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M 1000 (B), October 1959
Re-pressed April 1960
B-side of My Beloved
(Written by Berry Gordy, Charles Leverett and Sonny Sanders)
The Satintones had really upped their game for the A-side of this single, the spectacularly good My Beloved, so it’s more than a little disappointing to see them turning in a fairly pedestrian midtempo R&B number on the flip side, aping the comedy doo-wop of the Coasters with a forgettable tune and slightly ropey harmonies.
It’s not awful, but it’s not really much better than that: the vocals are slightly off in places, the interplay between Jim Ellis’ lead and Robert Bateman’s bass is nowhere near as tight and accomplished as on the plug side, the lyrics are unfunny and frequently sound forced, with little regard to scansion or timing, and the whole thing is pretty poor.
By now, we’ve reached October 1959, and the standard of Motown singles has been getting better and better for a few months; this sort of underprepared throwaway stuff might have been good enough for the fledgling company’s first tentative steps into the market, but as a 24th commercial release, it’s not really up to par.
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.
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| The Satintones “My Beloved” |
Eugene Remus “You Never Miss A Good Thing” |
i quite like it. kinda reminds me of “poison ivy”
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Well, they STOLE the piano riff & much of the melody FROM “Poison Ivy”!
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Wow this singles get a 2 and I can’t even hear it. Sucks!
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This song isn’t all that bad but there are some parts of the song where they sound kind of shaky like the end. The Satintones needed more recognition. Interested in buying there Kent album!!
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No argument on the “2” rating for the song but this is a very fascinating track rhythmically. It was released right around the time of the Cuban Revolution and mambo & chachachá had been all the rage in the 1950s. It’s hard for our modern ears to hear anything “Latin” about this track but rhythmically that’s precisely what it is. Imagine a standard salsa conga pattern against it – fits like a glove. And that 5-stroke break at 0:21 (and many other places) is “cinquillo”. Also note that prior to the influx of Cuban music, the “straight-8ths” feel was nowhere to be found in North American music – what I’m getting at is that the non-shuffle time feel that gradually took over Motown (and the rest of the world) came straight from Cuba.
But once you think of this track as rhythmically Latin, what’s truly fascinating is the way these guys are intuitively playing with the clave pattern. If it were Tito Puente, it would have to follow a strict rhythmic alternation, but these guys – whose relationship to the idea of clave is intuitive and subconscious – flip the alternation around every which way with very interesting creative results. This track would make Tito Puente thrust his timbal stick through one ear and out the other, but from an R&B perspective the rhythms work just fine. So … “2” for the whole package versus the rest of the Motown tracks, but “9” for its value in studying how 20th Century popular music evolved in the broadest sense.
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Again, listen to the Coasters’ “Poison Ivy.” That’s where they got the rhythm & much else from.
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I agree with the “2” rating. This is a worse-than-average novelty song, as it really has no interesting features. And I really dislike novelty songs in the first place.
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