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George Alexander Inc. 1079 (A), June 1965
b/w Supremes Interview
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)
Does anyone want to venture an explanation as to what this is, then?
Right in the middle of the Supremes’ all-conquering run of five straight Number One hits in a row, and with the astonishing More Hits by the Supremes LP ready to hit stores, Motown seems to have been struck by a sudden paroxysm of paralysing self-doubt. Perhaps overwhelmed by the pressure of finding a sixth chart-topper to continue the winning streak, when faced with the task of picking what would be the next Number One single from More Hits – which on first listen (and on lots of subsequent listens, to be fair) sounds like an entire album’s worth of hit singles – Motown second-guessed themselves, not once but twice.
Uncharacteristically – but understandably – the label dithered in choosing the new single, tentatively slating two different songs from the album before eventually plumping for a third in Nothing But Heartaches. I believe they made the wrong choice, as so often happens when you overthink something, but that’s a story for another day. The story for today is The Only Time I’m Happy.
YOU MAKE ME FEEL SO UNWANTED, DEAR
Here’s my best guess as to what happened here. Motown slated the next available catalogue number, M 1079, for a new Supremes single (it was never used for anything else; claims the number was allocated for a single by Little Lisa, an artist we’ve not yet met here on Motown Junkies, are entirely unsubstantiated). For whatever reason, they got cold feet as to whether The Only Time I’m Happy – messier and more loosely-fastened than the five slices of immaculate pop that had gone before – was really the right pick. Separately, the label’s marketeers, tasked with drumming up excitement for More Hits, wanted to do something to promote the LP, like sending out an interview disc to radio jocks across the country.
It’s my theory – sure to be shot down in flames in the comment section, but it makes sense to me anyway – that Motown ended up conflating the two Supremes promo efforts. To that end, I’m guessing they canned the proposed “new single” they were getting less and less sure about by the day, instead arranging for it to be paired with the group interview, as an incentive for jocks to listen to both sides, and “released” (probably only as a promo, or a giveaway, rather than actually being sold anywhere) via the (possibly made up) NYC-based George Alexander label, of which nobody has ever heard anything other than this one single.
Murmurs of payola caused by Motown’s current ubiquity on America’s playlists avoided; impression of a group so popular they merit a special giveaway on a totally independent label made; Supremes brand image as America’s number one group further cultivated. More Hits went Top Ten and eventually sold over a million copies. Mission accomplished.
So it came to pass that right in the middle of that run of Number One hits, there’s a Supremes single from More Hits that hardly anyone’s ever heard of. But it means we get to cover it here on Motown Junkies, and that means it’s fine by me.
But first, there’s something I’ve got to get into before we talk about The Only Time I’m Happy in any detail. If you’re not interested in my lengthy, rambling thoughts about More Hits and the phenomenon of Sixties albums as seen in 2013, well, you might want to skip this next section. See you at the bottom there.
EVER LOVING PRIDE AND JOY
(A LONG ESSAY ABOUT MORE HITS BY THE SUPREMES)
This is a Motown singles blog, but – as I’ve said before – I freely admit I’m too young to have ever known Motown as a relevant, current musical force, and I was slow off the mark even when I was old enough to start listening. I wasn’t there, and whilst this whole blog is my best shot at doing justice to all this great music, these great people, it’s inevitably done through a prism of hindsight; no matter how hard I try, anachronism, presentism, recentism, misplaced nostalgia for things that never were, all of these things remain dangerous hazards. But the one thing I’ve found hardest to cope with is considering that Motown, as well as being the greatest singles label in history, were also a great albums label.
Most of the 587 songs we’ve previously covered so far here on Motown Junkies were not conceived to be heard on albums, and if they did somehow end up on a long-player, those long-players in turn were not conceived as “albums” in the way a modern listener would parse that term. The Sixties saw the true emergence of the album as a valid art form in its own right, rather than just another format of single, a glorified maxi-EP. Jazz musicians were the first to really appreciate the liberating nature of the longer format, and from there, starting with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald’s eye-poppingly brilliant …Sings the XYZ Songbook series, pop audiences began to be introduced to the idea of an album as a discrete artistic statement to stand alone. By the 1970s, with the advent of FM radio and the rise of the cult of the singer-songwriter, or even writer-artist, as opposed to the production line, the album as we now know it had settled into a better-understood set of parameters that artists, labels and fans could all get a handle on.
