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Tamla T 54052 (A), December 1961
b/w They Call Me Cupid
(Written by Berry Gordy and Loucye Gordy Wakefield)
Motown’s third year of existence had been its best so far, commercially and artistically, but 1961 was still a very patchy time for the company; they’d endured a lengthy drought of sub-par records in the spring and early summer, and they closed out the year by releasing a series of Twist knock-offs and apparently clearing out a load of stuff which had presumably just been gathering dust in the Hitsville cupboards.
How else to explain the re-appearance of Mickey Woods, the man who’d been signed to spearhead Motown’s white teen pop breakthrough only to cut two alarmingly bad sides, the suicidally-doleful dirge Poor Sam Jones and its borderline-racist “comedy country” catastrophe of a B-side, They Rode Through The Valley? Though clearly Motown weren’t exactly throwing their whole weight behind Woods’ career: at least one print run of this single’s label mistakenly calls him “Mickey Wood” instead, which must have been faintly galling.
Quite unbelievably, this is a third Motown record inspired by Larry Verne’s 1960 historical-comedy hit Mr Custer, following Woods’ aforementioned They Rode Through The Valley and Popcorn Wylie’s Custer’s Last Man. You’d think that that particular lode had been mined out by this point, but no, apparently someone at Motown still believed there was mileage to be had banging the same drum.
The result is an ephemeral bit of white MOR fluff, with all the fizz of a nice mug of warm cocoa.
In a nutshell, it’s a parody of Mr Custer (nearly two years late, someone’s finger clearly right on the pulse of the zeitgeist of the time) inlaid with some contemporary political references. Instead of pleading with General Custer not to send him into battle, Woods’ narrator pleads with President Kennedy not to draft him until his girlfriend marries him; he’s convinced she’ll run off and shack up with someone else if he’s sent off to war.
(As opposed to her running off and shacking up with someone else because she’s engaged to such a total and utter drip, presumably. Once again, I don’t know what he’s worried about, as one gets the strong feeling the army would be better off without him in it – five minutes with this whiny milquetoast and they’d march him right back out of the recruiting office with a curt “thanks but no thanks”. Private Woods, dis-MISSED.)
Just as on Poor Sam Jones, Woods again delivers a weak, wet vocal pitched squarely so as not to frighten off white radio; unlike his previous effort, he’s not totally devoid of charisma here (at 1:26 there’s a throaty “Ohhhhhhh” which threatens to briefly enliven proceedings, albeit largely cancelled out by the unintentionally-funny squeaky falsetto “Oh no!” at 1:30), but on the whole it’s done with so little conviction or verve that the listener will likely remain completely unmoved by Woods’ pleadings, and completely indifferent to whether he gets sent off to war or not. Once again, it’s impossible to work out what kind of success its writer and producer Berry Gordy felt this record was going to have.
Unsurprisingly, the public weren’t queueing up round the block to grab copies of an(other) uninspiring parody of a two-year-old hit about General Custer, and the record failed to chart. It was the end of the Motown road for Mickey Woods, one of the more bemusing signings in the company’s history, but Berry Gordy never quite gave up the dream of having a successful white radio MOR singer on the books; the closest they’d come would be the turn-of-the-decade commercial peak of R. Dean Taylor on the Rare Earth label, but that was almost ten years away.
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 Twistin’ Kings “White House Twist” |
Mickey Woods “They Call Me Cupid” |
Motown Junkies 
Think you are being unduly harsh. I love this, always have, and especially for the instrumental arrangement. I have no problem either, with Mickey Woods’ vocal performance on this – for me it’s the best of the bunch, head and shoulders over the everything else recorded on him. No doubt at all!
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I like “Cupid” a LOT better than this, probably more due to the songwriting and high quality of the instrumental, rather than any difference in the quality of Mickey’s singing (which was fine on both). But, then I usually dislike novelty songs, unless they have a great singing effort, beautiful melody and high-quality instrumental. Most novelty songs rarely have more than one of those elements (if that).
