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Motown M 1032 (B), July 1962
B-side of You Beat Me To The Punch
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Freddie Gorman)
Oriole CBA 1762 (B), September 1962
B-side of You Beat Me To The Punch
(Released in the UK under license through Oriole Records)
The liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles series credit this song to the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting trio. It turns out that this is almost certainly an error, and that Freddie Gorman should have been named as one of the writers rather than Edward Holland Jr.
To find Freddie still writing with Brian and Lamont so late in the day is interesting. The HDH trio was so prolific in the mid-Sixties, and responsible for so many enduring hits, that it’s almost tempting for modern historians to bestow a kind of Hollywood glow on their rise to fame – Lamont Dozier met the Holland brothers, it was fate, the three clicked immediately, and they set about writing and producing a stream of classic records.
As this B-side shows, the truth was rather more prosaic. The trio didn’t immediately start working together to the exclusion of other former partners like Gorman or Janie Bradford, and there was no immediate leap in quality. While it’s not exactly a clunker, this falls well short of the trio’s later work, as well as the songs written for the Marvelettes by Holland-Dozier-Gorman at around the same time. Certainly it’s not a patch on Mary Wells’ recent work with Smokey Robinson, her “regular” writer/producer at the time.
No, playing this back to back with the A-side, You Beat Me To The Punch, just highlights the gulf in quality and experience that existed in the summer of 1962 between Smokey Robinson and the HDH triumvirate. Where Smokey’s song is deceptively complex, well-judged and perfectly-matched with Mary’s delivery, this B-side sounds like a pale imitation, a pastiche. To make matters worse, there’s a direct lift from the A-side to emphasise the comparison (the “that moment I saw your face / I wished that we could erase” bit is sung to exactly the same tune as the “but I was looking at you so hard / That you must have had a hunch” line from the A-side), and the general feeling is that HDH were simply trying too hard to ape the Smokey-shaped sound with which Mary had found such success.
Indeed, the most lively and entertaining bit of the whole song is the one bit that doesn’t sound like a Smokey Robinson pastiche: the dramatic ending section, featuring the Love-Tones’ backing vocals (“All the pain I caused you”), which ramps up the instrumentation and at least features echoes of the clever, perfect chord changes that producer Brian Holland had started to become known for. On the whole, though, it’s not great.
(If anything, it’s most reminiscent of a mix of Peggy Lee’s version of Till There Was You, and of big Mary Wells fans the Beatles’ cover thereof.)
Mary gamely gives it her best go, but the material, shapeless and meandering, simply doesn’t give her enough opportunity to show off her vocals. It’s almost as if there’s no attempt to make the lyrics scan, or indeed to relate to the music at all; Mary is left doing an almost freeform delivery, something more rooted in the jazz vocal tradition than the R&B/pop perfection her fans were starting to lap up in their droves.
In the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 2, there’s a great quote from Smokey Robinson which illustrates the gulf between the two songs. Quoth Smokey: “I always had people in mind, and I tried to tailor the songs to what I thought they would sound and feel like… I used to even pick words that they would sing well”. The lesson for Holland and Dozier was clear; writing a decent tune wasn’t enough, it had to fit the performer. And this doesn’t, not really.
It’s not terrible or anything, and the central lyrical conceit – Mary asking an ex-boyfriend if he’d like to get back together – is quite sweet, bad scansion notwithstanding. It’s just not up to the standards set either by Mary, by the A-side, or by Holland-Dozier-Gorman themselves (let alone the later glories of the HDH team), and has to go down as a bit of a disappointment. From small acorns, and all that.
Slowed down to roughly half speed, it became a cut on Martha and the Vandellas’ debut LP, Come And Get These Memories (a Holland-Dozier produced record) in 1963, as well as featuring as a future B-side for that group. HDH weren’t finished with the song, either, dusting it off for a late-Sixties remake by the Four Tops (though their version was shelved for 35 years).
This B-side, meanwhile, went through two pressings featuring two distinct versions of the song, both included on The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 2, but I’m buggered if I can tell what the differences are.
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!)
COVERWATCH
Motown Junkies has reviewed other Motown versions of this song:
- Martha & the Vandellas (January 1964)
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 Mary Wells? Click for more.)
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| Mary Wells “You Beat Me To The Punch” |
The Creations “This Is Our Night” |
Motown Junkies 
Like “Operator” and “When I’m Gone” this is another Wells record that I had already gotten use to by another Motown artist. So while I didn’t come to the Wells version prepared to be hostile, there was already a very fine example in place that this would have to match or better.
And in this case, I think the song belongs to Martha Reeves most of all. The added thought that HDH applied to her version -especially slowing it down- allowed Martha to put a lot more aching regret into her delivery. Martha’s version was wisely used on the b-side of the fiery “Live Wire,” showing again she could deliver plenty more (and different) emotion than furiously hollering.
Still, Mary’s version is only mildly disappointing and in no way should be taken as a sign that she wasn’t a good mix with HDH. Not far ahead their “You Lost The Sweetest Boy” and “One Block From Heaven” would prove that, working with HDH, Wells could lay down stomping, dance floor-filling sides as well any of her Motown labelmates.
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Mm, I agree – I don’t think it’s a bad match between Mary Wells and HDH per se, I think it’s a bad match between “Smokey’s version of Mary Wells” and “this early version of HDH”, if that makes sense.
I feel that in trying to do something in the same vein as Smokey’s hits with Mary, HDH tried to run before they could walk. It’s not awful or anything, it’s just a bit of a mess compared with the lovely A-side. And as you say, Martha’s half-tempo version is just better, to my ears at least.
I’ve just spent about six days writing The Complete (and Correct) Story of Martha and the Vandellas, for use on the review of “Camel Walk” by Saundra Mallett & The Vandellas – the majority of information on the group’s origins and formation on the Internet seems to be hopelessly contradictory or outright garbled, so I’m hoping to set it right!
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Ironically, this review in itself originally contained an error – acting on a tip from the son of Freddie Gorman, it appears Mr Gorman should have been credited as a songwriter instead of Edward Holland Jr., and so I’ve amended the review, credits, category links etc. accordingly.
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Lover her vocal! Love the Love-Tones on this! Love the arrangement! One of Motown’s best cha-cha records! Great party record! My rating: 9/10
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I like this enough to feel it possibly could have been a hit for Mary if issued separately. It’s the kind of song that could just catch, which I guess nobody can predict.
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Ha! Ha! That’s an understatement! Mary always performed with such high quality that there were a bunch of B-sides that would have been hits on their own.
Glad to see that Freddie Gorman will get his proper credit for being a co-writer on this version, as well as Martha & Vandellas.
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“so you came up to me” really sounds like Carole King – or vice versa – actually I think it’s a later CK song that it matches. But the way she sing “you beat me to the punch” … wow … Donald Fagen must have listened to this track a thousand times.
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>”Quoth Smokey: “I always had people in mind, and I tried to tailor the songs to what I thought they would sound and feel like… I used to even pick words that they would sing well”. ”
What a great insight. Mozart was said to have done the same thing in his operas – getting to know the singers who would be involved in the first performance before writing their arias. He even wrote parts to make fun of the affectations of the ones he didn’t like.
With the rise of the singer-songwriter a few years later this song-tailoring became something of a lost art, although the Beatles went to great lengths to custom-write songs for Ringo with incredible success. He has such a limited range and yet “With A Little Help From My Friends” is perfect for him And of course Bacharach for Dione Warwick.
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where do i get the music for old love by mary wells
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where can i find the music for old love by mary wells. i like the half step progretion and the over used bridge.
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