But what interests me – and troubles me, when it comes to the blog – is how to deal with early- to mid-Sixties albums, where the technology to put 40-50 minutes of music in one package was available but where the expected norms of what that meant hadn’t really been worked out yet. More Hits works as an album, in the modern sense, absolutely fantastically. Like the Marvelettes’ wonderful Playboy a few years before, it fits the modern expectation of an album like a glove, a group of songs recorded around the same time, some of them singles, some of them not, none of them crude filler or slapdash covers of non-Jobete material. If you didn’t know the landscape, and you were told that yes, Holland-Dozier-Holland and the Supremes had set out with the intention of making a great album, well, the record fits that narrative.
Of course, they didn’t set out to do any such thing. The landscape was changing alright, album sales were going up – and canny labels were recognising that not only were the margins on LP sales extremely appealing, but that there was room to push up the price without killing the golden goose so long as single prices stayed low. But we were still in transition. To take the other great global breakthrough group of 1964 as an example, it’s still anachronistic to see (for instance) the celebrations this month surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Please Please Me LP, as if it was brought into the world as anything other than ten quickly knocked-off filler tracks to turn their first two singles into a triple-length EP.
Time was when the Beatles weren’t “respected” as Serious Artists (which, for a generation of critics, means “ALBUM Artists”) – not simply in terms of the amount of respect paid, but rather in terms of the very way they tend to be respected, even lionised now. It’ll never be like that for the Supremes, for three reasons:
– They were women.
– They were black.
– They didn’t write their own songs.
…but as the tide turns and those first two points, at least, become more and more irrelevant, well, it all adds up to something of a re-evaluation. Unfortunately, it’s a re-evaluation which doesn’t completely make sense, can’t ever make sense, because it’s viewed through a prism of misunderstanding that can never be satisfactorily cleared up.
There are albums from the early Sixties from great pop(ular) acts, black and white – the Beatles, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, the Beach Boys – which fit not only the obsession with dividing up whole careers into neat periods delineated by albums, but also the later expectations, the later mental cataloguing of later fans looking to explore back catalogues the only way they’ve ever known, album by album, because the album is sacred, the album is the parent of the great single, the album is the key.
This has its drawbacks. When we look at acts who straddled that era, who filled the mid-Sixties with pop singles and then went into the late Sixties and early Seventies making albums that very definitely were intended as stand-alone artistic statements – plucking examples from the air, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Rolling Stones, and, yes, the Supremes – it’s almost impossible for me not to retrospectively start applying the later cataloguing standards to the earlier work. So, Tribute to Uncle Ray winds up as part of the same continuous lineage, ripe for apparently fair comparison, as Talking Book, when we’re really comparing apples and oranges based on the fact they both run for about 40 minutes; to somehow put More Hits by the Supremes in the same conversation as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Bitches Brew or Dark Side of the Moon or Thriller is like comparing a marathon runner with someone who does the 110m hurdles, and then comparing both of them with a bus driver because, hey, it’s all getting from A to B, right?
But you’ve got to have a system, and for listeners born after 1970, and especially for listeners born after 1980 who had their entire record-buying lives shaped largely by CD reissues, that system seems, by default, to (unconsciously) use The Album as the standard unit of career division.
(“That’s a great song – which album is it from? Oh, you can’t get it on CD, it was a non-album single. Maybe they’ll do a rarities compilation. But hey, that ropey Side 2, Track 4 cover they tossed off in five minutes to fill space, well, of course that must be preserved forever. It’s as the artist intended, don’tchaknow?”)
A great many of the songs we’ve covered on this blog have been new to me, to a lesser or greater extent. After I finally “got into” Motown, I bought a lot of British compilation CDs to feed my new habit, and when The Complete Motown Singles series emerged I started voraciously consuming those as well, as you can probably tell, which is what led us here. All of that means I’ve had a lot of fun listening to all these records in a weird, hybrid context, at once removed from their original surroundings and also super-saturated in them: I’m hearing them as singles, a constant, steady parade of singles, in the order they were first released, shorn of baggage (I’m often surprised to discover which of these were big hits, which of them are much-loved, and indeed which of them are obscure and forgotten), each one given the chance to sound fresh and alive next to its original neighbours.
To me, More Hits is different. Something seems to have glitched in my head somewhere when it comes to trying to make sense of the Supremes’ recordings in 1965. For a start, there are so MANY of the bloody things, I’m surprised Misses Ross, Ballard and Wilson had time to eat or sleep between sessions; even here, restricted to 45s alone, there are an astounding 22 (that’s TWENTY-TWO) Supremes reviews slated to go up on Motown Junkies to cover the period between February 1965 and February 1966. So my brain seems to have taken emergency maintenance action in order to try and keep them all straight, and filed More Hits as a discrete album in the same bracket as Rubber Soul and The Beach Boys Today!.
