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Motown M 1047 (A), August 1963
b/w Pig Knuckles
(Written by Earl McDaniel)
Yet another in the ever-increasing throng of one-and-done Motown artists who saw a solitary single release during 1963, the Morrocco (sic) Muzik (sic) Makers were a large R&B ensemble from Dayton, Ohio who had at least two separate recording sessions at Hitsville, resulting in six finished songs, only two of which ever saw the light of day. This particular record, a spectacular misfire, was cut in August 1962 but then held in the can for a year, until its date-specific subject matter made it commercially viable again.
Commercially viable in theory, anyway. This didn’t sell, and no more was heard of the Morrocco Muzik Mak… you know what, I’m fed up of these deliberate spelling mistakes. Ahem. “No more was heard of the (“Morocco Music Makers” – Ed.) at Motown ever again.” That’s better.
This is a most unusual record, in both concept and execution. Concept first, since that’s the bit that’s easier to talk about. This is the only pop record I can think of which celebrates the end of the summer holidays and the beginning of a new school year, rather than vice versa.
The liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 3 explain this away as part of Motown’s social responsibility programme, citing Motown’s “commitment to the education program by recording ‘don’t drop out’ radio promos; this ‘positive-spin’ single was conceived along the same lines”, but I’m not as sure. While stuff like Brenda Holloway’s 1966 Play It Cool (Stay In School), or the Supremes’ 1965 Phil Spector collaboration Things Are Changing have an obvious “good cause” foundation, this record is more ambivalent – I can see how a resoundingly positive “You’ve got to go back to school, but don’t be down, there’s lots to look forward to!” message might have worked, but that’s not what Back To School Again is, not really.
Instead, the (“Music Makers” – Ed) just seem to be making a record about going back to school, without any particular message to it at all. It’s not completely positive in its attempt to get the kids excited about going back to school, instead including both good and bad things indiscriminately and without comment (the main chorus begins with an exclamation that Summer’s almost at an end! in such a celebratory way, and so completely lacking in any accompanying redeeming message, that I can imagine most kids simply switching the record off right there and then).
Seriously, if this was meant to encourage kids to feel better about going back to school – see the lyrics “A lot of new faces now, a lot of new friends”, for instance, or “You’ll have so much fun / Watching a touchdown run / Or sitting at a basketball game / Or wearing your class ring”, all admirable sentiments – then surely it would focus unremittingly on those positives, and not undo that good work by also gleefully reminding the kids: “No more playing in the park / No more staying out after dark / You got to be home by eight / Nothing but a weekend date”?
No, for me this isn’t a grand social gesture; it’s simply an attempt to cash in on a current event, and a horribly misjudged attempt at that. Motown may have been intrigued by the idea of putting out a record on a subject nobody else had touched on – but there’s a reason nobody else had touched on it, and it’s the same reason the Beatles never released a song called “Remember To Brush Your Teeth”. Teenage record buyers didn’t enjoy messages reminding them of their lack of authority and autonomy – see the Marvelettes’ similarly misjudged (but infinitely superior) My Daddy Knows Best – and this is so cack-handed it might as well have been called “You’ve Got Chores To Do, Young Lady”.
Execution now. We’ve seen the lyrical content being badly mangled, but the scansion is also horribly forced – Summer’s almost at an end / It’s back to your pencil and pen”, goes the main refrain, with a heavy caesura right in the middle of the word “pencil” for good measure. The tune is almost completely forgettable; trite and cheap-sounding stuff, the only bit that passes muster is the middle eight (the Watching a touchdown run bit), and even that’s ruined by an uneven number of syllables in the final line. It also sounds awful, bongos popping away all through the track, off-key parps of trumpet, massive amounts of hiss that make it sound as though it was recorded through a sock… It’s just not very good, all told, and – as with many Motown singles recorded during the era using outside musicians rather than the immortal and ever-improving Hitsville house band, the Funk Brothers – it only serves to throw the musical deficiencies of the external players into sharp relief.
