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Tamla T 54082 (B), July 1963
B-side of My Daddy Knows Best
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr. with Janie Bradford)
Supposedly the Marvelettes’ first recording as a quartet following the early retirement of Wyanetta (Juanita) Cowart, Tie A String Around Your Finger comes as something of a surprise. Unlike the clunky, unrefined stomp of the disappointing A-side, My Daddy Knows Best, this B-side is a soft, breathy ballad, very similar in feel to Mary Wells’ What Love Has Joined Together, on which the Marvelettes’ Gladys Horton gets to do her very best Mary Wells impersonation.
The summer of 1963 saw the Marvelettes definitively overtaken by Martha and the Vandellas as Motown’s top girl group, and the fates of the two groups were intertwined during that changeover. Both groups’ previous singles (Locking Up My Heart for the Marvelettes and Come And Get These Memories for the Vandellas) had been written by the rising Holland-Dozier-Holland team and released at almost exactly the same time.
Now, history was repeating itself – the Vandellas saw their new HDH-penned record, Heat Wave, hit the stores just one week after the new Marvelettes record came out. As if to underline the changing fortunes of the two acts, the Marvelettes saw their newly-recorded HDH song used as a B-side, Motown opting not for HDH and the future, but for Berry Gordy and the past. The results didn’t lie. While Martha Reeves’ smash hit stormed to the top of the R&B charts and crash-landed in the Pop Top 5, the Marvelettes saw My Daddy Knows Best limp to number 67 pop, and unbelievably miss the R&B chart altogether.
All of which is a bit of a shame, because this is really a very fine song; it deserved more than to be buried under an embarrassing flop, at any rate. It’s unlike any other Marvelettes record seen before; the closest analogue would be Someday, Someway or Forever, but even those are more urgent and forceful than Tie A String Around Your Finger, which is an altogether slower and gentler affair.
(It’s also not quite as good as either of those records, but let’s not split hairs.)
When the Marvelettes were at their best, it was the Marvelettes themselves who made the difference, and that’s the case here. Unlike the A-side, a throwaway album track, they’re giving this one their absolute best. They’re also noticeably older – the studio data quoted in the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 3 indicates this was recorded only a couple of weeks previously, in June 1963, and the girls’ maturing voices are striking in their improved technical ability. The backing vocals – especially the high “Oooh”s peppered throughout the song – are quite lovely in places, and their deadpan, almost monotone harmonising comes over as charming and well-judged rather than flat. Meanwhile, Gladys Horton again sounds superb on lead, taking her cues this time from Mary Wells (who was more familiar with this sort of breathy midtempo fare).
As if to show off the girls’ newfound vocal self-confidence, the first verse – airy, almost wispy in places, verging on the ethereal – is taken almost acapella, with minimal backing from piano, vibes and bongos. The record picks up force and volume as it goes along, an electric guitar part, horns and drums all kicking in ready for the second verse, but Gladys doesn’t change her delivery in the slightest, doesn’t even break stride. It sounds great.
It’s a very pretty song, lush and all-enveloping; the central theme, “don’t forget me while you’re away”, is a pop music staple and the lyrics here don’t provide anything new or particularly memorable for that particular canon, but they do a job, and the scansion is much better than on the topside. Really, though, the lyrics are just a vehicle for a lovely voice and a pretty tune.
Not a classic tune by any means, but it’s all very nice. While it’s hardly life-changing stuff, it still might have made more sense to use this as the plug side rather than the grating My Daddy Knows Best, as it’s a much better showcase for the group and their current powers; if the Marvelettes were about to give up their crown as Motown’s top girl group, they were doing so as gracefully as possible.
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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| The Marvelettes “My Daddy Knows Best” |
Martha & the Vandellas “Heat Wave” |
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Motown Junkies 
So many times, after reading one of your great posts, I’ve dashed right over to itunes to pick up the track from the Complete Motown Singles (as I’m about to do now for Tie A String . . .)
Not long ago, in fact, I went looking for the Swinging Tigers in the Canadian Itunes store and found it on a compilation called Birth of Soul. To my absolute amazement, for my $9.99 I ended up with 206 songs – many of them the more obscure Motown tunes that you’ve been writing about (Paul Hartfield, Mable John, Columbus Mann, etc.) I thought it must be a mistake, but I went back today and it’s still available.
All the best, Nixon!
Thanks so much for your supportive comment on my last posting. If a private blog materializes, you’ll receive an email invite. All the best.
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Now we’re coming to the period where a new studio album on The Marvelettes will not happen again until March of 1967, and a great many single b-sides, beginning with “String,” get very difficult to find once the a-side they rode with had its chance to chart and hit …or not.
“Little Girl Blue,” “A Little Bit Of Sympathy, A Little Bit Of Love,” “A Need For Love,” “No Time For Tears,” “Your Cheating Ways,” “Anything You Wanna Do,” “Paper Boy,” and this song never made it to any Marvelettes vinyl album, none made in the 60s, nor any compilations after the group disbanded. To the best of my knowledge it wasn’t until “Deliver: The Singles,” the 2-disc CD package in the mid-1990s that these songs were brought around again.
As the group’s biographer Marc Taylor points out, like “Locking Up My Heart,” and “Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead,” even though “Tie A String Around Your Finger” wasn’t a big chart hit, it readily became a fan favorite thanks to the clever presentation the group gave it on stage with gloves and strings that glowed in neon light. It’s a sweet song, and on this side of the record, I’m in full agreement with your estimation 🙂
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nothing really distinctive about this b-side. I could never remember abything about it after i’ve walked away from it
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This one was always a favorite of mine. As stated above, the backing vocals were so much smoother than most of the earlier efforts and it all fell into place here. A quality tune and wonderful performance all around. Gladys was such a versatile singer.
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