This has a twofold effect, and it’s hugely contradictory. One: what a great album. (It really, really is – there’s not a track on here that I haven’t thought, while playing the whole LP through, “wow, that’s brilliant. This would make a great single”.) Two: paradoxically, it doesn’t actually respond all that well to being taken apart and parcelled out in single servings when you actually follow through and do it. Nothing But Heartaches works so well on the album, forming the second half of a kind of opening suite following Ask Any Girl, a one-two punch to start the record with a bang. Back In My Arms Again, which closes out side one, is a euphoric triumph, its slightly more sour, acidic notes perfectly balancing out some of the musical and lyrical sweetness we’ve had on the first side of the LP. Neither of them, though, seems to work properly when extracted to stand on their own; it almost feels wrong to hear them out of that context, as if we’ve broken up a priceless art collection because the pieces will make more money as individual lots.
More Hits is an incredible collection of great songs, an LP rather than an “album”. Simultaneously, and without contradiction, it’s also one of the best albums of all time.
Yes, I know that’s a strange thing to say (any part of it), but it’s at the root of all my thoughts on these (many!) upcoming Supremes singles and B-sides, and so I had to get it all off my chest.
We now return you to the programme as advertised.
…HELLO READERS
Strangely, some of the tracks which don’t leap out at me as should-be singles while I’m playing More Hits actually seem to work better when they’re isolated (quarantined?) as 45s. This – which on the album comes over as a driving, charming, but (there’s no getting away from it) slightly shambolic singalong, especially when compared to the magnificent but sort-of-similar Honey Boy, which we won’t get to meet here in full (but on which subject I’ll have plenty to say in future entries) – absolutely comes into its own as a standalone single.
The edges are rough; there are moments when the girls stumble over the lyrics, and there are moments when the lyrics stumble over themselves, all weird scansion and unnatural phrasing, most uncharacteristic for a product of the Holland-Dozier-Holland hit machine. We get less hooks (and less musical ideas, to be fair) than in any of the previous five Supremes singles, and you can understand radio being wary of a record that starts out with a false dramatic spoken-word intro (“I just want to be happy; to love and be loved back.”) and then proceeds to roll its sleeves up and get as messy as this. You can understand, in short, why Motown may have got cold feet and pulled it.
(It’s not just musically messy – the lyrics, leaving aside the almost casual disregard Eddie Holland seems to have here for his singers’ need to breathe, are again wandering into some dark territory, the narrator proclaiming that real life is a series of crushing romantic disappointments, at best a distraction before she can go to sleep and dream about a better world where the object of her affections loves her back. But the Supremes were veterans of this kind of thing by now, and Diana Ross takes it in her stride.)
Plus, it’s almost comically stereotypical as a Supremes record, the group’s signature sound woven into its very fabric; when people think of the generic sound of the Supremes, it’s likely to be the ambience of More Hits they mean, and despite the trips and slips, The Only Time I’m Happy encapsulates that sound more than any of the other Supremes 45s we’ve yet seen. It’s perhaps not quite adventurous enough to conquer the radio OR deflect accusations of musical stagnation, and so I readily understand why Motown would have changed their minds and backed a different horse, or felt comfortable (essentially) discarding The Only Time I’m Happy.
Here’s the thing, though. It’s fantastic.
All things being considered, I tend to like records that are slightly “off” in some way. Oh, flawless pop perfection is always awe-inspiring to behold, but below that level, I have a soft spot for records that are a bit less sure-footed, a bit more free and easy. To find a golden age Supremes record (and a Supremes record through and through, not some sort of weird experimental outtake) that sounds that way, a Supremes record that sounds half-finished, and what’s more a Supremes record that sounds as though it was actually fun to make… well, it’s both a relief and a pleasure.
I don’t know how they’re even managing to sing some of these lines – there don’t seem to be any pauses for breath built into this thing (the central refrain, one huge long badly-scanning sentence: ‘cos that’s the only time you hold me tight i-in my dreams is the only time your love is mine – runs straight into the first line of the next verse). But if you ever wanted to know what happened to the goofy, freewheeling spirit of When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, or what that song might have sounded like done by a group with the confidence borne of five number one hits under their belt.. well, voila.
Truth be told, I hadn’t appreciated this enough until it was isolated like this. But it’s a thrill; after calling it a single, the chorus seems to soar higher, the inherent clunkiness seems more endearing, and if I’m honest (am I ever anything but, dear reader?), I like it more than I probably should. I like it more than Back In My Arms Again, anyway; it’s this one I’ve come away whistling.
MOTOWN JUNKIES VERDICT
(I’ve had MY say, now it’s your turn. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment, or click the thumbs at the bottom there. Dissent is encouraged!)