Embarrassingly poor, this would have been beneath Motown’s standards in 1959. By 1963, there’s just no excuse for this sort of nonsense to have ever found its way in front of Quality Control at all. That it was passed for release beggars belief.
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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You make me wonder, when you declare the blog finished, what the tally of ‘1’s’ will finally be. A good argument is already formed by you that Quality Control was never filled out with unimpeachable genius.
My fists want to clench when you describe one this poor that gets to meet the world in its own time on a shiny new 45, and “Knock On My Door” remains under lock and key for over 22 years.
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My thinking is that iTunes and anthology CDs have democratised pop music in that regard; all release schedule wrongs can eventually be righted. It’s all out there to be heard, and if I can help guide people to the good stuff, so much the better.
On marking… There’ll be more 1s than 10s in total, for sure, but not too many in the mid-Sixties and early Seventies. (I already know what most of the 10s will be, and there are going to be 50 of them, with no more in 1963, spoiler fans.) ’64 is really the last year when QC was still embryonic, and the horrors and travesties tail off dramatically after that. The plan is to stop in 1988, by which time I’d expect to be giving out a modal average of 5 or 6, and a mean somewhere higher, between 6 and 7, because I’m a Motown fan and marks will tend higher than if I was discussing a random selection of records.
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There actually were other pop records with this same theme. “Back to School Again” by Timmie “Oh Yeah” Rogers on Cameo in 1959 was a very similar attempt (only slightly more listenable) to get kids to feel excited about returning to school. And no other than The Four Tops themselves recorded a “Back to School Again” in 1982.
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The Tops? I had no idea… Et tu, Levi? Is it the same song, I wonder?
Thanks for all your comments, Nick, it’s always good to read your contributions even if I can’t reply each time.
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I have to agree that tjid is not a top notch song but I enjoy it nevertheless. but only 1? Come on – at least a 3!
Being a great Vandellas fan though, I have to admit that Martha, Annette and Roz on backing vocals raises the score somewhat on this release. Both Roz and Annette remember clearly addding the bvs in the studio for this one.
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Seriously? I’ve scarcely ever been so confident in giving something the bottom mark; it just goes to show how widely tastes can vary, I guess!
For me, this is fully deserving of its place alongside the Chuck-a-Lucks, Haney & Armstrong or that “groovy swingin’ guy with the rock and roll banjo band” in Motown’s ‘worst of 1963’ pageant. I’m staggered the Vandellas got sucked into it (though of course it makes perfect sense given the recording dates, cropping up right in the middle of their summer ’62 stint as makeshift replacement Andantes), because the backing vocals here aren’t any better than the rest of the record to my ears… To preserve their aura of greatness, I’m going to pretend they didn’t carry out their company-mandated BV duties here with any great enthusiasm (nb if this is wrong and you confirm Roz and Annette loved the record and were really proud of their work, I reserve the right to stick my fingers in my ears and shout LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU)
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After last month’s sudden surge in interest in Little Stevie Wonder’s “Sunset”, this month it appears to be the turn of the Morrocco Muzik Makers – does anyone know why this page is suddenly getting loads of hits? I know it could just be the “back to school” theme, but this didn’t happen last year.
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The reason this is gettin so many hits is that the public radio show This American Life (hugely popular) featured this song on one of its recent episodes, and now every1’s searching 4 it. unfortunately i can’t find a place to listen to it 4 free. if u know of 1, please advise. also, somebody please just upload the song to youtube already.
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Thanks for the tip, Sean, I was somewhat baffled!
With regard to listening for free – have you tried Rdio? I think someone mentioned all of the Complete Motown Singles box sets are available there and you can use their free trial to listen without paying.
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I admit that this was a lousy idea, and poorly done. But, I would give it at least a 2. There has to be a way to differentiate the horrible quality of “Happy Ghoultide”, “Randy The Newspaper Boy” and ridiculous “Break-in” songs from this, lousy, burt not as horrible tripe.
