Tags
Tamla T 54024 (A), April 1959
b/w I’ll Never Love Again
(Written by Charles Leverett)
The first and only single by Charles “Chico” Leverett, a vocalist and songwriter “better known” (in the sense of “not at all known, unless you are a Motown nerd like me”) as one of the Satintones, the male vocal group by now signed to Motown but yet to release a record.
Although, really, that’s just a technicality, because the backing vocals on this record by the Rayber Voices mean that Solid Sender actually features three of the four Satintones anyway – Robert Bateman, Sonny Sanders and Leverett himself – as well as Brian Holland and Raynoma Liles Gordy, “Miss Ray”, on harmonies.
Anyway. It’s not great, this; easily the weakest of the seven sides featured so far, it’s utterly forgettable mid-tempo R&B with doo-wop bass harmonies that quickly grate, and the tune sounds totally unsuited to Leverett’s gentle, musical baritone, which just ends up sounding thin and weedy against such robust backing. It’s entirely generic and wholly inoffensive, and apparently intentionally so – the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 1 quote Leverett as saying he wrote the song at the specific request of a religious relative who challenged him to write a secular song he would allow to be played in his house. (Which is just… Come on. An R&B record written specifically not to offend religious relatives? Nothing can go wrong with that idea!) The record does feature another fine Beans Bowles sax solo (see Barrett Strong’s Let’s Rock), but there’s really not a great deal else to recommend it.
Footnote: This was the first Motown single to be released without a songwriting credit for Berry Gordy. The liner notes note that Gordy “led the session” at the recording, but decline to name a producer.
Footnote 2: This is one of the singles for which the original master tapes were unavailable when compiling The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 1, and which consequently had to be dubbed from a 45rpm single. It sounds fine, if a little lacking in clarity, which is much more than can be said for the recording of the B-side I’ll Never Love Again, which sounds dismal.
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 Chico Leverett, or The Satintones? Click for more.)
 |
 |
| Barrett Strong “Do The Very Best You Can” |
Chico Leverett “I’ll Never Love Again” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
|---|
Like the blog? Listen to our radio show! |
| Motown Junkies presents the finest Motown cuts, big hits and hard to find classics. Listen to all past episodes here. |
Motown Junkies 
well…i agree that its not that great but i quite enjoy the baritone backing vocal “bom didda bom…” you know the bit i mean… and the sax solo is ok. i would given it more than a three. perhaps a five but definately no more than that! fantastic website by the way nice one!
LikeLike
Vocal backing by the Rayber Voices of Detroit!! Versus the ones in Toledo, of course. BTW, Berry needs to make a decision, will it be Raeber or Rayber?
LikeLike
“Raeber” is a typo; Rayber is correct, it’s a contraction of RAYnoma and BERry.
LikeLike
Completely agree with this verdict! I listened to this song three times and I still couldn’t remember this song. Boring and completely unoriginal is how I would describe this song.
LikeLike
This song interest me because of the singer Chico Leverette. His name is cool to me. But anyway this song is ok. Its just a little different like what is a solid sender? A mailman? Idk, but nonetheless Chico can sing and love the bass singer part I think Robert Batman. I like the story of the religious relative that’s also interesting. I give it a 4/10
LikeLike
“Solid Sender” was a term used in the 1940s and early ’50s for a girl (woman) who “turned you on” (e.g. sent you to a higher level of emotion).
LikeLiked by 1 person
The really interesting thing about this track is the breakdown (0:48 and 1:37) with stop time in the rhythm section and counterpoint between the horns and backup vocals – very cool arrangement-wise – but otherwise I agree with the assessment.
As a more general comment, this site is essentially an eBook and it’s truly one of the best books on popular music in general. Not only is the information thorough and authoritative, the writing style is funny, insightful and eminently readable (and the general level of the comments is also very strong). In most ways it’s also more user-friendly (and much more visually appealing) than a typical Kindle book, but the one enhancement I crave is a duplication of those previous/next buttons at the top of each article. The articles and the comments are well worth reading in their entirety but at other times, I want to quickly page through the songs and I have to scroll to the mid-point to get to the next button. In lieu of duplicating them, even moving them to the bottom would be an improvement. The only other critique is that it would be a bit clearer to list the composers above the B-side instead of below as it tends to look like the B-side is composed by the A-side composer.
That said, if these types of tweaks are super time-intensive, I’d rather have more new articles! Waiting for the rest of 1966 is starting to feel like waiting for The Winds of Winter.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Kevin (and thank you for the comments you’ve been leaving on these early entries, I’m always glad to have new and well-informed opinions!)
In short, yes, that would be super time-intensive; because I’m using wordpress.com rather than hosting my own install, I can’t automate that kind of task or just change the CSS globally, and so I’d have to make any changes manually, through the web browser, in old-school HTML, on every single page, one by one. Sadly I’m having enough trouble just finding the time to sit down and write and post new entries, never mind making “tweaks” that would likely take days to implement. Wish you’d been here in 2009 with that suggestion, I could have put it in the template back at the start when there were only twenty pages to fix instead of about 700!
(I agree it would have been a good feature, though, especially since you’re still quite early on in the blog and haven’t seen some of my 3,000 word rambling epics yet… (sadly I’m not joking). If it helps, you can just go into your browser’s address bar and change it to motownjunkies.co.uk/xxx (where “xxx” is the review number) and increment it by one – delete/ignore all the date numbers – and it’ll take you straight to the page in question. Or you can use the Master Index and just open the next one in a new tab and flip between them? I don’t know.)
There will be some new entries coming soon. I’ve finished doing the radio show now (my choice – I got to my 110 episodes target and was offered the chance to do another 60, but I just physically don’t have time for it any more. Still, there are plenty of recorded shows left in the can for you all to enjoy in the future!), so hopefully I’ll be back to blogging regularly again before too long. I’ve already written or sketched out about 25 more entries in varying states of completion, so, well, fingers crossed.
LikeLike
I agree with the “3” rating. This bluesy novelty tune just isn’t my cup of tea. I like the group ballad side much better.
LikeLiked by 1 person