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Motown M 1027 (A), May 1962 (2 pressings)
b/w (He’s) Seventeen
(Written by Smokey Robinson)
It’s a widely known bit of Motown trivia that the Supremes, later the label’s most successful act of all time by almost any measure you care to apply, spent the first three years of their time at the label toiling in relative obscurity, becoming known disparagingly within the halls of Hitsville USA as “the no-hit Supremes”.
It’s rather less well-known that that snide moniker was factually inaccurate – with this record, the “no-hit” Supremes did actually score a Billboard Hot 100 chart hit way back in the summer of 1962, albeit a very minor one, hitting the giddy heights of number 95 pop. It was the start of a run of Supremes mini-hits in the lower reaches of the Top 100 (or in one case, the, er, Top 126) which predated their move to the big time and kept the label on-side.
Your Heart Belongs To Me was the first Supremes cut to be written and produced by Smokey Robinson, the girls’ erstwhile neighbour on the grim high-rise Brewster-Douglass council estate the group still called home, and it bears all the hallmarks of the calypso-tinged, midtempo hits he’d already crafted that year, both for Mary Wells (The One Who Really Loves You) and for his own group the Miracles (the glorious I’ll Try Something New). Settling into his new role as a top producer and songwriter, having stepped out from under the wing of label boss Berry Gordy Jr. and now a proven hitmaker entrusted with his own projects, Smokey now went in to bat for his friends, the first time he’d been tasked with writing for a female group.
Motown’s trust in Smokey’s golden touch wasn’t completely there yet, of course. Having taken nearly five months since it was recorded to find a place on the release schedules – and in the process seeing the group transferred from the Tamla label to the Motown imprint, which would remain the Supremes’ home for the next 15 years – this record was then immediately withdrawn so that a different mix could be pressed up instead (the sort of cock-up which was becoming increasingly rare as Motown grew in stature and the organisation got more professional). With hits from Mary Wells and the Marvelettes to sell, the label didn’t exactly push the boat out to back the record, either, meaning the promotional plugging was so ineffective that the record took several months before finally, briefly troubling the charts. Nonetheless, the decision to let Smokey have a crack at Motown’s other girl group paid dividends, both small commercial ones and bigger artistic ones.
The commercial rewards we’ve already talked about, but there were artistic rewards too, because if we consider the group’s breathless, unique, but generally scathingly-regarded début single I Want A Guy as an anomaly, a discographical quirk that doesn’t fit neatly into the story of the Supremes’ development into the greatest girl group of all time, then this is pretty much the only good Supremes record to come out between that tentative, nervous first step and the HDH era, starting with When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes towards the end of 1963.
It’s not as good as the wide-eyed wonder of I Want A Guy, for my money, let alone the candy-coloured starlight of the Supremes’ peerless run of mid-Sixties hits under the guidance of the Holland-Dozier-Holland holy trinity – but it’s still pretty, and not in the least bit objectionable. Nicely timed, too – hot on the heels of the previous Motown release, Marvin Gaye’s Soldier’s Plea, the young Diana Ross delivers up a tender, heartfelt plea to a soldier boy, as she both tries to raise her army boyfriend’s spirits and subtly begs him to be faithful while he’s deployed overseas (“serving your country / On some faraway sand / If you should get lonely / Remember that your heart belongs to me”), and turning in her best vocal performance to date in the process.
Diana is actually really good here, capturing something of the wounded vulnerability of early B-side Never Again but now matching it with a much-improved delivery, technically leaps and bounds ahead of her wobbly crack at Who’s Lovin’ You. She’s still young and unschooled, but it’s a fine performance nonetheless.
The rest of the Supremes are on good form, too – Flo and Mary provide sparing but rich backing, buttressed by fourth Supreme Barbara Martin, in her last appearance on a Supremes single (though she wasn’t invited to appear on the record’s B&W picture sleeve (left), having already left the group by the time the single was actually released, and being heavily pregnant to boot).
The band, meanwhile, were getting used to working with Smokey the producer and accommodating his current calypso phase, and they’re accordingly proficient here; it’s a slow, engaging, bongo-driven performance, very similar to the aforementioned The One Who Really Loves You and I’ll Try Something New but no worse for it.