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@ Nick—don’t forget Gary US Bonds doing “School is In” in 1962 i think.
The same year Dee Clark on Vee-jay records recorded “I’m Going Back to School”.
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What a contrast! Dee Clark’s contribution to the “don’t be a dropout ” campaign was a terrific R&B song with a hip message wrapped in an amusing package. “School Is In,” on the extreme other hand, was a cheap answer to his own “School Is Out” offering from several months earlier that had been a big hit. Ironically, “School Is In” had a much more likeable melody than “School Is Out,” which seemed like a rehash of Bonds’ “Quarter to Three.” The difference was in the message. Every student loved “School Is Out,” a virtual “to do” list for a summer’s worth of fun. And every student (nerds excepted) hated “School Is In” for reminding them of every reason they wanted vacation to never end; in other words, the same points that Mr. Nixon found to be objectionable in “Back To School Again.” I had never heard “Back To School Again” until I purchased the TCMS collection. As a high school student when “School Is In” was released, I had nothing but ill thoughts for Mr. Anderson for harboring any suggestion that such a record would be appreciated by any of his fans.
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This has a nice faster mid-tempo sound. Despite the ridiculous lyrics (lyrics have never mattered to me), this has a catchy tune. I’d give it a “4”.
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Any idea who the lead singer is on this one? Not that bad a vocal to my ears
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The usual vocalist for the group was Edward “Little Woo Woo” Early. [DFTMC]
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Do you mean Edward Earling? We had several acetates of songs sung by him from 1963 (same year as The Morrocco Muzik Makers’ Motown release) in The Motown vaults. We had an interesting discussion about the group on Soulful Detroit Forum in 2014. I stated back then that Earling’s voice on his solo cuts didn’t sound much like the lead on “Back To School Again”. I thought I’ve seen a list of the group’s names from an Ohioan who had known them, and Edward Earling was NOT one of them. But, I’m not positive. 144 Man, what do you know about Edward “Little Woo Woo” Early (Earling), and what was the source of that information?
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The names of the group members are given in the notes to The Complete Motown Singles, Vol.3: 1963., which includes quotations from organist Jack Hart and saxist Ronald Green.
Core members are named by Hart as being vocalist Edward “Little Woo Woo” Early, saxists Earl McDaniel, Tyrone Harris and Ronald Green, percussionist Don McWaters, guitarist Melvin Owens and drummers Ralph Hopper and Sonny Patterson.
The lineup on the Hitsville date was Edward “Woo Woo”, McDaniel, Harris, trumpeters Curtis Alexander and William Buckins, organist Booker Dotson and guitarist Harold Williams. A friend, bassist Marshall Jones (later of the Ohio Players), also helped out. According to Ronald Green, Marvin Gaye played drums and Martha & the Vandellas sang background on the session.
I notice that the Edward Earling acetate tracks “Baby Don’t Leave” and “My Love For You” were both composed by Earl McDaniels and Wm Stevenson and “This Time I’m Gonna Leave You” by Earling, McDaniels and Donald McWhorter (sic).
This does indeed make it almost certain that Edward Early and Edward Earling are the same person.
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Hart apparently also butchered McWhorter’s name, making it sound like “McWaters”. Surely, the names taken from an interview about the group, many years later, are more likely to have been misspelled than the printed songwriting credits, which were taken at the time of the group’s working for Motown, from official Motown company documents which had to match official BMI documents.
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And then, it seems very likely, that the solo cuts by Earling on the acetates probably WERE recorded while the group was under performance artist contract with the company, and therefore, those recordings should be property of Motown, and should have been released in digital format when the other 1963 recordings were. A similar situation exists with “Tears, Nobody, and a Smile” by The Serenaders, and “All I Have Left Are Memories” by Sammy Turner (and group). It’s a shame for the sake of early 1960s Motown fans.
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