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Tamla T 54086 (A), September 1963
b/w Monkey Talk
(Written by Clarence Paul and Henry (Hank) Cosby)
Stateside SS 238 (A), November 1963
b/w Monkey Talk
(Released in the UK under license through Stateside Records)
Motown had absolutely no idea what to do with Stevie Wonder. Even after “Little” Stevie had scored the label’s first pop number one single in two years (and only the second in their history) with Fingertips, seemingly they still didn’t know what they had on their hands.
It’s not entirely Motown’s fault, of course. Fingertips was such a weird number one record in the first place that even now, almost 50 years after the fact, people still argue over just why America suddenly went crazy for a live recording with a glaring mistake that meant the song came to a dead stop right in the middle, by an unknown 12-year-old blind harmonica virtuoso, a kid who’d never had a solo concert date, nor any significant press. Nobody had shown the slightest bit of interest in Stevie’s three previous singles prior to Fingertips, none of which had charted, and nobody would show any real interest in him again for another two years.
My own theory is that Fingertips is a one-shot deal; built on live energy, adrenaline, stagecraft and showmanship, you didn’t need to have been there watching the original performance in order to bask in the electric party vibe on the record, because listening to Stevie wail away on his harmonica and shout EVERYBODY SAY YEAH!!, you felt like you were there. Don’t think about it, just switch off and go wild. Great while it lasts, but impossible to successfully reproduce. As the Contours were finding out to their cost, following up a frenetic, live-sounding, alive-sounding dance hit with several calculated soundalikes – following the recipe without knowing what made it taste good – would certainly pay the bills, but it wouldn’t result in big hits, and would do nothing for your reputation.
In essence, the anomalous success of Fingertips was a happy windfall for Motown which kept the label on-side through two years of frankly uninspiring records, allowing Stevie to develop both his performing and songwriting skills while the label indulged him, a couple of Top 30 hits here and there enough to keep the momentum going without too many difficult questions being asked in the corridors of Hitsville. Wonder once said some observers “thought (he’d) wind up making potholders” once his music career failed; Fingertips spared him such a fate, effectively buying him time.
Motown filled that time with any number of cack-handed attempts to push Stevie’s career in one direction or another, resulting in some bad records and some increasingly desperate-looking moves. Their opening gambit was to reissue Stevie’s flop début single, I Call It Pretty Music But The Old People Call It The Blues (Part 1), in a new pressing slightly remixed to make it sound a bit more like Fingertips. Record buyers weren’t stupid, and for a second time, the single failed to chart.
This must have thrown Motown a little off their stride; people were buying vast quantities of Recorded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius, the live album hastily cobbled together around Fingertips (though all the material on it was taken from an entirely different performance), but that enthusiasm didn’t translate into them becoming Little Stevie fans who’d pick up anything with his name on it. Conclusion: they liked the energy and the harmonica, not the novelty act package that was Little Stevie. Result: Workout Stevie, Workout, the planned first single from an entire album of gospel-influenced uptempo semi-instrumental harmonica thrash-outs. Reward: R&B Top Ten and scraping the Top 30, credible enough but well below Motown’s lofty expectations. Effect: LP release summarily cancelled forthwith.
This is basically secular gospel music, if that makes sense. Think of a church with an organ and a full-on gospel choir in full voice. Move the choir into the studio, where there are saxophones and bongos playing alongside the organ. Replace the lead singer with a blind kid playing a harmonica. Replace the religious lyrics with the words Work out, Stevie, work out! Work out, Stevie work out! repeated over and over again. You now have a good idea of what Workout Stevie, Workout sounds like.
According to the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 3, this was carefully crafted to follow in the successful steps of Fingertips, which makes no sense at all – this sounds almost nothing like that previous hit. Its raucous pace is led by bongos and handclaps, rather than the pounding, primal drums heard on Fingertips, which provides a different kind of energy – the wrong kind, if recapturing the vibe of Fingertips was what they were going for. It’s a distinction I find easy to draw, but difficult to describe; it all sounds too church, too abstract. Perhaps knowing it wasn’t actually live (the band track was cut long before Stevie ever got near it to dub his voice and harmonica over the top) adds to the mystique-shattering effect. I don’t know.