You’re reading Motown Junkies, an attempt to review every Motown A- and B-side ever released. Click on the “previous” and “next” buttons below to go back and forth through the catalogue, or visit the Master Index for a full list of reviews so far.
(Or maybe you’re only interested in The Supremes? Click for more.)
Marv Johnson “I’m Not A Plaything” |
The Supremes “Supremes Interview” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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Nick in Pasadena said:
Your theory on the release of this single makes about as much sense as anything I could come up with. But I can’t believe this was ever considered as the next release in the Supremes’ hit streak. It’s a good song, not one of my favorites, but it doesn’t come close to having the driving, beat-heavy intensity of “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “Back in My Arms Again.” And Motown, for good or ill, was always about repeating a winning formula to death (and sometimes beyond). “Nothing But Heartaches,” however, (which you’ve indicated you’re not wild about) fills the bill completely. But that’s a future discussion!
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The Nixon Administration said:
Thanks Nick. If it helps to clarify my theories before we get there, “Nothing But Heartaches” most definitely wasn’t an assured pick as the next single – it was a last-minute substitution for “Mother Dear”.
Whether that has any bearing on this one, well, that’s the million dollar question…
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Damecia said:
I agree with Nick!
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BILLY RICHARDSON said:
THE ONLY TIME I’M HAPPY is a great song but not great enough to be a 45. Maybe a B side where it could’ve been flipped over by the djs who were good for doing that in those days as I remember too well. They did it frequently with Motown artists particularly with Mary Wells. The girls could do no wrong though.
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144man said:
My schoolfriend, Mike, was given a free copy of this when he visited Hitsville somewhere between 1968 and 1970.
My only criticism of the track is its sudden, unexpected fadeout.
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The Nixon Administration said:
How odd! Not a bad freebie by any means, though.
I don’t think they’re particularly rare given the prices on eBay (and especially taking into account the automatic “Supremes tax” which jacks up the asking price of any item related to Motown’s most popular group); but you’d never turn it down.
That’s one of the things which makes me wonder about the scale of this effort – it makes me think there might have been quite a few of these sent out to various places (or possibly just left in a store cupboard somewhere for international visitors to take home…)
It’s a splendid record in its own right, as well as a good fallback choice for Northern DJs (given it’s not massively overplayed) and an excellent stumper for trivia quiz buffs.
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Damecia said:
Wow Steve D. you’ve really outdone yourself with this review which I will have to say has been my favorite I’ve enjoyed reading. As I read I think to myself, “wow this guy’s brain is all over the place” but this is of course a good thing because this is the Supremes and it’s sooo many things that are not the obvious that is never stated about them which IMO makes the most popular girl group of the 1960s and arguably of all time extremely underrated.
I loved how you explained us 80s babies way of conceiving music and an album. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I also adore the fact you shoutout More Hits because it really is one of the best albums ever! It’s an album where you can’t skip around because (1) it doesn’t feel right, but (2) there’s no need because it’s so AWESOME! lol.
Finally, I loved how you analyzed and compared this record to “When The Lovelight Starts Shining in His Eyes.” It is true this is running the same vein, but with a little less punch and adrenaline. Instead, this song contains the excitement, happiness and coolness of a group that has finally found success. No longer are they starving for success that you can hear it in each not and syllable. What we have here is a polished group.
Now onto my critique of “The Only Time I’m Happy.” This is a well done sweet song that has an edge. The reason why I use the word edge is because of the intro. Listen to how Miss Ross says her spoken bit. There is no seduction or sweetness about it. She almost says it in a Shangri-Las type manner. I love it! The girls seem to sing in a never ending manner with perfection and smiles on their face. H-D-H trademark is present also within the lyrics and instrumentation. Great song, that deserves its 8/10, but last off the album single material in my opinion. When all the hard-hitting, beautiful romantic and dance/party songs have been released this is the single to release next.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Thanks Damecia. I knew you’d be happy seeing another Supremes post!
For me, Mother Dear and Honey Boy (whether you like it or not – and I do, but again, I’ll talk about this another time), seem like the most obvious “next single” candidates.
I won’t tell you what my favourite song from the album is just yet.
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Damecia said:
= )
IMO the next single should have been “(I’m So Glad) Heartaches Don’t Last Always”
I’m dying to here what you’re favorite song off the album is! lol
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Robb Klein said:
Mary Wells’ “Honey Boy” should have been the pushed and hit version. “The Only Time I’m Happy” is good enough to be a “B” side. I’d give it a “5”.
