695. The Temptations: “Fading Away”

Gordy G 7049 (B), February 1966

B-side of Get Ready

(Written by Smokey Robinson, Bobby Rogers and Pete Moore)

Tamla Motown TMG 557 (B), April 1966

B-side of Get Ready

(Released in the UK under license through EMI/Tamla Motown)

All label scans come from visitor contributions - if you'd like to send me a scan I don't have, please e-mail it to me at fosse8@gmail.com! The A-side here, the incomparable kinetic thump and clatter of Get Ready, had been (in many ways) a most out-of-character outing for the Temptations’ outgoing primary writer-producer, Smokey Robinson, to give to the group. Here on the flip side, it’s a whole different story. Underneath the last Tempts 45 Smokey would ever helm, on one of the last times we’ll meet the combination of group and guru here on Motown Junkies, we find perhaps the most in-character Smokey number the Temptations ever recorded. I close my eyes, I think of this song, and invariably it turns into Smokey himself singing it instead; ironic that Fading Away comes bundled with the Temptations single that ended their working relationship with Smokey forever, because right at the end of that partnership, more than any other Smokey/Temptations joint, is a song that sounds more like the Miracles than the Miracles themselves.

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694. The Temptations: “Get Ready”

Gordy G 7049 (A), February 1966

b/w Fading Away

(Written by Smokey Robinson)

Tamla Motown TMG 557 (A), April 1966

b/w Fading Away

(Released in the UK under license through EMI/Tamla Motown)

1966 is full of Motown landmarks, and they don’t come much bigger than this.

Or, well, do they? Before I ever Got Into Motown, this was one of the obvious touchstones I was always familiar with, one of the ones I just assumed everyone knew. A Top 10 hit here in Britain, it’s certainly a well-known song, and – if it isn’t quite as ubiquitous as My Girl (but then again, what is?) – it’s immediately recognisable, from the second those first few grizzled horn-and-bass pulses come pumping out of the radio. This isn’t the Temptations’ great monument, but it’s surely not far behind, right?

So, it was something of a surprise for me to discover that, while it did the business back home on black radio (becoming the Tempts’ third R&B number one), Get Ready was actually considered something of a flop on original release, enough to lose Smokey the gig as the Temptations’ main writer/producer. In 1966, Motown valued crossover success far above scoring big on the R&B charts, and when this single limped into the top 30 (quite literally, at number 30) for one week before sinking like a stone, Berry Gordy was deeply unimpressed. Smokey may have been Gordy’s closest and longest-serving lieutenant, a friend and a trusted collaborator and valued second-in-command, but for Motown’s flagship male group to be shunned so harshly by white radio was not only embarrassing, but potentially extremely harmful to Gordy’s overall vision.

After this, Norman Whitfield took over at the helm of the Temptations, effectively for the rest of their top-level career; rather than being the triumphant pinnacle I’d assumed it to be, this record in fact marks the (commercially) disappointing end of a chapter, and of a glorious era.

All of which is not only a shame, but also really confusing, because this is truly spectacular. Continue reading →

693. The Four Tops: “Just As Long As You Need Me”

Motown M 1090 (B), February 1966

B-side of Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)

(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)

Tamla Motown TMG 553 (B), March 1966

B-side of Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)

(Released in the UK under license through EMI/Tamla Motown)

All label scans come from visitor contributions - if you'd like to send me a scan I don't have, or an improvement on what's already up here, please e-mail it to me at fosse8@gmail.com!

Okay, this is going to be excellent again, isn’t it?

Alright, for me, at this point in 1966, it’s pretty much a given that every big-ticket Motown single is going to be good, and probably most of the small-ticket ones as well; a Four Tops/Holland-Dozier-Holland collaboration, even a B-side, is as close to a sure thing as anything can be even before the needle drops. But in this case, I mean that when the needle did drop (or, well, more accurately but boringly/prosaically, I pressed play on the FLAC file), it only took me a few seconds of the intro and first verse to decide that, yep, this is going to be ending in another big green number. Sorry to spoil the surprise, but, hey, let’s not focus on how they’re doing this, and instead just enjoy the Golden Age ride. Again. Continue reading →

692. The Four Tops: “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)”

Motown M 1090 (A), February 1966

b/w Just As Long As You Need Me

(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)

Tamla Motown TMG 553 (A), March 1966

b/w Just As Long As You Need Me

(Released in the UK under license through EMI/Tamla Motown)

We’ve only just reached February 1966 and already every side of every single, er, single we’ve seen this year – this Motown year, I should specify, since it’s taken me, like, four actual ones to get through these first few weeks of ’66 – has earned a big green number at the bottom of the review. For new readers, the marks are meant to be a fun conversation starter, not the be-all and end-all of my thoughts on a particular song, but still… including the last weeks of December 1965, that’s a streak of fourteen straight songs I’ve rated as, at the least, very good.

