Gordy G 7034 (A), July 1964

b/w Leaving Here

(Written by Mickey Stevenson)

Some records start off unassuming, then win you over, and then just keep on getting better and better the more you play them. (The Marvelettes’ You’re My Remedy is a prime example, though there are lots of others.) What starts out as a distraction, something that just passes you by on your first sweep through The Complete Motown Singles, ends up working its way into your affections until you realise you positively love the thing.

This isn’t one of those records. This one started off grabbing my attention right off the bat – wow, who’s this? “Tommy Good”? Never heard of him. Was it a hit? No, apparently not. Well, did he cut any more Motown singles? Nope, this was it. Must investigate further. And so on. But the more I play it, the less and less I find it charms me, to the point I’m worried I’ll have to stop playing it altogether soon or I might find myself not liking it any more.

I do still like it a lot, mind you.

Tommy Good’s one and only Motown single saw the company making its first serious attempt to break a white R&B act since Debbie Dean three years previously. Motown certainly believed the lad had potential; not only did he cut reams of material over the course of a year at Hitsville, but he also saw one of the label’s more infamous publicity stunts set up in his favour. To launch Tommy’s solo career, Motown staged a mock “protest march” on the studio, featuring supposedly outraged die-hard Tommy fans (actually hired local schoolchildren) carrying picket signs demanding Motown release Good’s records.

A splendid specimen of Sixties astroturfing at its finest. In fact, Motown had planned the whole stunt from the start, using contacts in the local media to get coverage and build momentum for a complete unknown. Baby I Miss You was actually released less than a month after recording, Motown pretending to bow to nonexistent “popular demand” – but it’s interesting that they chose to mock up a fake backstory that claimed the song had been sat in the can for many months, because this probably would have made more sense in 1963. In several ways, it feels like a holdover from an earlier Motown era – this, of course, being a time when such things were measured in weeks rather than years. Continue reading »