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Tamla T 54085 (B), October 1963
B-side of Just Loving You
(Written by Ronnie White and Mickey Stevenson)
Of course, it’s now widely known that Kim Weston didn’t go on to become a superstar; Motown never even released an LP on Kim, and she’s best known today for one much-played, long-lived duet (of which more later).
But nobody was to know that back in the autumn of 1963; with Motown on the cusp of its eye-poppingly successful “Golden Age”, with hitherto-unknown Hitsville acts beginning to rack up hits left and right, Kim must have seemed at least as good a bet as anyone else to break through to the big leagues.
Love Me All The Way, the B-side of Kim’s début single It Should Have Been Me, had handily outperformed the non-charting A-side, resulting in a minor pop hit on the Hot 100. With the A-side here, Just Loving You, also failing to chart, Motown must have hoped that lightning might strike twice with this more uptempo B-side.
This, though, is much less riveting than any of the other three sides Kim had cut for Motown to date. Miss Weston sounds ill-at-ease with the backing musicians throughout, the arrangement apparently flummoxing her to the point she actually drops out of key a couple of times (most unlike her).
The song’s not a bad one, not at all, but it definitely doesn’t suit Kim’s massive voice, and so she does her best to keep it hidden, almost all of the way through the record. The effect isn’t half as enchanting as when she’s free to really go for it; unreasonably restrained, she still sounds rich, but also flat and occasionally tuneless.
There’s just one big-voiced flourish, in the middle of the song (the If your man wants to leave, let him go / But I won’t take you back part, the first reminder that we’re listening to a Kim Weston side), and not coincidentally it’s by far the best bit of this record.
Otherwise, it’s all pretty workmanlike; perfectly adequate B-side fodder, listenable enough, but not anything to linger over.
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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| Kim Weston “Just Loving You” |
The Darnells “Too Hurt To Cry, Too Much In Love To Say Goodbye” |
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Some, but not all of Kim’s material made it to my ears in the 60s when they were mostly fresh: the two you’ve reviewed so far because they were carried on the first two “16 Original Big Hits” collections, “Take Me In Your Arms,” “Helpless,” and two duets with Marvin, “What Good Am I Without You” (which flopped) and “It Takes Two” (which didn’t).
What irks me where Kim is concerned -in addition to never being given a solo album while she was with Motown- was that I never even heard of “Looking For The Right Guy” and “A Thrill A Moment” until the second half of the 1970s.The former is a winsome and lighthearted -if obvious- attempt by Smokey to tailor Weston to teenagers. An enjoyable record that deserved greater popularity.
But “A Thrill A Moment,” from 1965 is magnificent. You mention in your review of the a-side here that Kim’s vocal power could even engender some fear with its strength. “A Thrill A Moment” gives her another such chance to blow the roof off, and she surely does. She had been shifted from Tamla to Gordy by then, and I treasure my 45 of it still. That it didn’t show up on Billboard’s white pop chart is disgrace enough, but the mind refuses to comprehend how it failed to show up on their black R&B chart for even a single week.
The b-sides too, are going to get increasingly interesting. “I Want You ‘Round,” “Don’t Compare Me With Her,” and “I’ll Never See My Love Again” are terrific records and I look forward to when you come to them. 🙂
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I sometimes feel I should refrain from commenting on future entries, for fear of repeating myself later or just spoiling what I’m going to say, but what the hell, here goes. I like Kim’s full-blast turn on A Thrill A Moment (WITHIN MY HEART, YOU RING A BELL / THAT SWINGS AND TELLS / HOW SWELL IT IS… HEY LOVE, INVITING YOU ARE, SO RAW, SO RARE, SO SWEET, SO FAIR… Man, I could listen to that all day), but find the pairing-up of that vocal with that music and production (literally ten years ahead of its time – a mid-70s Philly-flavoured disco smash in 1965) highly confusing. I think the vocal is massively OTT for the backing, and the backing saps the power out of her voice like a sponge.
Helpless, on the other hand, I won’t hear a bad word against 🙂
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(or is it “sways”? I’ve never been sure)
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I agree that the song is no barn-burner, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. When I first picked up this 45 in a thrift store I thought “Another Train Coming” was the A-side. I wasn’t too impressed at first but I found myself going back to it again and again. These days it’s always included in heavy rotation on my playlist when I get in a Motown mood. And…yes, Kim got a bum deal from Motown. She should have been a bigger star, but with that kind of competition….
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Sure, with the benefit of hindsight; but in 1963, right on the edge of everything at Hitsville going supernova, anyone could have made it. I doubt many Motown staffers had the Supremes or Four Tops in the sweepstake, for instance, while Kim had actually had a (minor) hit and could obviously sing her way out of trouble. (Also, she married the A&R director…) You’d have thought all that stuff would carry some weight at least, but apparently not.
Anyway, I was probably unduly harsh on this – I’d spent a lot of time listening to the A-side, in comparison with which this definitely pales for me. (Also, I’ve only just noticed the backing vocals in the chorus are meant to be making train noises – “Whooo-whooo!” – and I can’t decide whether this pleases or aggravates me.) Reviewing it another day, I might bump it up a bit.
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I had exactly the same experience. “Just Loving You” was only played on Chicago radio for a couple weeks, and was a really low charter,. When I first played “Another Train Coming, it brought back the feeling of those 1962 lighthearted mid-tempo girls group cuts. I thought it might have been intended as the “A” side. I’d give it a “7”, rather than 5.
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The 45s of this one “Love Me All The Way,” “Just Loving You,” “I’m Still Loving You,” and “A Thrill of Moment” are ones I scored on my great record safaris of the late 1970s. (“Looking For The Right Guy” was the most difficult, not getting the 45 into my hands until the 1990s.)
I’d haunt the Record Museum chain stores of Echelon Mall NJ, Deptford Mall NJ, and assorted other hole-in-the-wall shops within a 35-mile radius of my home. Typically, I’d prepare to spend $100 and would feel deprived if I left with less than forty new 45s.
I found wonderful and increasingly obscure things in those years: the Temptations “Check Yourself” on Miracle and “Dream Come True,” their first Gordy, Jr. Walker’s “Good Rockin'” on Harvey, Mary’s “Strange Love” and “Bye Bye Baby,” Stevie’s “Castles In the Sand,” “Happy Street” and “Kiss Me Baby” and so many others. I’d also bolster the number of copies of more well-known favorites. Doesn’t everybody need at least six 45s of “Where Did Our Love Go…?”
I miss those stores. 😦 I’m grateful for the Internet which -rather quickly- lets me locate a vital missing vinyl link, but nothing beats the feeling of discovering of one in a dusty old record store with your own warm paws. 🙂
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One of my favourite quotes about that exact phenomenon went as follows:-
“Modern online stores are, inevitably, the future of shopping for records; they do at least let you know pretty much instantly whether they have that rare shiny CD. The downside is that you won’t find amazing things you weren’t even looking for whilst rooting through crates of battered seven-inches. It’s the difference between a mail order catalogue and a rummage sale.”
That was in 1996.
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What I always liked about Kim Weston was that she could take a fairly nice but ordinary song & give it some extra zing. I think it is an absolute crime that more people aren’t familiar with this lady’s music. Kim who? This lady could sing Whitney Houston (who yes does have some talent) under the table!
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Like the previous commenters, I think it’s a pretty cool song too. There’s something winsome and moving about the melancholy way she sings “There’s another train coming” while the background singers go “Woo-woo!” imitating the train horn.
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