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Motown M 1054 (A), February 1964
b/w I’m Giving You Your Freedom
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)
Several important sources – not least the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 4 – are decidedly sniffy about this record, and history has seemingly felt the same way. Following the false dawn of their supposed breakthrough into the big time with When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, the Supremes’ follow-up single was this, recorded before Lovelight… but held back for a later release: a first stab at aping the Philles sound by the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team. (Specifically, it’s the sound of the Crystals’ Da Doo Ron Ron, ripped off quite effortlessly here). The result was a resounding chart flop, a creative dead end, the last agonising stop before the girls’ eventual cathartic real breakthrough with Where Did Our Love Go.
Overlooked in all of this factual analysis is that it’s a totally, completely brilliant pop record, the best thing the Supremes had released since their long-forgotten début I Want A Guy almost three years previously. Dropping the rollercoaster ride of celebratory teenage joy that permeates Da Doo Ron Ron by transposing the whole thing to a minor key (I think D# minor, but I’m happy to be corrected!) and filling the initially happy lyrics with ominous doubt in the face of open conflict from the backing vocals, this instead becomes a rollercoaster ride of paranoid teenage hormones, all rattling along at 80 miles per hour. At the end of it, HDH and the Supremes have created their first flash of real magic, and a totally different kind of magic to the Crystals’ exploding bubblegum heartburst.
Oh, wow, this is such a brilliant, brilliant record. It’s like the very last gasp of what the Supremes had been building up to all these years; if Where Did Our Love Go serves a neat narrative purpose by reinventing the girls as ambassadors of a whole new sound all their own, bringing them to the notice of mainstream American culture almost the very minute they changed the kind of group they were… well, if this one had turned out to be their big splash instead, this would have made just as much sense. (Indeed, a number of sources – Mary Wilson chief among them – state that this was held back not because it was considered to be inferior to When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, but because it was seen within Motown as a potential big hit once some groundwork had been laid. If true, then its total failure (number ninety-four with a bullet) must have come as a real shock to the system.) Whatever the story, it’s undeniably excellent.
How is this achieved?
LESSON #1: Trust in Diana Ross to do the heavy lifting.
This seems counterintuitive at first; even Diana’s greatest admirers would hesitate to say she has a powerful voice. Yet Run, Run, Run is more about Diana and her voice than any Supremes track since I Want A Guy. The muddled, muddied group mumblings of When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes are replaced here by Diana’s clear-voiced, piercing proclamations, first of joy (Girls, gather round me / And hear the news! He finally kissed me – oh happy day!) and then of defiance (From him I’ll never never part!), all counterpointed by the naysaying backing vocals. Diana is on sparkling, superstar form here, carrying off her part by hitting all the right notes in every sense (including acting the part of a naive, lovelorn teenage girl), sounding like a hit-making veteran full of confidence rather than a cruelly-disparaged “no-hit Supreme”, tired after years of fruitless toil, full of fear and desperation. Or maybe she does sound scared and desperate, but turns it into a method performance, since that’s exactly the kind of emotion her character is meant to be going through. Either way, there’s no doubting that however this record works, it works because of Diana Ross.
LESSON #2: The Funk Brothers are better than Phil Spector’s session musicians. Use them.
Piano, shimmering over the top of everything even as it simultaneously pounds the song along, backed up with great waves of notes from an electric organ, delicate and poised while also tough and uncompromising. Horns, handclaps, drums, bass, all irresistibly compelling you to move your feet, or bob your head at the very least, whilst driving the narrative thrust of the lyrics. A Wall of Soundalike it may have begun (so much so that it features on one of the volumes of the Phil’s Spectre anthology series of miscellaneous mid-Sixties Philles knock-offs), but this ends up sounding superb; Spector wished his crew could turn in a performance like this.
(Oh, and make sure you listen to it in mono, this is important.)
LESSON #3: Play to Flo and Mary’s strengths.
