Tags
VIP 25001 (B), December 1963
B-side of Stevie
(Written by Frank Wilson and Hal Davis)
The B-side to Patrice Holloway’s one and only Motown single. Very much of a pair with the A-side, the patchy Stevie, this turns out to be another tribute song to Little Stevie Wonder, one which again starts out promisingly before ending up as a screechy, unintelligible musical soup.
As a love song to Stevie Wonder (and it definitely is, just as explicitly so as Stevie, incidentally, opening with a backing vocal cheerleader chant of “S! T! E! V-I-E! STEVIE!” before starting up with a naff “spelling” gimmick – “S is for Stevie, the boy of my dreams / T is for the time that comes between…”) it’s considerably more positive than the A-side had been; rather than cursing his name and howling in anguish, Patrice instead counts her blessings that she’s in love with such a super guy. It’s a song pitched for a much younger vocalist than Stevie, which initially works in its favour; where that song had called for 12-year-old Patrice to play the role of a woman maybe twice or three times her age, (He Is) The Boy Of My Dreams is decidedly more kiddie-friendly fare, and it suits her better, at least to begin with.
Sadly, this record shares and multiplies the major flaw of the topside; Patrice starts out well-controlled and charming, but quickly loses that control and ends up shrill and tone-deaf, wailing monotonously as soon as she gets out of the lower reaches of her register. It’s not a bad little song, but it’s so badly performed that it’s actually painful to listen to in places, and that all comes down to the vocalist. Sorry, Patrice.
We know for a fact she got better – she racked up a bunch of excellent sides for Capitol in the mid-Sixties (here’s Love And Desire, which gives its title to Patrice’s upcoming long-awaited anthology CD) as well as providing the voice of Valerie on the Josie and the Pussycats TV show (and singing several leads on the spin-off LP) – but none of that would matter to Motown. The label declined to release anything else on her after this, due to some supposed legal wrangles which kept the rest of her cuts in the vault until the Cellarful of Motown series appeared 40-odd years later. Sadly for Patrice, she’s best remembered by Motown fans as a footnote in the career of her big sister Brenda, a fate she didn’t really deserve but from which this single does nothing to spare her.
So that was 1963 – a super run of singles to close out the year, this little mis-step aside, a new Golden Age by anyone’s standards, and yet things were about to get even better. By the end of 1964, Motown would have gone from a respectable power to a cultural juggernaut, but this had been the most important year so far. Some of Motown’s acts were starting to scale the heights of pop stardom, a couple of them were already up there waving, and we’re getting very near the point where you could pretty much grab any Motown single unheard and be assured of its quality before you’d ever listened to it. A pity for Patrice Holloway that she wasn’t given more time to join in the fun and produce some Motown classics of her own; there aren’t very many more outright duffers left between now and the end of the Sixties, that’s for sure.
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.
(Or maybe you’re only interested in Patrice Holloway? Click for more.)
 |
 |
| Patrice Holloway “Stevie” |
Little Stevie Wonder “Castles In The Sand” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
|---|
Like the blog? Listen to our radio show! |
| Motown Junkies presents the finest Motown cuts, big hits and hard to find classics. Listen to all past episodes here. |
Motown Junkies 
My instinct is that for the majority of American buyers, this V.I.P. label wasn’t seen until they picked up the 45 of The Spinners’ “It’s A Shame,” which almost certainly had to be the largest seller on it.
I didn’t even find a 45 of “Needle In A Haystack” till the 70s. Considering the piss-poor promotion artists on this label got from Motown, I’ve always suspected the moniker stood for “Very Insignificant People”.
In The Velvelettes case, that comes close to a crime.
LikeLike
Try “Greetings this is Uncle Sam” 1966-The Monitors or “Heaven Must Have Sent You”-The Elgins
LikeLike
Many of my friends bought “Needle in a Haystack” and “He Was Really Sayin’ Something” by The Velvelettes, as well as “Darling Baby” and “Heaven Must Have Sent You” by The Elgins, and “Say You”, “Greetings” and “Since I Lost You Girl” by The Monitors, before “It’s A Shame”. These people were just normal people, -not record collectors. Those records were bought to play at parties-not to place in a collection.
Admittedly, however, they were all African-Americans living on the South Side of Chicago, who listened to WVON rather than WLS.
Some of them also bought “Lonely, Lonely Girl Am I” by The Velvelettes and “I Understand My Man” by The Elgins, as well.
In addition to all of those, I, myself, also bought: “Who You Gonna Run To” by Mickey McCullers, “Please Don’t Turn The Lights Out” by Danny Day, “I’ll Cry Tomorrow”-Serenaders, “Tell Me-Vows, “Hang on Bill”, Little Lisa, “Don’t Be Too Long”, “Love’s Gone Bad” and “I Love You” by Chris Clark, “Bring Back The Love” by The Monitors, “Why Am I Lovin’ You” by Debbie Dean, She’s Gonna Love You At Sundown” by The Spinners, “Need Your Love” by The Lollipops, “Blackmail” by Bobby Taylor, and a handful of Ivy Jo’s and Chuck Jackson’s before seeing “It’s A Shame”.
Americans that listened to Soul stations knew VIP Records very well.
But, I admit, that I wasn’t “normal”.
LikeLike
I definitely picked up “Needle in a Haystack” in 1964 and it became one of my all-time Motown faves. At the time I was aware of Motown as a musical force, and was surprised to see the new VIP imprint with the Motown affiliation at the bottom of the yellow label.
Yes, “Needle” deserved far more succes than it received, but I’ll wait (anxiously) for Nixon’s review.
LikeLike
The first time I was aware that this record existed was when I saw a picture of it in the “For Sale” section of Goldmine magazine in the 1990s. My first reaction was that it was a fake as I couldn’t understand why I had never heard of it before. I was desperate to hear it, but had to wait until it appeared on “The Complete Motown Singles”. It wasn’t worth the wait.
LikeLike
I have almost all the actually RELEASED Motown singles from 1959-1972. But, I have only seen a scan of this one. It was missing from The Motown Record File and Jobete Music Record File in 1972, when I first looked through them. The Andantes on VIP and Frank Wilson on Soul WERE in those files. So, I believe the story that this record was only pressed in small quantity in Detroit, and although some got to a distributor, Berry Gordy ordered them destroyed (before they went anywhere). Perhaps the one existing copy was one of the pressing plant test pressing masters that Ron Murphy “rescued” from the Detroit plant (American?) in 1969, when they were going to throw away the old test pressings? I’ve looked through literally MILLIONS of 45s since this record was pressed in late 1963, and NEVER seen one. I have seen 4 different copies of the Frank Wilson and 3 of The Andantes, and two of the Little Iva, and 4 of Oma Heard. This one is rarer than anything except those that were never pressed (Andre Williams, Gino Parks, Hattie Littles, etc.).
LikeLike
Never heard this one. I do love “Touch of Venus” from Cellarfull of Motown. What a jam! I remember see Patrice on Soul Train in the early 70s doing a catchy Jackson 5/Honey Cone style song. I think Brenda/Patrice sang backup on a Neil Young album. Does anyone know about this? The Holloway sisters were good songwritiers. Love “Bah Bah Bah” which they wrote for the Supremes. Would have loved to have heard Brenda or Patrice do that one themselves.
LikeLike
As to the song in question, it’s not all that good as material goes, but the very young (15?) Patrice does a good job. I’d rather have had Motown release “The Touch of Venus”, “For The Love of Mike”, or one of her other better unreleased cuts. Both this song and “Stevie” were nothing special.
LikeLike