The whole package just ties together very neatly. Smokey knew exactly what he was doing, and Diana is the perfect choice for the lead here; another big-voiced Florence Ballard lead wouldn’t have fit the song, and might have added saucy implications to the narrator’s sending photos to an overseas serviceman boyfriend, whereas with Diana singing one gets the feeling she’s talking about sending him a class portrait or something. But she sells it, again, and it’s beguiling. “If a pretty girl should pass you by / I won’t mind if you give her the eye / Or even if you give her a smile sometimes / But keep your heart / Because your heart is mine / Your heart is mine”, she trills in the middle eight, heartbreakingly, and you can’t see her boy putting up much of an argument. When she delivers the final plea – “Lover of mine / If I could tell you how I yearn / For the day to come / When you will return” – you’re fervently hoping he returns unscathed so they can get back together.
Hopes were high that the group had reached a turning point, and to that end their early material was even anthologised on an album, Meet The Supremes, left, for which Your Heart Belongs To Me was requisitioned as the opening track; however, nobody seemed to want to meet the girls after all. The LP failed to chart, gathering dust on record store shelves until the group rocketed straight from obscurity to superstardom in 1964, at which point it started flying off those same shelves as audiences awaited their second album Where Did Our Love Go? that August.
Indifferent though audiences may have been, this song is good stuff, nonetheless; good enough that Smokey dusted it off for the Velvelettes to take a splendid second crack at it three years later. (Their version wasn’t released until 2004.)
Sadly, though, this single would be the last really good record the Supremes released for nearly a year and a half, as the group embarked on a dismal run of dispiritingly poorly-received singles, none of which climbed higher than the pop Top 70. Left to clench their fists and watch with pretended good grace as a host of labelmates overtook them, the group – and Diana Ross in particular – must have seriously doubted whether they’d ever crack the mythical Big Time. Hindsight is everything.
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 The Supremes? Click for more.)
Marvin Gaye “Taking My Time” |
The Supremes “(He’s) Seventeen” |
Dave L said:
You surprised me when you found such kind words for “I Want A Guy,” which I’ve never hated, but was not very moved by. Still, it was their ‘hello world’ record, and it’s endearing the way you receive them in your first review. “Buttered Popcorn” sounded like a lot of energy expended for nonsense that doesn’t deserve it, and it still does.
However, “Your Heart Belongs To Me,” sounded genuinely pretty and sincere from first listen, and has lost none of its charm. It’s a long shot, but one could imagine Ross choosing to perform this one day in a farewell concert and still make it heartfelt.
Nevertheless, you have to wonder if Motown really thought this had a commercial shot so soon after the Shirelles’ enduring masterpiece. Unless I’m forgetting one, it took two years before any other ‘girl talking to her serviceman boyfriend’ record even made the Top Ten: Diane Renay’s “Navy Blue.”
When you consider how greatly Smokey contributed to establishing the identity of Mary Wells, Brenda Holloway, Wanda Young Rogers and even Kim Weston ( on “Looking For The Right Guy”) and Martha Reeves (on “No More Tearstained Makeup”), it’s forever a quandary that his efforts with Motown’s foremost female songstress never came near a shot at the Top Ten.
I love your blog, and am checking it every day. Keep up the splendid work.
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Robb Klein said:
Smokey wrote plethora of good quality songs between 1961 and 1963. But they didn’t get spread around to all the various artists. Writers often write with specific artists in mind (especially the music-as it relates to the individual singer’s or group lead singer’s own sound (voice, tone, range, and abilities to carry notes). He clicked with Mary, and wrote a lot of songs with her in mind. He was her main producer (HDH also worked with her). Brenda inherited several songs that were written for Mary (especially after Mary left Motown). Smokey wrote precious little that Martha and The Vandellas, Kim Weston and The Supremes made into hits. HDH clicked with The Vandellas. Mary got Smokey’s best songs because he worked well with her. The Supremes didn’t click with a producer until they were teamed with HDH.