Quite noticeably, most of the backing vocals on this record aren’t just by the other Supremes, thus neatly avoiding the rushed, almost-gasping vocal gymnastics the girls had to employ to get through When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes on time and in one piece. Even though this song is almost a duet, calling for a kind of Greek chorus to play against Diana Ross’ wide-eyed optimism – and therefore on paper a perfect recipe for Flo and Mary to anticipate their roles playing off Diana on the Supremes’ upcoming run of mega-hits – instead, HDH recognise the difficult stresses of the parts they’ve written and rope in a mixed-gender choir of backing singers to take up the countermelody, thus leaving Flo and Mary free to provide a fresh element with their oooohs and bop! bop! shoop! shoop!s. It’s something we’ve not heard before; combined with Diana’s long notes which always give the impression of barely-concealed anguish under the surface without ever actually getting close to breaking face, this is a masterpiece of vocal chart wizardry. Compare and contrast with the rushed pseudo-Spector all-in-a-heap arrangement of When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes. Less is sometimes more, onward isn’t necessarily forward, a more faithful homage isn’t always a better record, and When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes is definitely not better than this.
An almost impossibly enjoyable rush of adrenaline and pop craft, a fitting last stop on the journey to the top before the Supremes move out of reach forever, and cracking good fun to boot. Outstanding.
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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I agree with you completely. This has always been one of my favourite records by the Supremes!
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I always liked this recored, and thought it would at least make the Top 40.Growing up in the Los Angeles area where “Let Me Go The Right Way” got to #11 at KRLA and “When The Lovelight…” reached #7 on KFWB ,I expected “Run Run, Run” to do at least as well.
Really loved the Piano !
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You’ve surprised with a grade this very high, but the record is good and always has been. The saxophone adds to the fun too. We don’t know how many takes there were, but the piano player must have had some tired fingers and I hope he got a cash bonus. “Run Run Run” would be included on the Where Did Our Love Go album between the title song and “Baby Love” and kept the party going just fine.
But the record’s dismal peak on Billboard at a lowly 93, did make the next recording session of a single by the group (April 4, 1964) in Detroit “a very trying experience,” according to Lamont Dozier’s telling to J. Randy Taraborelli. Diana, Florence and Mary were not happy to be handed a song unanimously rejected by the Marvelettes. Dozier states that originally the background vocals were more complex, but given the rebellious reluctance by all three, he eventually said, ” okay, just do baby-baby, ooo, baby-baby.”
Mary Wilson: “We wanted to sing some real songs and ‘get down’ like the other girls at the company were doing. It worked for them, why not for us? Then we get this wimpy little song by the same guys who gave the Vandellas a great record like ‘Heat Wave.’ I cried and cried over ‘Where Did Our Love Go.’ ”
Oh Mary, don’t you weep.
🙂
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I agree 100%, Oh Mary dont you weep is so right. This became their signature song and took them on the ride of their life …. Straight to Super Stardom. So much so that the other girl groups who were banging out hits before them had to take lessons now from them.
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The pianist was almost certainly Earl Van Dyke, and you’re right: he must have been sore after this.
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AAbsolutely agree…a brilliant record. Why it flopped is beyond me. I, too, was a KRLA listener in L.A. and wondered why it took the Supremes so long to follow up “Lovelight” with “Where Did Our Love Go”. It was many years later that I learned this was the actual follow-up–but I had already fallen in love with this cut on the “Where Did Our Love Go” lp.
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What can I say? Once again an incisive, insightful, passionate review of a record I don’t care for that much.
I always get a lot out of your reviews, especially the ones about records you love that I don’t. Cummulatively your reviews are shaping up as the definitive critical history of Motown. No book even comes close, as near as I can tell.
thanks
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“Run, Run, Run” is my favourite Supremes’ recording. I was shocked to see it fail to do well on the charts.
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Hey buddy I made some other comments below. Sure love this song. What makes the Where Did Our Love Go album so great was the variety of styles. Along with the Vandellas singles I feel like this raised the whole girl group bar to another level.
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Love the song… the great sax, pounding piano, funky syncopation, Flo & Mary’s “bop bop shoop shoop shoop” and beefed-up background vocals. but I’d score Diana’s voice a wee bit lower than you do. Just a tad adenoidal for my taste. I’d rate “When the Lovelight” higher than this, but maybe that’s just because it was the first Supremes song I heard, and it started me on a life-long passion!
