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Motown M 1013 (A), January 1962
b/w Don’t Leave Me
(Written by Henry Lumpkin and Carolyn Strong)
The excellently-named Henry Lumpkin had to wait over a year for a follow-up to his first Motown single, I’ve Got A Notion, released in January of 1961; in the meantime, he’d been co-opted into a short-lived new vocal trio, “Hank, Gino & Bob”, with Gino Parks and Satintone Robert Bateman, but that plan had been scrapped before their debut single Blibberin’ Blabbin’ Blues, now credited to Parks solo, saw a release. The extremely early, out-of-sequence Motown catalogue number on this single suggests it was originally planned for release much earlier than January 1962.
It’s a shame Henry’s Motown career never really got off the ground; as mentioned previously, his physique (described by Parks as “hefty” in the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 2) might have been an obstacle to solo superstardom in an increasingly image-driven business, or perhaps there just wasn’t room for another teenage R&B singer-songwriter in the Motown stable at the time for Lumpkin to receive a proper promotional push. Whatever the reason, he certainly had the raw materials for success.
The company clearly thought so, not only giving him a second solo single release, but also letting him do it with his own song. The result: a bluesy, slinky R&B number, much in the vein of the stuff later cut by Shorty Long for the Soul Records subsidiary.
Henry gives it 100%, turning in a raw-throated blues delivery over a less intense, more pop-flavoured R&B rhythm bed (and some rollicking Nawlins boogie-woogie tack piano thrown in for good measure), letting loose with a full-on howl when the music calls for it.
Lumpkin’s lyrics are good fun, too. A particular highlight comes when he starts riffing on the lyrics of Jack and Jill Went Up The Hill (no, really), and adds a sandpaper-rough postscript – She picked him up, and set him right / I said, ah, now she’s lovin’ him day and night – but the whole thing is worthy of a smile or two, especially when he changes the “woman” in the title to “lover” (“He’s like a book without a cover / He’s like a child without a mother / Now that’s a man / Oh that’s a man / Without a lover”).
Once again, the record wasn’t a success, and once again Motown weren’t deterred; there was never a Henry Lumpkin LP, but another single did see the light of day later in the year.
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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| Marvin Gaye “I’m Yours, You’re Mine” |
Henry Lumpkin “Don’t Leave Me” |
I found the comments on the Lumpkin single to be accurate and not without interest. Question: Does anyone know what became of Lumpkin and is there any other Lumpkin material in the vaults and are there plans to release it? If anyone knows, I would appreciate hearing.
Mary Magaldo
marymagaldo@basicisp.net
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I don’t know what happened to him in the mid-Sixties, but he did hook up with erstwhile Motown writer/producer Robert Bateman (of the Satintones) at some point later in the decade, who wrote him an excellent single on Buddah in 1967, Soul Is Takin’ Over b/w If I Could Make Magic; some sources say he had at least one more single on Buddah, but a lot of them list If I Could Make Magic as that second single, perhaps mistaking it for a separate release. Before I come to write about Henry Lumpkin’s final Motown hurrah (later in 1962), I’ll try and dig out some more information, unless anyone else reading this has any further trivia to add? Anyone?
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Henry Lumpkin to me is one of the most interesting Motown artist ever. He had some great songs that should have been hits (i.e I’ve got a notion, really love each other, and this). Where is he?
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REQUEST: For those of us who sadly don’t have a spare $1500 lying around to buy the actual box sets, could you describe the documentation? How many actual pages of “liner notes” are there? And how glorious is the packaging?
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The packaging is really rather nice – for each volume, the whole thing takes the form of a thick hardback book, where the front cover is a facsimile record sleeve containing a reproduction 45, and the last 4-6 pages hold the individual discs. In between, there are maybe 100-odd pages of track by track notes and photographs by Keith Hughes (himself an occasional commenter here) and Bill Dahl, plus a foreword by a guest commentator and an introductory essay. They’re well worth getting if you can find them.
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Henry Lumpkin had a regional hit on The East Coast in 1963 on Cameo-Parkway’s subsidiary, Fairmount Records (“I’m A Walkin’ For JFK” (to go along with The Civil Rights Movement), and he DID have a second Buddah release “Soul Is Taking Over” was #22, and his other 45 was #55, “Your Sweet Lovin”/”Honey Hush”. The former was a Robert Bateman/Lou Courtney collaberation, as most of Bateman’s Buddah releases, and the latter was a remake of Joe Turner’s early ’50s hit.
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I don’t think Lumpkin’s delivery is “blues” at all. He is a soul man. His voice reminds me of Otis Redding’s. If Motown had allowed him to stick around, they could have worked some Motown-style Redding records around him. A missed opportunity — but then again, he didn’t have Otis’ looks.
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