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Mark V said:
There’s almost too much to respond to here. First the theory of the album at this point. (Good points abound.) I can remember going into a suburban record shop when “More Hits” first came out and remarking “Oh good, all the songs are Holland-Dozier-Holland.” My friend turned and said something like “Why’d you say that?” or “What’s the big deal?” The big deal was that I was holding a real Motown album in my hands, with a focus all its own (to sell many, many discs–albums or singles), with an esthetic all its own (courtesy H-D-H), with a sound all its own. (This really exemplified the trebley insistence that held one’s ear when hearing a Motown record.) I think a precursor to this as an album (Motown, that is) was “The Temptations Sing Smokey,” again for the same distinguishing reasons.
As time went on, and groups started releasing albums as “statements,” the Supremes with Diana Ross could claim two more (“Sing Holland, Dozier, Holland” and “Love Child”) as pop soul examples, and of course their specialty albums (“Sing Rodgers and Hart”), which don’t really stand the test of time. That is, if those two albums were even consciously released as anything other than collections of available singles and also-rans.
I agree that the inclusion of “The Only Time I’m Happy” in the CMS series made me appreciate the song as something more than part of an album. But when my buddy and I put the record on, that tune probably had the least impact on me (other than “Honey Boy,” which I thought ranked lower by a good bit than the other cuts).
On the other hand, “Mother Dear” just jumped off the turntable, from the off-kilter drum introduction to the thrilling vocal interplay…
But, as you’ve said, that’s a story for another day.
“The Only Time I’m Happy” would get a 6 or 7 rating from me if I honestly compared it to the Supremes singles that came before or after.
Nice essay.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Right back at you – thanks for a great comment!
The “X sings Y” albums (and their related brethren, “Tribute to X”) I see as being part of that Ella/Songbook tradition I mentioned, one of the first ways to market a non-jazz LP as something more than a haphazard Collection of Stuff.
Disagree on Honey Boy, but we’ll get into that the next time we meet the Supremes.
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benjaminblue said:
Supremes ‘A Go-Go was a statement album, too! It’s concept — which worked, incidentally — was to say to the world, “Okay, great; you love The Supremes, and you’re buying massive quantities of their releases. Now, let them re-introduce a few of our other Motown acts. Once you hear The Supremes’ interpretations of songs by those groups, you’ll be seduced and and you’ll rush out to buy more Motown product, to compare the originals to The Supremes’ versions.”
It was a marketing ploy that succeeded perhaps beyond even Motown’s expectations! And it was a reversal of the trick used two years earlier, with A Bit Of Liverpool. Back in 1964, The Supremes had just two hits under their belt, and teens with little cash were hesitant, at first, about buying their album. But when the group covered known commodities — hits by The Beatles, The Animals, The Dave Clark Five and so on — we felt a bit more confident that A Bit Of Liverpool would be satisfying, so we Supremes fans bought it whether or not we were willing to plunk down $3.98 for the Where Did Our Love Go album right away. Similarly, those who were devoted followers of the British groups were tempted to buy a Supremes’ album out of curiosity when they saw, for instance, that A Bit Of Liverpool included a version of The House Of The Rising Sun!
Supremes ‘A Go-Go, which compiled recent and older Motown classics, gave the ever-expanding Supremes’ fan base a chance to really listen to some of the “also-ran” groups’ output which had washed over us and wafted around us as we half-listened to the radio until our favorite records were played. Perhaps for the first time, these other songs piqued our interest, and we considered expanding our horizons a bit, exploring the full experience of the Motown Sound.
You see, in late August, 1966, many of us were still relatively unfamiliar with The Temptations — not to mention The Isley Brothers or The Elgins — and while Martha & The Vandellas and The Four Tops had received somewhat heavy airplay over several years, we’d purchased, at most, a single or two by them, but certainly we’d not bought their albums in any great numbers. There were so many fascinating records coming out, week after week, that it wasn’t necessary to obtain the latest 45s; invariably, our momentary obsession with one record would be forgotten as soon as another, even stronger hit emerged.
Of course, other Supremes’ albums, specifically select tracks from I Hear A Symphony, Sing Country, Western & Pop, We Remember Sam Cooke and Sing Rodgers & Hart, helped us appreciate or at least get acquainted for the first time with various types of music well beyond our limited exposure, reach and imagination, and some of us began to venture, tentatively, into the Great American Songbook, with its Broadway/Hollywood standards and its gospel and country roots, as our tastes evolved and matured.
I agree, though, that some of The Supremes’ later statement (and non-statement) albums have held up less well. The Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland album, in particular, came across as a hodge-podge even at the time it was issued, although it contained a few great individual cuts, such as Going Down For The Third Time, that remain vital. As well, the Reflections album is remembered mostly for its first side, and the other late ’60s albums have only occasional songs that stick in one’s mind.