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I think this song is real good in comparison with the previous stuff Mickey Woods put out. Need more info on him
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Just found this absolutely outstanding essay by Mark Clague on Motown, politics and the anti-Vietnam movement (and which namechecks this record!) – well worth a read:
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0049.406
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There’s an almost straight cover of this in the (apparently excellent) film Inside Llewyn Davis, which has sparked quite a controversy – suggesting that Motown themselves weren’t only inspired by Larry Verne but also by another comedy duo who’d already adapted the song from “Custer” to “Kennedy”:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/inside-llewyn-davis-general-custer-661912
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Having now seen the scene in question, it’s only the chorus of the fictional “Please Mr Kennedy” that is lifted from the record – the verses are original.
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Whoever you think you are, your totally unfair and bitter review shows your ignorance by saying that a run of records went through with the wrong name (Mickey Wood) instead of Mickey Woods. Actually, it was correct. MY name IS spelled without the “s”.
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Hello! Well, it’s good to clear these things up. So what prompted the change to “Woods”? Did people keep adding the extra S (like Mary Hopkin or the Book of Revelation) and Motown just decided to go with it, or was Woods always a mistake and it should have been Wood all along?
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The latter. I have original vinyl with both names.
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I had always wondered about that mis-spelling. I had found the record with both names. But, why did it appear incorrectly on BOTH singles?
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I’m glad that you have found this website, Mr. Woods. And I hope that you will let us know how you got connected with Motown, and as much of the story behind your recording career with them as you are willing to tell us. We want to learn as much as we can about how things happened back when Motown was starting out. I must mention that I love your song “Cupid”, and I bought it when it was out, and have listened to it hundreds of times over the more than 50 years I’ve had it. I never grow tired of it.
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I fronted a group while at Redford High School, and we auditioned at Motown in the spring of 1959. Mr. Gordy said he would take the whole group or me as a solo act, and since we were all heading off to different colleges in the fall, I was signed as a single. I soon found out that the only way to be noticed at Hitsville was to be there all day, every day, as organization wasn’t the strong suit in those early days. If I was there, I had a chance to do a session. If I wasn’t there, they simply worked with other artists. By the same token, the record distribution worked much the same way. I was attending classes at Butler University in Indianapolis at the time “They Rode Through the Valley” was released, and I did personal appearances and worked with local DJ’s, who claimed people were trying to get the record, but were unable to purchase it in local stores. When “Cupid” and “Mr. Kennedy” met with the same fate, it became apparent to me that Berry was “putting his bucks where he was sure to get the bang” (behind his red-hot African-American artists). The rest of us were just, more or less, tossed into the market, and if we had some success,it was gravy. “They Call Me Cupid”, for instance, started out with great early reports from all over the country, only to fade quickly into obscurity. That discouraged me, and I simply stopped showing up at Hitsville after that. I did extensive nightclub work, and recorded for local Detroit labels in the following 13 years. Then, in 1975, I moved my wife and two sons to Alaska, where I did limited performing over the years. Though I never became a star at Motown, I was never bitter about it. I met many wonderful people there…..among them, Smokey Robinson, Popcorn Wylie, Robert Bateman and of course, Berry himself.
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Thanks so much for sharing this. Given my rather rude review (as I say every time I come across a record I don’t like, it’s still ten thousand times better than anything I could do, and plus you made a Motown record while I’m just some asshole on the Internet), it shows a lot of character to stick around and share all this information – all of which is new to us Motown fans – and I’m grateful.
I take it from your comments that you are Caucasian? For what it’s worth, that would actually make you Motown’s first white male solo artist. Something to put on your resume!
I’m still confused though on the name thing – why did Motown incorrectly bill you as “Woods” on so many records (including the Complete Motown Singles box sets)?
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Thanks. It’s always great to hear what actually happened back in the early years from the people who made it happen.
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Throughout my life it has been a common thing for aquaintances to add the “s”. As for Motown, I can’t say why they didn’t get it straight on the later issues. My contracts were signed correctly. Of course, the CD set you speak of was released without any contact with me for more than 40 years, And, as I said before, early Motown was known for its music…..not its organization.
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I’ve used your very detailed comment above as your biography under the “Artists” heading on the main menu – I hope that’s okay. Good on you for sharing your story with the world, Mr Wood, and fair play for not simply telling me where to stick my request for information.
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