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Tamla T 54064 (A), June 1962
b/w I’ll Cry A Million Tears
(Written by Smokey Robinson)
VIP 25009 (B), October 1964
B-side of Who You Gonna Run To
(Reissued as a B-side)
Another oddity, this. Mickey McCullers was a local singer around Detroit who happened to be a close friend of Smokey Robinson; the great writer (and Motown vice-president) apparently pulled a few strings and got McCullers a Hitsville session, resulting in this little curio.
Smokey both writes and produces here, settling into a new role with aplomb; as well as his work for his own group, the Miracles, he’d already written and cut hits in 1962 for Mary Wells (The One Who Really Loves You) and the Supremes (Your Heart Belongs To Me). But, try as he might, he couldn’t get lightning to strike a third time with this one.
It’s not a bad song per se, though hardly breathtaking stuff; far be it for me to suggest Smokey didn’t give his friend his best material, but although you’d hardly put it in the same class as corkers like I’ll Try Something New, it’s quite a sweet, simple tune. In fact it’s reminiscent, if anything, of Freddie Gorman’s The Day Will Come from the previous year – or rather, it sounds like Smokey’s take on that song.
The lyrics, and McCullers’ reading of them, have Smokey’s fingerprints all over them, too; the same clever wordplay and tailored vocal cadences that were coming to be Robinson’s trademark. (Check out the start of the second verse – It’s the same old heart being broken / With the same cruel words being spoken – and the way McCullers pronounces “bro-ken”, with a little kick up the scale at the start of the word; you can almost see Smokey coaching him through the delivery.)
Likeable enough, it’s in the same kind of bag as Smokey’s recent midtempo calypso-tinged production work as mentioned above, but the instrumentation is denser, the Andantes’ backing vocals are mixed right to the front, noticeably louder in places than McCullers’ lead, and the whole thing sounds more about the band than the singer (most remarkably at 1:17, when the vocals get very abruptly faded down to make room for a bevy of saxophone riffs in an abortive instrumental middle eight).
The reason for McCullers finding himself sidelined on his own record is pretty straightforward; rather than being a daring aesthetic choice on Smokey’s part, the simple fact is that McCullers’ performance wasn’t good enough, and had to be compensated for with backing vocals and instruments.
It sounds harsh, but it does feel as though Smokey was trying to avoid causing embarrassment to McCullers by releasing a record that highlighted his good friend’s vocal weaknesses, and so did everything he could to cover them up. Even the great Claudette Rogers (Robinson) of the Miracles, Smokey’s wife at the time, pops up in the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 2 to pre-emptively defend McCullers’ performance. (The gist is that McCullers was a great singer in person, but couldn’t get it together in the studio – “he never came across on record the way he actually sounded”, says Claudette.) Whatever the excuse, McCullers’ voice isn’t really up to the job on this single; he’s not without technical skill as a vocalist, but he’s alternately flat and off-pitch here, and never once sounds like a lead man. Without Smokey fighting his corner, it’s tempting to wonder whether he’d have been so willingly obliged by Motown.
The single failed, but Motown clearly believed the song had legs; perhaps trusting in the judgement of their vice-president, the label reissued a remixed version of this in 1964 as a B-side to McCullers’ belated follow-up single Who You Gonna Run To more than two years later.
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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| Lamont Dozier “Fortune Teller (Tell Me)” |
Mickey McCullers “I’ll Cry A Million Tears” |
Motown Junkies 
And talking about not being able to do a good job singing in a recording session, – Mickey did a fine job on his recording of “Who You Gonna Run To”. Both songs were well-written by Smokey. Mickey McCullers could have had several more releases, and sold a lot more records. But Motown had too many artists (too many of whom were better singers and more dynamic personalities). Like so many others of their fringe artists, he got lost in the shuffle.
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Did Mickey get to sing songs by other Motown writers? i wonder what he could have done with a Stevenson/Hunter song?
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Mickey also had a couple nice Smokey-written songs in The Motown Vaults, including “Better Late Than Never”.
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Perhaps it’s just the passing of time, or perhaps it’s the different mix, but at the time of writing (almost 2 years later), having heard this over and over in its guise as the B-side to Mickey’s belated (1964) follow-up, I like it rather more now than I did back then.
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That’s because Smokey writes really good songs, and Mickey did a decent job singing this one. I assume that The Vandellas are backing him up. But The Andantes were also at Motown by early 1962 (probably late 1961.
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I think it is The Andantes on backing vocals. I hear Marlene Barrow’s very distinct voice. The Vandellas (particularly Ms. Reeves and Ms. Ashford) have very distinct very voices as well, and I don’t hear them here.
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Not bad, but listening to this, it occurs to me that Micky McCullers may have been a bit like Chicago’s Major Lance; Major was an appealing singer, but not necessarily the strongest or most dynamic singer. His producer, Curtis Mayfield was the one who really knew how to produce him best in the studio. One of Mayfield’s “tricks” was having Curtis and his group, The Impressions, singing behind Major Lance, to more or less bolster his vocal. But Curtis, like Smokey, also knew exactly how to write to Major Lance’s strengths and diminish his weak points.
Had Mickey been at Motown a bit longer, James Dean and William Weatherspoon probably would have been great for him; they had that whole thing where the Andantes and Originals would practically sing every single line behind an artist. Their style could make the weakest singer sound like major league.
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I think Mickey CAN sing. I can tell where he hits certain notes. I guess he just isn’t connecting with the songs
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In the volume of “The Complete Motown Singles” featuring this record, Claudette Robinson recalled that Mickey WAS a good singer – live. On a stage he was good, but Claudette remembered that for some reason, when he got into a studio, it was another story. He just didn’t do well when it came to singing in the recording studio, his voice didn’t convey the same strength as when he sang live.
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Unfortunately, I don’t know if comments can be deleted because I would delete the reply I made above; the point about Mickey singing in the studio had already been made in the original commentary.
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