Happily, though, there are the three classic albums — Meet The Supremes (except for Buttered Popcorn and He’s Seventeen); Where Did Our Love Go (although Always In My Heart should have replaced the relatively weak Standing At The Crossroads…); and More Hits (which is near-perfect from beginning to end) — and those represent The Supremes realized at their very best, along with Supremes ‘A Go-Go (despite its several clinkers, These Boots Are Made For Walking, Hang On Sloopy and Put Yourself In My Place). These albums are the absolute essentials, some 50 years on.
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ExGuyParis said:
RELATIVELY WEAK “Standing at the Crossroads”?!?!? WHAT?!?!?
😉
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benjaminblue said:
Standing At The Crossroads (which our host assigned a rating of 6) is relatively weak next to Always In My Heart (which our host assigned a rating of 8).
You can read our host’s in-depth analysis of each, but here I’ll present one generalized conclusion he reached: Standing At The Crossroads finds Diana singing in a higher range, while Always In My Heart presents her in a more comfortable range. On Always In My Heart, Diana comes across as a more mature, polished performer.
Too, at the time the Where Did Our Love Go album was released and in the stores, Always In My Heart, the flip side of a #1 record, was relatively more familiar to potential buyers than was the flip side of a #23 record a year earlier. Thus, in context of sales, it was a stronger draw at that moment.
Also, Always In My Heart had an edge because its production and arrangement were far more consistent with — and contemporary with — Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love and Come See About Me, the three principal drivers of the album’s sales.
I do like Standing At The Crossroads, but because it was recorded at an earlier time than many of the other album tracks (and sounded a tad out-of-place because of that), it might have fit better on the re-issued in 1965 Meet The Supremes album, while Always In My Heart, organically, fit better with the Where Did Our Love Go assemblage.
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ExGuyParis said:
“Standing At The Crossroads (which our host assigned a rating of 6) is relatively weak next to Always In My Heart (which our host assigned a rating of 8).”
That’s an opinion, not a fact! I have always felt that Always in My Heart is overblown, melodramatic, pompous, pretty silly, and a fairly awful song… and I’d place Standing at the Crossroads pretty high on my list of favorites.
The thing I love about this place (and I’ve read every review, and a large majority of the comments) is that divergent opinions are encouraged. There are not many places like that on the Internet. It feels good to be able to have an opinion and not get bashed for it.
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Damecia said:
I agree with you completely ExGuyParis I place “Standing at the Crossroads” among my favorites.
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Dave L said:
Well, after that 🙂 I couldn’t be prouder to tell you all More Hits By The Supremes was the first album I ever, ever owned, way back as a lad of 11. And, of course, I’ve never been without a copy in the 48 years since.
There was a family with a last name of Roy, that lived two house away from me, and I was buddies with the son and a little crush on his older sister, and they had a Sears portable machine we used on their enclosed front porch playing More Hits over and over and over again till it was time to go back to school.
Even if “Nothing But Heartaches” ends up graded with a less-than green number, there really wasn’t and isn’t a bad cut from that album. I can listen to the whole thing, isolated cuts whether singles or not, and love them in any presentation. This is the summer of my life I’d most love to live over. And here comes “Tracks,” “Since I Lost My Baby,” “First I Look At The Purse,” “Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead,” “You’ve Been In Love Too Long,” “I’ll Always Love You” and “It’s The Same Old Song.” Golden age indeed.
Needless to say, I’m delighted to finally read some scholarly insight toward this album so key in my memories of youth. Thank you, Nixon. 🙂
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The Nixon Administration said:
Thanks Dave, it’s good to hear from you again.
There’s more to come from me on More Hits yet, but that was just something I needed to get off my chest, and it lays the groundwork for what I’ll be saying over the next few Supremes reviews.
My main fear for this glorious Golden (Age) Summer of Motown is that you’ll all get bored reading my gushing praise and seeing big green numbers week after week. But wow, there are some amazing records just around the corner.
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Dave L said:
And it wasn’t all Motown, either. In my Philadelphia neighborhood, that summer, you also wanted to have “Yes I’m Ready” by Barbara Mason, “Storm Warning” by the Volcanos, and “I Do” by The Marvelows. Then, if there were spare bucks left you gathered whatever you could of The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Four Seasons.
I wonder how the candy stores stayed in business, because who had any money left?
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Damecia said:
How cool is it to say More Hits By The Supremes is the first album you ever owned!?! = )
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The Nixon Administration said:
Mine was “Pelican West” by Haircut One Hundred.
Don’t even Google it.
I was four.
