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Miracle MIR 9 (A), October 1961
b/w Blue Cinderella
(Written by Beverley Humphrey)
The weirdest artefact in the Motown catalogue so far, this bizarre spoken-word vignette by white radio DJ Joel Sebastian – a friend and media contact of Berry Gordy Jr. – helped extend Miracle Records’ hitless streak to eight singles and counting.
Sebastian has a fine speaking voice, booming and clear, but his stentorian narration is hammy and over-dramatic, and the story he’s telling doesn’t really make a great deal of sense. On the surface, a man and a woman get together, the man points out he’s already engaged to be married to someone else, they both regret their choices; there’s a subtext which implies the woman is the man’s former partner, who’s since died, and the man is struggling to reconcile his love for her with his feelings for his new fiancĂ©e. Or maybe it’s just random nonsense, I don’t know. Sebastian, though, reads it so faux-passionately that it lands somewhere between a Sixties anti-drugs public service announcement and a really bad Shakespeare audio book.
It’s not acapella, and the backing track, all gentle guitars, hushed female choir and brushed drums, is quite pretty; pretty enough to make it sound as though there might be the kernel of a decent song buried here, certainly. There’s a third-bar chord change in particular which catches the ear in a very pleasing fashion. Unfortunately, the spoken-word narration kills it stone dead, and it’s so cheesy and bizarre I can’t really imagine anyone playing this more than once.
(Unless they had to, of course. I mean, I’ve just played it several times back to back to do this review, and I’m guessing that as a result, I’ve probably pushed myself up into something like the top 50 or so of the list of people who’ve listened to Angel In Blue the most times in all of history).
The liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 1 explain this baffling curio away as a vanity-feeding favour to Sebastian, who had ambitions to be a recording star, in return for his support playing Motown discs on his WXYZ radio show. If the ploy worked, it couldn’t save Miracle Records; this single stiffed (obviously) and after a few more commercial flops, the label was shut down for good a couple of months later. It didn’t help Sebastian either; he would have no more records released (on Motown or anywhere else) and quietly went back to his broadcasting career.
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 Joel Sebastian? Click for more.)
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| The Miracles “I Can’t Believe” |
Joel Sebastian “Blue Cinderella” |
Motown Junkies 
This record would have been bad enough musically, but it is spoiled even more (if that were possible) by the fact that the story makes no sense to me whatsoever.
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Congratulations on getting far enough into it to make that observation!
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Are Joel Sebastian and Tom Clay the same person?.His speaking voice sounds remarkably like Clay’s on the Mowest tracks
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Interesting notion, but no, they’re definitely two different people.
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The story is that Berry owed Sebastion a favour for having plugged his records. Sort of the music industry equivalent to “the vanity press”. It makes Dora Hall’s “efforts” sound almost palatable, at least by comparison.
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In Al Abrams’ book, he claims this was in no way meant as a favour to Sebastian, and rather that Motown just liked the guy and wanted to work with him. Um, okay. Allow me to say: HMMMMMMM.
Still, Abrams does highlight Sebastian as a genuine ground-floor Motown booster from the earliest days, as well as someone who – unlike Lee Alan – never brought race into the equation.
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I’ve just noticed that he namechecks Billy Joel at about 2.35. This may be a terrible single, but that’s some spooky foresight.
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hmmm I just found a copy in a junkpile — a stock copy to boot — put in on EBAY–no takers– then why does Osborne’s book list it at 50.00???
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Maybe this review has ruined the value 🙂 In all seriousness, a record’s only worth what someone’s willing to pay for it at any given time, I guess.
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Joel Sebastian was a longtime radio personality in Chicago, working at WLS, WCFL and WIND (among others). Had no idea he’d recorded any songs, much less for Motown. Willing to bet he NEVER played these during any of his Chicago radio gigs!
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I lived in Chicago then, but only listened to WGES and WVON (when the latter started in 1963. I would hear WLS (Chicago’s major pop station) once in a while on someone else’s radio, but don’t remember their DJs. But, Sebastian must have been on WIND, as I never listened to that station, and WCFL was “easy listening music” at that time.
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Not like E. Rodney Jones, eh? No! Had Sebastian played this, he’d have been fired before the last 5 and a half bars!
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I have ignored it a half-dozen times, but now that I’ve given in to temptation once, I guess I can’t stop. It’s spelled “artIfact.”
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I think there’s a British spelling of the word artifact with an “e” and since Nixon is British…
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Exactly THIS! “Artefact” is the preferred British and Dutch spelling, while “artifact” is the preferred Canadian and US spelling.
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