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I absolutely agree with Michael Landes statement that, ” . . . your reviews are shaping up as the definitive critical history of Motown. No book even comes close . . .” , and I believe that you could write the definitive history of Motown!
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I used to listen to this record so much my ears would fall off. As everyone else has said I am shocked this did not hit the top twenty! I think it was a bit too frantic to be top ten but it is one of the best records in the earlier years that the Supremes have ever done and certainly one of the best piano performances in the history of Motown along with Money!
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I remember hearing this record when it was first issued. Only once, on the radio, transistor under the pillow late at night listening to CKLW Detroit. I had to have it but none of the local stores could seem to get it. Surprising since “When The Lovelight” did moderately well. Never heard it after that until I eventually scored it on the Where Did Our Love Go album. I loved it, being placed right after the title track.
Not quite as enamored with it these days. I still like it but it’s pitched a little too high for Diana and I find her vocal kind of grating. I’m guessing DJs at the time just couldn’t get past that either?. Or perhaps the dismal chart showing was due to the British Invasion which was going full steam when this record was released. But that band really smokes and my hand gets tired just thinking about the guy playing those piano triplets. (Anybody know who that was? Johhny Griffith?)
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Wow! Finally somebody agrees with me about this song. It is da bomb! I mean it just oozes perfection (the cheesy roller rink organ, the piano, the background voices, the wall of saxes, Diana’s excited lead vocals). So many critics are quick to dismiss it. As much as I love this record I do understand why it wasn’t a hit. Most listeners probably thought it sounded too much like a Spector production & by this point they were probably getting tired of his sound.
I would go so far to say that it is better than anything Phil Spector ever produced. Of course, I one of the few people on the planet who never really went in for the whole Spector/Girl group sound.
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This song is Definately ” Da Bomb”. I listened to it so much my sister began to hate it. I lived in Brooklyn , NY and on AM station WWRL it was played quite often but never made it to their top 10 list. That is so sad, I think this song is one of Diana’s best early work, though it was pitched high for her range, she sang RUN, RUN, Run like she was trying to show Berry, Smokey and all the girl groups that called them the “No hit Supremes” that The Supremes were a force to be reckoned with given the right material.
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never noticed the mixed background on “run, run, run”. being a spector affectianato i cannot agree that this record sounds anything like any ps production. the background and backup vocals are strong and clear, unlike anything phil would have done. while quite different from the sound the supremes would become known for this song proves they might have gone into a stronger more soulful direction that in my book might not have been a bad move, but motown’s storied history as “the sound of young (white) america” would never have happened without their more pop sounding H/D/H hits, and a whole lotta other hits would have been lost too. however, the hit itself, taken out of context, is certainly a scorcher!
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The first Tamla Motown single I bought. Loved it then. Love it still
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Thanks Ken 🙂 I wish more people knew this record. I chose it as one of my 5-6 picks when I was interviewed on Radio Cardiff last month, and the DJ opted to play it – I couldn’t restrain myself from saying “Oh, excellent!” or something like that:
http://screencast.com/t/Vd5reoAS
(I sound a bit confused and out of breath because it was recorded at eight o’clock in the morning, and I’d just spent half an hour walking around a freezing cold Welsh industrial estate in the dark, trying to find the studio…! For instance, I am aware the Supremes did not “split up at the end of the Seventies”, I meant to say “when Diana left the group at the end of the Sixties”, but there we are.)
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Wow I can’t believe I am the first person to disagree, but I think “When The Lovelight Shine Through His Eyes is a way better song than “Run Run Run.” “Da Do Ron Ron” is a better song too! Of course the Funk Brother’s outplay Spector’s session players, but “Da Do Ron Ron” is catchier and it’s easier to catch the groove. “Run Run Run” is a little to frantic for my taste. The music comes in fast and Diana’s delivery is the same frantic. I cannot picture “Run Run Run” in the greatest hits compilation at all. The jump from “Lovelight” to “Where Did Our Love Goes” makes much more sense. Even though I learned that there was another song before “Where Did Our Love Go” I would give this song a 4.