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Damecia said:
LMAO!
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John Plant said:
I very rarely bought 45s in those days – I first heard the songs on a jukebox (3 for 25 cents) or, more rarely, on the car radio… and then waited EAGERLY for the album. That’s why More HIts for the Supremes and Leontyne Price’s recording of Puccini’s Tosca are inextricably intermingled for me – they came into my lives at the same time…The first glimpse of a newly released Motown album in the Ben Franklin five and dime store in Middlebury, Vermont was like a promise of paradise – sometimes kept (as in this case, and in the case of EVERY SINGLE TEMPTATIONS ALBUM) and sometimes, perhaps, not. That the treasures were scattered more randomly than on, say, an early Dylan album only added to the charm…and to the sense of betrayal when the Supremes ended up covering Nancy Sinatra on The Supremes a GoGo!
Terrific post, once again, Steve, this is a multigenerational feast.
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The Nixon Administration said:
It sounds clichéd to say it, but Motown created so much great music during the Detroit years – much of it badly served and badly preserved first by the relentless focus on black soul acts’ singles rather than albums in the 70s and 80s, and then by the album-centric reissue distribution model of the 90s – that the singles really are just the tip of the iceberg. Thankfully we’re closer than ever to reaching a point when the entire Motown oeuvre will be available for download one click away.
“Multigenerational feast”! I like that.
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ExGuyParis said:
What a superbly marvelous review! The word “review” doesn’t do it justice. Opinion piece? Essay? Album deconstruction and appreciation? Whatever; I love it.
I also love this song. “…done by a group with the confidence borne of five number one hits under their belt” hits the nail on the head. I appreciate the volume and participation of Flo & Mary. It’s a song that makes me incredibly happy.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Thanks EGP, it’s much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed.
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I LOVE THE SUPREMES AND TEMPTATONS said:
I love this song from the Supremes but I too can see why it wasn’t released as a single too laid back..Supreme singles come at you with a boom!…this one is more stubble
I also love how you can hear Mary so clearly
7/10
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I LOVE THE SUPREMES AND TEMPTATONS said:
Oh and More hits by the supremes is in my opinion their best album…I just discovered it last year and I have been hooked ever since
and as far as their worst album Meet the Supremes definitely…
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Damecia said:
Great album it is…definitely in my Supremes Top 5, but I would have to give #1 to Where Did Our Love Go.
Meet The Supremes maybe their worst album, but it makes an interesting album to listen to considering their age and the search ti find a sound.
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Nick in Pasadena said:
Agree! Where Did Our Love Go is the one I come back to again and again. (That was the second album I ever bought, after Introducing the Beatles). But More Hits is definitely great.
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Damecia said:
Yay! High fives Nick!
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I LOVE THE SUPREMES AND TEMPTATONS said:
Where did our love go is another great album from them…totally forgot about that one!
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Mary Plant said:
And that was MY first album purchase!
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John Plant said:
…and my first MOTOWN album (perhaps my fifth pop album, if you count Joan Baez’s first two albums as pop – following the Beatles second album and Dusty Springfield’s ‘I only want to be with you…’ Mary, I remember your very excited letter to me – I was working in Elmira, NY, – asking me if I’d heard a fabulous song which began with the words ‘Baby, baby….’
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Damecia said:
So cool!
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Robb Klein said:
This was a giveaway record. I never saw nor heard of one sold in record shops. Motown wouldn’t have allowed an outside label to sell its records in 1965. I’d give it a 7. I could never believe that “The Only Time I’m Happy” was ever planned for the A side of the next Supremes’ 45 release.
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The Nixon Administration said:
I don’t think this was “sold” in the traditional sense (though the existence of stock copies with punch holes seems to indicate it made its way into at least some cutout bins), but equally I’m not at all convinced George Alexander Inc. was an outside label, or indeed a real label at all – does anyone have any more information?
To me, this makes more sense as a single than “Nothing But Heartaches”, but equally I can understand why Motown might feel it wouldn’t work.
The only things that make me think this may, once, have been thought of as the next single are the allocation of a catalogue number and putative release date which fit perfectly into the Supremes’ current 45 schedule. Not exactly the strongest case I’ve ever built, which is why I said it’s only a theory! But I don’t really understand the alternatives either, and I do think it illustrates a certain… confusion, maybe…? within Motown as to what to do with More Hits, and where to go for that sixth chart-topper.
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Mark V said:
Confusion was reigning probably because the album didn’t contain another chart-topper. Gordy’s dictum that all singles by the Supremes were going to have to be Number One Singles (and on the pop charts) was no doubt part of his plan to support the competitive drive of his writers and producers (which worked brilliantly). (It’s also said, I think, that he proclaimed that ALL Motown singles would be Top Ten Hits.) Even H-D-H were only human, but it is fascinating to contemplate the thinking behind picking the next likely candidate.
