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Tamla T 54065 (A), July 1962
b/w Someday, Someway
(Written by Mickey Stevenson, George Gordy and Marvin Gaye)
Oriole CBA 1764 (A), September 1962
b/w Someday, Someway
(Released in the UK under license through Oriole Records)
If Motown had been slow to get on the girl group bandwagon, the label certainly made up for lost time with the Marvelettes. Between November 1961, when – fresh from scoring Motown’s first-ever number one pop single with Please Mr. Postman – the group’s first LP, also entitled Please Mr Postman, made its appearance, and July 1962, when this single was released, Motown managed to release no less than three Marvelettes albums.
The first two LPs are patchy in the extreme, packed with cover versions and hastily-recorded filler (the second LP, titled either Smash Hits of 1962 or The Marveletts (sic) Sing depending on which pressing you bought, was a sloppy anthology of covers of contemporary hits recorded in two days flat), and they sold poorly. But the Marvelettes had started to revive their critical and commercial fortunes with another hit single, the enjoyable Playboy, recorded at the tail end of 1961.
It marked something of a rebirth in the young group’s fortunes; in May of 1962, as the single started to pick up pace in the charts and on the radio, Motown slated some serious studio time for the Marvelettes to cut their third album, also titled Playboy.
In half a dozen sessions throughout the month, the Marvelettes recorded with some of Motown’s A-list writing and producing talent – Mickey Stevenson, Brian Holland, Smokey Robinson, Freddie Gorman, Lamont Dozier and even label boss Berry Gordy Jr. – and came up with seven excellent brand-new songs for the new album, plus another three that were held over for the group’s fourth LP The Marvelous Marvelettes the following year.
In order to maximise the amount of recording time available to the group, in a departure from usual Motown operating procedure, the A&R department decreed that the Motown house band (the Funk Brothers) would lay down most of their instrumental tracks in separate, dedicated band sessions (usually in the early hours of the morning), ready for the Marvelettes’ vocals to be added later; this would quickly become the standard way of doing things at Hitsville, a change which led directly to the star career of Martha Reeves (of which more later).
Although the production of the finished Playboy album was credited to Stevenson and “Brian Van Holland” (a baffling affectation Holland toyed with in the early Sixties), studio records show that production duties were actually carried out individually by Holland, Stevenson, Robinson or Gordy, depending on the song. When the record was completed (the seven new songs supplemented by Playboy and two older recordings, You Should Know and (I’ve Got To) Cry Over You, tacked on at the end of the running order), Motown had its first great album.
Playboy is such a strong LP that pretty much any of the new material could have been pulled as a single. In the end, six tracks did appear on Tamla 45s – as well as the title track, the album provided three wonderful future B-sides (all of which could have worked as singles in their own right), and both sides of this, the Marvelettes’ fourth single, an unintentional double A-side and among the best Motown single releases of the year, if not of all time.
At first blush, this is a pretty strange choice for Motown’s first pick as a new single from all the great new material available. The Playboy album contains numerous lovely ballads (a couple of which, Smokey’s I Think I Can Change You and the Holland-Dozier-Gorman masterpiece Forever, ended up being used as B-sides further down the line) plus a driving midtempo R&B rocker in Mix It Up, which seems like a crushingly obvious choice, and Berry Gordy’s contribution I’m Hooked not far behind.
Compared to that little lot, Beechwood 4-5789 initially seems like the weakest song of the bunch; the tune is less ambitious than some of the other songs on the Playboy LP, the lyrics are far simpler, and the backing vocals – so often the Achilles heel of early Marvelettes tracks – are once again shrill and grating.
Yet, oddly, this is now one of my favourite Marvelettes singles. For the longest time, I could hardly even listen to it. Those bloody backing vocals kick in straight away, the girls alternating between indistinct lyrics and just making straightforward Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya noises; the tune doesn’t appear to be going anywhere special, and the chorus is strangely forced, Gladys Horton pushed into delivering a line that doesn’t quite seem to fit the tune (And my number is: Beechwood 4-5789 / You can call me up and have a date / Any old ti-ime), using some weird, lolloping semi-scansion that makes no sense at all.