Even Stevie’s vocal exhortations sound pre-rehearsed, almost forced, in comparison to his big breakthrough (shades again of those post-Do You Love Me Contours exercises), and that includes his melismatic, spooling near-acapella intro (EVERY TIME I feel a little groove comin’ on I just have to moooo-oooove); what spontaneity there is is, once more, “gospel spontaneity” and not “R&B spontaneity”. It’s raucous, and yet it isn’t dangerous; it’s frantic, and yet it isn’t exhilarating.
A strange miscalculation – the first of a great many such miscalculations for Little Stevie over the next two years – it’s difficult to know who would be satisfied by this. It’s not horrible or anything, it’s just Little Stevie Wonder doing a gospel song, something for which it’s hard to imagine there’s ever been a significant market. The only real plus is that the “Little Stevie” aspect is played right down here; despite his obviously pre-pubescent voice during that intro, the blind kiddie novelty schtick seems to have been dropped in favour of playing up his considerable skills as an entertainer.
He would at least be granted plenty more chances to follow up his big hit before his adult career began in earnest; some of those attempts would be better than this rather uninspiring start, but a great many of them would be considerably worse.
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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Little Stevie Wonder “Monkey Talk” |
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In my heart of hearts, even back at 9, I knew it wasn’t as good as “Fingertips,” but ‘brand loyalty’ was sinking in fast anyway, as far as Stevie and the Vandellas were concerned.
I had to have it, even though the dollar might have been better spent on an Orlons record or even “Deep Purple” or “Sugar Shack.” My mom could recite the drill for you: “Please, please, please, it’s only 80 cents, I’ll run the vacuum, do the dishes…” It’s gonna get worse as each Vandellas (if not every Wonder record for a while) gets better and better. But my mom made out on the deal too, getting whatever I promised to do or stop doing, as well a good 24 hours of being told she’s the most wonderful mom in the world. 🙂 She and I are both born under Aries; we both know to play to the ego.
Nor did this music torture her. She liked it more than she ever admitted; I once caught her singing “Jimmy Mack” under her breath 🙂
We babyboomers, back then, were totally clueless of how spoiled we were about to become. It was just a presumed thing, from this point onward, that there’d be a new and interesting single (if not chart-topper) on every major and minor Motown act, every three months. And there was. We thought it would never end. It did, but it’s a long euphoric period first from “Heat Wave” until the Florence’s exit from the Supremes, the first public sign of trouble in ‘the family.’
Splendid work again, Nixon.
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I love these stories. And if anyone thinks I’m being harsh on many of these ’63 efforts, well, fear not, we’re getting very close now to the stage where almost every record is an absolute belter.
I’d put the “ending” far, far later than you do. Following your comment on the Morrocco Muzik Makers record, I’ve been raking through the entire Motown release schedules this week, counting up just how many “favourites” I couldn’t bear to be without. The final tally, unless I change my mind in the intervening YEARS it’ll take to get there, is exactly fifty 10s, thus inadvertently forming my very own personal “Motown 50”. (A lot higher than I thought – I had the magic number somewhere around 25, but there were just too many personal favourites I couldn’t leave out of a “desert island Motown” playlist, and 50 ended up being an organically-chosen round number rather than a ceiling… I’m justifying my lax marking now, but bear in mind any mark above a five is good, ten just means something is among my favourites, not that it’s somehow perfect – anywhere 91% and up – so I’ve not gone so totally soft that it becomes completely meaningless. Eh, I love Motown, or I wouldn’t be doing this in the first place – what can I say.)
Now, granted, a majority come from the mid-Sixties Golden Age, but a good many of them from what I call the Silver Age, the turn-of-the-decade period between 1968 and 1972, with a couple more thereafter.
(Still, knowing how may 10s but not what they are might turn this into a fun parlour game, or something… I challenge anyone to correctly predict the remaining 43 records which are getting a ten, based purely on what’s going on in my head!)