Make that fifteen. Hope it isn’t getting boring! If my praise starts to sound repetitive, do me a favour and stick the actual records on – right now, they’re all brilliant. Nothing much I can do about that.

Motown was on a tear, no question, and for most fans 1966 marks the apogee of the label’s anything-but-mythical Golden Age, the time when everyone at Hitsville was at their very best. Motown’s prodigious output would be one thing, but the quality of that output at the time is, by and large, the stuff the label’s legend is built upon. Just as the city’s motor industry was firing on all cylinders, Motown brought worldwide attention to Detroit in the mid-Sixties, as the most successful music industry talent-spotting and -gathering operation of all time came to fruition. Berry Gordy had gathered around him the absolute cream of the industry’s black American talent, whether that meant in songwriting, musicianship, production, singing, dancing, marketing… you name it, Motown probably had someone who was the best at it.

Even more remarkably, some of this unique confluence of brilliance had happened entirely by accident; the Supremes were famously the runts of the litter, Stevie Wonder was a “blind dancing kid with harmonica” novelty act, Smokey Robinson just happened to be Berry’s friend. Did Motown realise they had signed the future biggest and most famous girl group of all time, and two of the greatest singer-songwriter-producers in history, any one of whom could have sustained an independent label of their own for years? What about the session drummer, Marvin Gaye? Or the A&R secretary, Martha Reeves?

And yet, astonishingly, there had still been some Ones That Got Away, even in Detroit. The Four Tops had somehow lasted until 1964 as perennial and well-known “local talent” before getting a single on Motown, ten hitless years of hard slog rewarded and paid in full. By teaming the Tops with the Andantes, the immortal Motown female backing singers, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team created something close to alchemy, a blend of beautiful voices and gritty soul sensibilities verging on the perfect (and sometimes, as in the case of their début Motown 45 Baby I Need Your Loving, actually perfect). This record may not be quite as good as that one (because, frankly, almost nothing is), but stone me if it’s not brilliant anyway.

Fifteen in a row, ladies and gentlemen. The Sound of Young America, conquering the world. Continue reading →

691. Marvin Gaye: “When I Had Your Love”

Tamla T 54129 (B), January 1966

B-side of One More Heartache

(Written by Smokey Robinson, Pete Moore, and Bobby Rogers)

Tamla Motown TMG 552 (B), March 1966

B-side of One More Heartache

(Released in the UK under license through EMI / Tamla Motown)

All label scans come from visitor contributions - if you'd like to send me a scan I don't have, or an improvement on what's already up here, please e-mail it to me at fosse8@gmail.com! Smokey Robinson had a lot on his plate in the mid-Sixties. With the all-conquering Holland-Dozier-Holland team increasingly preoccupied (not least with providing more hits for the Supremes), and with Berry Gordy himself long since absent from the songwriting coalface, it often fell to Smokey to write and produce hits to order for Motown’s ever-burgeoning roster of star names. The Temptations had already reaped the chart rewards, and so, for the best part of a year and a half, had Marvin Gaye. With Motown seemingly finally having won the battle to turn Marvin away from his life’s ambition of (basically) being the next Nat King Cole, it fell to Smokey and his Miracles bandmates to handle the permanent transition from processed crooner to hip-shaking pop star, and they’d acquitted themselves with aplomb; if Marvin’s mid-Sixties singles are always a little more “out there” than some of his contemporaries, within Motown and without, then over the past year we’ve seen a definite template emerging nonetheless. Not necessarily musically – one of the things I’ve seen writing this blog is that each Marvin Gaye single not only sounds different from the last, but that we often see each B-side trying to catch up with that last one when the topside has already moved on – but rather, the idea of what a Marvin Gaye record should feel like. He was already one of the most charismatic, enigmatic guys on the roster and on the radio, but Smokey Robinson maybe deserves more credit than anyone else (save Marvin himself) for taking those raw materials and uniting them into something the public could readily recognise. Wow, that’s Marvin Gaye!
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