But it sticks in your head (just like Playboy), and pretty soon you find yourself whistling it while buying some milk, or waiting for a train, and then perhaps you find yourself singing it under your breath, at which point you decide to just go along with it, because once a Motown record gets its hooks into you like that, resistance is pretty much futile. And this song has well and truly got its hooks into me.
It’s such a happy, youthful song. Either the opposite of Playboy, or a companion piece to it, Beechwood 4-5789 sees lead singer Gladys Horton (who turns in yet another splendid performance), exhorting a boy to pluck up the courage to give her a call sometime. (It’s fun to see the Marvelettes moving on from the postal system to the telephone exchange, underlining the increasing importance of communication to teens in modern America.) The tune which originally seemed banal becomes charming and danceable. That odd scansion seems to be working on some far-advanced level, the weird forcing-together of syllables part of the song’s memorable charms. The band are on superb form throughout, the guitar work worthy of particular notice (there’s a great instrumental break at 1:13 where the playing is almost in a flamenco style). The whole thing just works, and it’s fun, and young, and summery, and I love it.
(Trivia! What was the first Motown single co-written by Marvin Gaye? This one, obviously. I just threw that in there for the search engines. So many people seem to find this place by typing Motown questions into Google. If you’re one of them, I hope you find the answer you were looking for.)
(Trivia, part two! The telephone number repeated in the title didn’t actually belong to any of the Marvelettes, or indeed anyone in Detroit at all, but (as Mickey Stevenson later sheepishly admitted) nobody bothered to make sure that the number didn’t actually belong to anyone elsewhere in America, supposedly resulting in a slew of calls asking to speak to the Marvelettes in towns that really had a Beechwood exchange.)
Between this song and the beautiful B-side, Someday, Someway, this is one of the Marvelettes’ best singles. The group had finally made good on the promise of their stellar début, and Motown showed the first signs of their mastery of the girl group as a medium for high-quality commercial pop music. The Marvelettes, and with them the foundations for Motown as we know it, had now truly arrived.
VERDICT
* * * * * * * * * *
7 / 10
(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 Marvelettes? Click for more.)
Henry Lumpkin “Break Down And Sing” |
The Marvelettes “Someday, Someway” |
Mickey The Twistin' Playboy said:
I think it was the popularity of this song that sealed their reputation as Motown’s “quintessential girl group” (as Rolling Stone called them).
The song did better in certain markets than it did nationally. For example, it was a Top 10 record on New York City radio playlists.
My rating: 9/10
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michael Landes said:
I have a friend who loves lots of kinds of rock and roll but has no affinity for the girl group thing. As a result the pleasures of Mr. Postman are lost on him as he can’t get past the backup vocals, which, while fine as “girl group” (they indeed sound like a bunch of school girls 🙂 ) are not satisfactory as singers in any conventional sense (my friend keeps referring to Aretha’s back up singers as a point of reference, to explain why he can’t listen to these girls!!!!!).
My point? Well, I’m OK with the girls on Postman, but the opening “La La La’s” here just hit my funny bone wrong. For me it grates in a way that spoils the single for me before it even gets started. And that’s a shame because the rest of the single is pretty wonderful. For me the likely solution is to actually edit the opening by the girls right out of the single. Not that I recommend that to anyone else.
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Mickey The Twistin' Playboy said:
No offense meant to your friend but comparing a group of 17 year girls who had been singing casually for a couple of years to grown women who are professional singers doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
The song and sound is a perfect reflection of the sound of teen girls during that time.. and Motown captured it quite well. Good dance tune too and very popular on the East Coast.
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Steve Robbins said:
Totally agree!! The phone number was also a neat idea.
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MotownFan1962 said:
If I may add, The Marvelettes did get better over the years, like all good professional singers do.