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I remember this song very well growing up. I was 13 going on 14, my father was a pastor of a church that played that kind of music. A song we use to sing in church was called “Run On And See What The End Going To Be”. When I first heard Stevie’s “Workout”, instantly that church song came to me. If you really think about it most of the MotownSounds was gospel songs I heard in church as a kid.
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As we all know, Motown was definitely influenced by gospel music – especially the early songs. In an interesting twist, I listened to Christian artists like Andrae Crouch & Jessy DIxon a lot in the 70s. Their sound was a very contemporary version of Gospel Music. In their music I found a lot fo Motown influence. Very interesting.
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To me, a grading of 10 signifies a “perfectly made” recording. It could not have been made better. I have a LOT more than 50 perfectly-made Motown recordings. Yet I feel that I am not being too liberal with my grading. I would want them ALL on my desert island. I could choose a Top 10, with a gun to my head. But that top 10 would be subject to change, daily, being different combinations from among my Top 100 or so.
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I couldn’t choose a top 150 Motown records. so many good one
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I have to say, with no offense meant to Mr. Wonder or fans of this song…. I CANNOT STAND THIS SONG! Okay I feel much better now! LOL Peace to all!
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That was perfect! Damn ’em on one side but then bless ’em on the other!
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I liked much better back then than i do now. What was i thinking? I do remember my Grandfather thinking the song bordered on blasphemy (he didnt like anything that wasnt sacred.
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Just got this ’63 unreleased Stevie Wonder from one of my subscriptions. Thought I’d throw it in the mix for those that may not get the chance to hear it.
Definitely a more mature offering than ‘Workout’. Bit of a melange it seems to me but that’s after just two listens. See what you think.
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It appears that it’s up to me to defend this song, but I have an ally, and his name is Pete Myers. Pete was a successful DJ in Cleveland who moved on to New York City, much like another Cleveland emigre, Alan Freed, the man who introduced a 7-year-old me to R&B music a decade earlier. Pete settled in at popular AM radio station WNEW in New York City, which played standards and MOR music by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat “King” Cole, etc. However, Pete had an alter elgo named Mad Daddy, who suddenly appeared at top 40 station WINS Friday and Saturday nights. Mad Daddy was like no white DJ New York had ever heard. He was loud and frenetic; he talked in rhymes (he is credited for coining the terms “wavy gravy” and “mellow jello”); and he had a whole lot of teens, myself included, flocking around their radios wondering what he would say next. His manic style notwithstanding, the reason I listened to Mad Daddy was his penchant for playing less popular R&B records like “Work Out Stevie, Work Out,” which the R&B stations were playing only marginally and the white stations weren’t touching. But that song was on Daddy’s playlist every show (and so was “Hey Harmonica Man” a few months later). The more Mad Daddy played “Work Out, Stevie…” the more I liked it. It was fast, loud and exciting, just like the Mad man. When Stevie asked, ” Do you feel it?” I yelled “Yeah” along with the choir. I give this song an “8,” and I give its top supporter an “8” as a DJ. Mad Daddy’s frantic style eventually wore thin with the listeners, and he disappeared for a spell only to return later shortly before his tragic end. For what he did on behalf of R&B records that many would never have heard but for his presence, I remember Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers fondly.
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I really dig this record. I don’t think it’s that forced, and the gospel feel of it is VERY different from “Fingertips,” no matter what anyone says!
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What’s really weird about this is that the ONLY thing I knew of Little Stevie Wonder was “Fingertips.” I was only 3 but I knew it because my folks must have been buying a lot of those Motown 16 BIG HITS albums.
Cut to the 80s when I was around 14 and getting into Motown in a big way. I got the Stevie Wonder Greatest Hits album and hear “Workout” for the first time. Immediate 14 year old impression? Desperate attempt to capture the vibe and raw excitement of “Fingertips.” Not that I thought these two songs sounded alike but I got the idea that Motown figured a pseudo-gospel rave up was the closest they’d ever get in a studio setting to the energy of “Fingertips.” I tried to like this but never quite got there. I couldn’t stop the word “rip off” from popping up in my mind.
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Well that was harsh. After a few years the song did grow on me (but I still couldn’t help thinking Motown had gotten a bit desperate in looking for a direction!)
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