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Motown M 1082 (B), August 1965
B-side of The Bigger Your Heart Is (The Harder You’ll Fall)
(Written by Billy Page)
Tamla Motown TMG 537 (B), October 1965
B-side of The Bigger Your Heart Is (The Harder You’ll Fall)
(Released in the UK under license through EMI / Tamla Motown)
Unlike the Ron Miller-penned A-side The Bigger Your Heart Is (The Harder You’ll Fall), a record which only narrowly fails to attain the necessary escape velocity to become Not Actually That Bad, this B-side is instead very obviously from the same writer as 51-year-old Tony Martin’s horrifically gloopy début single Talkin’ To Your Picture and – especially – its all-or-nothing nightmare of a flip, Our Rhapsody.
Here, the intensity of Our Rhapsody has been thankfully dialled down a bit – but only from “astonishingly pompous” to “embarrassingly puffed-up”, which isn’t really all that much of an improvement. What we’re left with is another grotesquely swollen MOR ballad, continually reaching out to pluck heartstrings it hasn’t earned the right to approach, and fronted by a man ten years past his best and whose voice is so artificial it makes me instinctively cringe. It’s not a winner, let’s put it that way.
As with the A-side, though – and, if I’m being scrupulously fair, as with Our Rhapsody too – there’s actually a pretty little tune going on here, a tiny spring bubbling away somewhere deep in the caverns of self-satisfied glurge. Unlike Our Rhapsody, the overdone production isn’t quite all-consuming enough to squash it.
I’m left with the feeling that, were you able to somehow scrape Tony off of this, along with some of the Hollywood excesses of the LA orchestra, the end result might actually come out as quite a nice little song. Of course, we can’t, and it doesn’t, but the failure’s not as ignominious as it might have been.
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!)
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Was this recorded in LA?
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Yes, it was. “Don’t Forget the Motor City” [link given in column on right] gives the recording studio when known.
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That site didn’t mention exactly which studio this was recorded at, but if judging from the sound quality (as I heard on a YouTube clip), I’m guessing it could’ve come from the “Music Center of the World” studios Martin’s old label, RCA, operated at 6363 Sunset Boulevard (the sound quality leaves a bit to be desired, especially in certain frequencies, and is very similar aurally to such other West Coast RCA recordings of the period as Sam Cooke’s “Shake,” Glenn Yarbrough’s “Baby The Rain Must Fall” – and The Rolling Stones’ 1965-66 recordings, although in their case RCA Hollywood’s particular sound quality matched the Stones’ “dirty” ethos and image of the time).
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I wonder if The Supremes ever listened to it. (Which I think would have required pressure.)
If it’s true that Mary Wells held some resentment about the profits she was bringing Motown being, what appeared to her, squandered, maybe by this point, Diana, Mary and Florence had some similar, private thoughts: “We’re going out there every night, busting our asses to earn the butter, working ourselves underweight, and this is the kind of shit he’s investing it in….?”
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A few years after Martin’s Motown run, he ended up cutting a single on Dunhill (yet another incongruous fit – the label of The Mamas & The Papas and The Grass Roots – and, later, such acts as Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night). His 45 for them was “Theme From ‘The Sand Pebbles’ ” / “This Year” (45-D-4073, 1967). His producer? Marc Gordon, by then gone from Motown (and serving as manager of, among others, The 5th Dimension who were just getting started on Johnny Rivers’ Soul City label at the time). The arranger on both sides was Ernie Freeman . . . makes one wonder who was the uncredited arranger on his Motown 45’s (the last of which will follow in this sequence).
And you think his time at Motown was bizarre? . . .
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Maybe his arranger was pianist, Johnny Allen?
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Its a shame Motown didn’t start regularly crediting the arranger on labels until 1969/70. Just the occasional string arranger eg Riley C Hampton were mentioned now and then. Many other companies gave arranger or orchestra directed by credits long before. Strange really when the arranger is equally as important to the finished product as the producer and often as important as the performers.
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In R&B music, the arranger was USUALLY one of the performers, as well. Not sure what % of Motown instrumentals that the arranger played on. I wouldn’t even be able to make a wild guess. But , I suspect that from 1959 through 1962, it was probably a high percentage, with Joe Hunter, Popcorn Wylie, Johnny Allen and others of their regular musicians , doing the arranging.
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Amazing to think these stodgy ballads were written by the same person that came up with the fabulous, exciting “The ‘In’ Crowd”.
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