That’s just the way things happened. To me, The Supremes had a particular sound that was “light” on Soul, and more poppish (ESPECIALLY with Diane on lead). Smokey, concentrating on the more soulful style of Mary, didn’t put his full attention into trying to take advantage of The Supremes’ sound, so he gave them fairly good material, but nothing extraordinary, that could give them their break-out. HDH DID give The Supremes their full attention, and found the formula.
HDH did the same with Martha & Vandellas. Fuqua and Bristol worked well with The Spinners and Monitors. Clarence Paul worked well with Little Stevie and with The Temptations (who could also sing Bluesy). Stevenson and Hunter also did well with The Spinners, as well as Kim Weston. It’s just the way things work out. Even the nicest people find a groove working with some people that is more productive than with others. Some of it is personality, some is just luck or fate (right place at right time).
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Landini said:
I always liked Smokeys work with the 70s Supremes with the Floy Joy album. Any fans of that out there?
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The Nixon Administration said:
I think it has to be ranked among the best Supremes LPs, but we won’t be discussing it here for a very long time yet. Have patience, we’ll get there!
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Byron said:
I disagree with you when you stated that your ” Your heart belongs to me ” was the last good song for the Supremes for more than a year. I agree that the song was very good and I enjoyed it, but there were also good songs the Supremes sang before their big hit ” Where did our love go ” made them stars. Like … ” Breath Taking Guy”, Run, Run, Run” with that driving beat and one of my favorites ” When the lovelight shines” . Though they were poorly received by billboard’s pop chart , on little known R&B charts and Radio stations they received good airplay and were well received.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Breath Taking Guy is okay, but the other two titles you mention are very good – they both came out more than a year and a half after this. That was my point! “Lovelight” was the record I had in mind when I chose that time frame.
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Rick Bueche said:
I think Your Heart Belongs To Me was the first effort by the Supremes at something serious and a bit more mature. Smokey lowered Diana’s key a bit and added that calypso sound that was working so well for Mary Wells. Diana’s vocal is less shrill and more sublime. The single mix perhaps ruined the desired effect when Smokey kept repeating the percussive intro at rather odd times that was not in the original mix. It sounded like bad editing. Flo is clear in the background and as usual adds spark to the delivery. Clearly the song is intended for the military man who left his love to defend her right to freedom and this might have made a bigger impact if released a few years later when the Vietnam war started raging.
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Damecia said:
Rome wasn’t built in a day! Smokey’s involvement gave the girls a cleaner sound than previously before. You’re absolutely right about Miss Ross singing the lead and her singing implying that of a class photo lol. I think about it every time I hear the tune. Up until this point this was the best Supremes song. It seems that there material was not as strong or good as The Marvellettes. HDH were really their musical angels. I think Miss Ross does a great job interpreting the lyrics and her voice matured a bit from Who’s Lovin’ You. I also want to shout-out the girl Flo, Mary and the fourth Supreme Barbara. They did a great job on the back. The instrumentation is nice as well. Too bad it wasn’t a hit. But if it were things could have turned out differently and the girls could have been a whole different group. Btw I loved how you ended this review with haunting “hindsight is everything.” I imagine those were nerve wrecking days for the girls especially Miss Ross = )
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bogart4017 said:
Great record! Makes up for that dreck titled “I Want a Guy”.
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Kevin Moore said:
If commercial success is not weighted in the ranking, I actually find this better than I’ll Try Something New – I like the main hook better (musically anyway) and this one has a nice bridge. But both are evidence of Robinson having moved to a higher level.
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Robb Klein said:
This is a pleasant song (melodywise), but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as “I’ll Try Something New”. & is a proper score for me as well.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Nope, commercial success makes no difference to the rankings at all 🙂
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Slade Barker said:
This is NOT “calypso,” and as far as I know, Smokey Robinson NEVER wrote a calypso song. This simply isn’t a rhythm EVER heard in the music of Trinidad & Tobago, or even the mock-calypso records inspired by that music. PLEASE STOP SAYING that Smokey wrote calypso song! (The lyrics are nothing like what has ever been heard in calypso either.)
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