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Don’t worry, I think you’re in a majority, even if lots of people – most people, really – don’t click the Thumbs of Judgement at the bottom there. 🙂
Thanks for all your comments throughout the site, Damecia – I’ve been enjoying reading them. Sadly you’re almost at the end of the Supremes reviews now (but there’ll be some more soon!)
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Oh wow! I know I’ve already commented on this song several times but it came up on a CD Mix I have playing on my office computer. I’ll say it again — This song is Da Bomb! I agree it has a lot of flaws but it is still fun (at least to me!) For the first time I really noticed the bop bop shoop shoop background vocals.
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“…transposing the whole thing to a minor key (I think D# minor, but I’m happy to be corrected!)…”
Just a quick correction: The key is Eb major, not minor. (Incidentally, Eb and D# are enharmonic equivalents, meaning that they are the same pitch, but the key of Eb has three flatted notes, whereas the key of D# – were it even in common use – would have an unwieldy nine sharped notes, including two double sharps. In practice, one always speaks of the key of Eb, not the key of D#.)
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“…an unwieldy nine sharped notes…”
I didn’t really express that properly! It’s not actually possible for a key to have more than seven sharped notes. Let’s just say that, speaking theoretically, the notes in a D# major scale would be D#, E# F##, G#, A#, B#, and C##. However, again, in practice it’s better to steer clear of the hypothetical key of D# major and call it Eb major instead!
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Thanks for this – I’m no musician and I’m very happy to be corrected on these things!
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There are many fascinating aspects about this chord progression that go far beyond the harmonic world of all the (admittedly little) Phil Spector I’ve heard. First of all, the intro is amazing: Bb Bdim Cmi Ab Bb … all before we even hear the tonic Eb. But more revolutionary is “he finally kissed me” – Db – the legendary bVII chord of mid-60s rock and beyond – the “Hey Jude chord” (come on the 4th “na” of “na na na na nanananaa”). There’s an ongoing discussion of who came up with that when, and Nowhere to Run is often cited (we obviously haven’t hit that yet). Finally, on “friends want to say”, they cycle between vi and IV – something that’s now beyond common but we haven’t heard it prior to this in TCMS. It’s kind of like … okay, the doowop progression (I vi IV V) was to my ear completely worn out before 1960, but Smokey still got lots of mileage out of taking just two chords, I and vi, and cycling them. Now the next pair of chords, vi and IV, are being used to even greater effect. Of course, you could say that at this point we’re really in the minor key of vi, or Cmi, which is probably why our host first brought up the idea of this song being in minor. It could be said to swing like a pendulum between Eb major and C minor.
TL;DR – the harmonic creativity of HDH has now hit its stride!
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“Run, Run, Run” was a challenge to me at the age of 11 when I heard it. My folks were feeding my Motown addiction and bought me that amazing 2-album Greatest Hits package. This was my first introduction to the Suprmes and so far I liked what I heard. Then this came on and it sounded so afar from the rest of side one.
Oddly, it was my younger brothers who got me to like it. They pointed out how they liked that “a bunch of guys” were singing the backgrounds. They kept running around the house singing that chourus- “So you better Run, Run, Run,….Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah YEAH!” Well, it WAS a fun kind of song. You just played it and enjoyed it. The term wasn’t around at the time, but I guess I thought it was a “Hot Mess” and that’s what I grew to love about it. No sheen, no shine, no gloss, just hardcore R&B.
So initially, I’d have given it a 5, but now I rate it a 9 for the pure joy it seems everybody was having in that Hitsville studio!
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Great comment. Really interesting you should have that reaction – everyone I play this to agrees it has nothing in common with the “Motown sound”, but usually because they say it’s too much like a girl group pop song, with not enough R&B!
