the list is now complete.

Matt Carroll put him to the test

As one of The Supremes, Mary Wilson changed the face of America. She tells John Walsh how her sequins sold the civil rights movement

A breezy tale of obsessive love

It's not all platinum discs and private jets. As executives at EMI discovered to their cost this week, the record industry can be a cruel mistress. But what of the other labels that made musical history? Rock's back catalogue is full of hits and misses... announced plans for 2,000 job losses. Does the digital revolution spell doom for the record labels that built rock 'n' roll?