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Steve Robbins said:
By George, I think you’ve got it now, ole chap!!
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Mark said:
A friend from Detroit once said that Beechwood was a black middle class area in the city.
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Mark said:
The guitar on the bridge reminds me of Charlie Christian.
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Mark said:
The guitar on the bridge reminds me of Charlie Christian.
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MotownFan1962 said:
I really love this song! It’s one of my favorties by The Marvelettes, right up there with “You’re My Remedy”, “Someday, Someway”, “Strange I Know”, “Too Many Fish in the Sea”, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game”, “Which Way Did He Go”, etc.
Speaking of “Which Way Did He Go”, does anyone know who wrote it? My best guesses are Holland-Dozier-Holland and Mickey Stevenson & Ivy Jo Hunter.
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MICHAEL said:
BORN & RAISED I DETROIT – GREW-UP LISTENING TO LEE ALAN “ON THE HORN” EVERY NIGHT – BARRY GORDY USED BEECHWOOD 4-5789 FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO REMEMBER THE ORIGINAL MOTOWN PHONE NUMBER – OUR’S WAS PRESCOTT EXCHANGE – THIS WAS LIKE “HOLD THE PICKLE, HOLD THE LETTUCE” OR “WHERE’S THE BEEF” – BRILLIANT MARKETING BY HIM AND YOU COULDN’T GET IT OUT OF YOUR MIND – EVERYBODY SANG IT ALL DAY LONG –
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The Nixon Administration said:
Thanks Michael. A lovely idea, but sadly not true; that was never Motown’s phone number (even if it had been, it’d be a rather dubious marketing strategy – why would you even want hundreds of random people calling you every day?)
According to Mickey Stevenson, the number (BE/23 4-5789) was chosen *because* it didn’t belong to anyone in the Detroit metro area, and thus no innocent third party would be overwhelmed with a slew of irrelevant phone calls.
(As I mentioned in the review, problems arose when other US cities which both had a Beechwood exchange, and had allocated the 4-5789 number, started to get complaints about teenagers ringing up homes, restaurants etc. hoping to speak to the Marvelettes – Stevenson’s research didn’t extend far enough to make sure the number wasn’t in use nationwide!)
Wilson Pickett had an extremely similarly titled phone number song a few years later, 634-5789; I think it’s just a nice sequence of numbers that scans well.
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bogart4017 said:
@nix: Good point. The Pickett record and the Marvelettes record do share the same SLN (subscriber line number). I guess the just sing well (is that the same as “scan”)? The one problem i have with your explanation if another city has an allocated beechwood exchange wouldnt you need the area code to reach it? In other words if the beechwood exchange is is not assigned in the Detroit area you should reach a recorded message stating the number is not assigned. In order to reach a live person you would need to apply an area code which the songwriters didnt provide.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Not quite. People in Detroit wouldn’t get anywhere by trying to dial Beechwood 4-5789, which is what made Motown erroneously think they’d done their homework and were safe – but if you were a kid in faraway (I don’t know) Biloxi or Omaha or somewhere and you got the Marvelettes record, there was a chance that combination of numbers would actually put you through to a local business or residence.
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Robb Klein said:
I think “7” is too low for this fine song. I’d give it “8” or “8.5”.
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Robert said:
Fun song. I’ve always liked it.
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Riley said:
i really love the Marvelettes, they deserved to be a lot bigger than they were but they sealed their place in the history books when they were the first to have a Motown Number 1 record.
I think i prefer their later stuff like ”The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” and ”My Baby Must be a Magician” not that i dislike the early stuff, far from it, but their later work was more sophisticated.
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Steve Eaton said:
I agree with your appraisal of “Beechwood”.
It does work, because it is about youth and
it’s in the pace and mood of youth. It is
about the most opposite extreme to
“Strange I Know”, which with “Someday, Someway” could be their very best among
several contending tunes. I have two vinyl
“Playboy” albums, one still sealed, which I
consider precious.
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