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Agree 100% with this, I hesitate to use the term hot mess as that has modern connotations of horrors like Rebecca Black’s Friday or whatever Lady Gaga is wearing this week, but this record is certainly one hell of a romp! Although it’s arranged brilliantly, and it’s nothing like the loose funk jams that people like James Brown would become known for (or in a Motown context, Norman Whitfield I guess) everyone sounds like they’re having a ball in the studio. When you speak of the “bunch of guys” on backing vocals, it always sounded like the Four Tops to me, I’ve read YouTube comments that say the same, but you don’t mention it in the article. What say you TNA?
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Yes. That WAS The Four Tops. They did a fair amount of background singing at Motown in late 1963 and early 1964, before hitting it big with “Baby, I Need Your Loving”.
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Spector wishes he could work it like this. It retains some of his “wall of sound” without that cluttered feel.
What was more (for me anyway) is that the Supremes sounded good with some muscular male sound behind them, even if i never understood what they were singing.
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I was driving through Richmond , Va.last week on a Sunday night trying to find a station to listen to when I heard this song during a doo-wop show. It sounded great in the middle of all those rickety, tinny sounding songs. Perhaps, if HDH had lowered the key for Diana Ross in this song as they had for her in WDOLG, The Supremes may have made history a little earlier. Maybe.
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To say that HDH were copying the “Philly Sound” is not correct. The “Philly Sound” is from Philadelphia and was popular during the ’70’s. Many of the songs were written by Gamble & Huff.
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Yes, but I said Philles, not Philly… Two very different things.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philles_Records
The Motown and TSOP stories do intersect later on, but that’s a story for another day.
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Where to start? Well, the other day I was asking for enlightenment on the importance of Phil Spector, and after digging up Da Do Ron Ron I see that he introduced the super-fast shuffle feel that’s anchored most of the best HDH tracks in this recent batch. It’s hard to pick the piano out of the Spector mix (and since it’s “wall of sound” I assume there are 4 or 5 of them playing in unison). The Run Run Run piano is, to me, way too loud in the mix. It’s also pure, crisp triplets and the Spector part seems not be sparser patterns out of the same triplet groove. Aside from the advisability of a loud, relentless triplet piano part it’s quite amazing that a human could maintain a stream of triplets at that tempo. Can you tap your right hand that quickly on a table? George Martin was famous for recording piano parts an octave low at half speed so that when they were played back they’d be faster than he could normally play. I’m not sure if that was possible with whatever type of recording environment Motown had – or whether it had been thought of in 1964.
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If the pop stations were playing this in NYC, I didn’t hear it, which accounts for its poor chart performance. The R&B stations filled in the gap, and that’s the only reason I knew of this record. My favorite part was the Aahhs near the end by the Tops. (Thank you, Mr. Klein for filling that gap in my knowledge.)
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I’m rather surprised at how highly many people regard this recording. In most cases, where I disagree with the reviewer’s mark, I would go higher, but in this case I would mark lower. True, it’s entertaining and a very lively production, but musically it’s not that strong, and lyrically pretty basic. However, the biggest disappointment to me is Diana’s vocal, which is really awful to my ears, anyway. I know in their pre-hit days Diana’s vocal could sound a little nasally at times, particularly on ‘Never Again’, but on this she’s even worse. It sounds to me as if she was holding her nose while signing it. 4/10 from me, and even if the vocal lead was better it would only get 5/10.
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I like this record a lot, but must side with the majority in saying that it’s not quite up to the measure of “Lovelight”. On the other hand, I like it better than many of the records that followed, and I’m surely in the minority in that I prefer early Supremes on the whole to their later style. Correction: the record is actually in D3 (or Eb if you prefer) MAJOR, although there are lots of diminished and relative minor chords that give it a brooding, desperate quality that perfectly matches the lyric (of course — we are talking about HDH here!). The backing vocals on this song are amazing. My favorite moment is the few bars before the fade with the Cm to Ab change and the “aaa-aaa-aaa” backing vocals by the Four Tops. The more I listen to this song, the more I like it. Still, it’s not one of my all time Supremes faves.
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…also notable is the baritone sax playing (at least I assume it’s a bari). Knockout!
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Run, Run, Run was one of my favorites. The lead vocals, background vocals, the beat etc. I want to know WHO was playing piano ? Keeping up that pounding rhythm throughout the song…WOW
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