“Honey Boy” might have indeed been in the running because its introduction was retooled into the mesmerizing lead-in notes of “I Hear a Symphony” a couple of months down the road.
Like Brenda Holloway, the Supremes were heirs to the catalogue of Motown’s first superstar in that “More Hits” contained “He Holds His Own,” “Whisper You Love Me Boy,” and “Honey Boy.”
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david h said:
like the album a lot.in my top 5. WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO, SING HDH are my two favorites. have to give props to SING ROGERS AND HART, LOVE CHILD.
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bogart4017 said:
No doubt the least talked about Supremes song except amongst super Supremes fan. I know i’ve heard it but can’t remember when or where. I probably have a copy of the song in some kind of shape, form, or fashion but i don’t know where to begin to look. I just know the title is very very familiar.
Also, i agree with everyone who says “Meet The Supremes” was by far their worse album and i would add that it is also important historically.
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David Wilson said:
Firstly I have recently discovered your website- well done, it truly is a labour of love and your exuberant enthusiasm is evident in every line. I was born in 1961 so have only hazy recollections of the 60’s with regards to pop culture although I was surrounded by music – my cousins who would babysit along with their boyfriends would bring their singles collections to play on my fathers state of the art stereogram and my dad, who was a member of a dance band, would play pop, c&w, jazz and we would listen to and record the pirate stations on his Grundig reel to reel tape recorder. How I wish those tapes had survived if only to hear my childhood self playing Disc Jockey between the tracks! I’ve always been aware of Motown and the Supremes and Four Tops in particular. Growing up in an all white rural Scotland they represented another alien world, exotic, beautiful and sophisticated ‘negresses’ (in the words of the Daily Record newspaper in 1965!) Although I would buy the odd single now and again (e.g. Sugar Sugar) I really started seriously collecting music in 1974 and studying the charts- BBC/Luxembourg/Billboard. I fell in love with the Supremes and Diana Ross in particular with all her faults. First Supremes album I bought was a Music for Pleasure release off early recordings titled ‘Baby Love’ which had been re-released and charted on its 10th anniversary. The triple ‘Anthology’ album was next as wereDiana’s solo projects and duets with Marvin. My collection expanded to include singles and albums by all motown artists, alongside contemporary artists of the day. I get frustrated when Motown’s influence on the development of popular music is downplayed by the mainly white middle-class music press/critics. The seem to view it a side bar. To completely ignore the significance of the Supremes in pop culture is criminal. 12 US No1’s bettered only by Elvis and the Beatles, breaking through the colour bar in so many ways. It is also conveniently forgotten that Diana was the top female star of the 70’s with a record 6 no1’s in US. Without them the Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child Whitney, Madonna, Janet, Beyonce, Rihanna and co would have found life much tougher and yet they rarely acknowledge Diana and the Supremes. Keep up the great work and I look forward to regular visits.
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Rhine Ruder said:
i had never heard this song until recently and hadn’t read your review until today. i am not sure what caused the failure of “nothing but heartaches”, but i have to admit i have never heard anyone champion the song. for me, it fits perfectly into the supremes next trifecta. it has the power and drive of “stop!” and “back in my arms again” and brings these three songs to the natural end of this second string of supremely fine records. i have never felt that hdh copied themselves. rather, they seemed to create mini suites. each song led to the next and then hdh were ready to take a new turn. sometimes it was a cycle of two and occasionally four (the tops “reach out”, “shadows”, “bernadette”, “7-rooms”.)
however, i have always felt hdh knew when they were writing a single and when they were writing an album cut or “b” side. “the only time i’m happy” does not make any sense as a single. their string of hits with the supremes up to this point has the women singing a new kind of pop/soul tune that played on their sexiness and modernity. even if the song was happy, it was fast, repetitive, plaintive. if it was a heartbreaker hdh used the same ingredients. diana smiled with ease through either emotion.
“the only time i’m happy” is too slow and sounds like it is from an earlier era. the long three part harmonies may have worked in their “try to please everyone stage shows” and worked for the decades old andrew sisters, but was totally out of keeping with the new swinging look of the group that was part of the ’60’s music scene. this would have been such a terrible miss that i shudder to think that it might have thrown hdh off their game. at least “nothing but heartaches” was a natural forward progression. you have to remember that in 1964-1967 the supremes were hit makers enjoyed by most kids. they fell out of fashion with their over-beaded night club persona, while music headed towards hipper and hippier tastes.
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