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Motown M 1054 (B), February 1964
B-side of Run, Run, Run
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)
The Supremes having made such giant strides on the A-side, Run, Run, Run, towards the assuredness (if not the actual sound, or the sales) that would make them stars, it’s more than a little jarring to be suddenly pitched back to an earlier era for the flip.
This is one of the very first Holland-Dozier-Holland/Supremes collaborations, both Diana Ross and HDH feeling their way gingerly around a pedestrian ballad. Built around an “Ooh-ooh-ooh” vocal hook from Flo and Mary, it all comes across as slightly hesitant, slightly unsure of itself, just as its creators must likely have been.
This is another nice coincidence of lyrics and delivery – Diana’s character is plucking up the courage to dump her wayward boyfriend, on the basis that the relationship is making both of them miserable, and in so doing she’s “giving him” the freedom he apparently wants. Again, though, I doubt it’s any more than a coincidence.
It’s all pretty enough, with some nice ideas (check out the flamenco guitar!) and a striking time signature (which in hindsight might have been too much too soon), but it was never likely to pull up any trees.
Nicely sung by all three women, featuring some great moments amid the overwhelming morass of Totally Average which covers the record, but symptomatic of the directionless mess HDH found the Supremes in when they took over the role of songwriters and producers for the hitherto “no-hit” group. I’m Giving You Your Freedom stands as an indication of the scale of the job HDH had on their hands, rather than a first sign of them actually tidying up some of the mess and beginning to turn things around.
It’s no embarrassment; by its own limited standards, it’s pleasant but inconsequential fare. You wouldn’t get up to turn it off, but equally you probably wouldn’t keep coming back for repeat listens, not when there’s so much more interesting Supremes material out there to investigate.
Not awful or anything, but this is a relic from an age already past, and there was very much better to come. Try the A-side, for starters.
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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| The Supremes “Run, Run, Run” |
Joanne & The Triangles “After The Showers Come Flowers” |
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Motown Junkies 
Now you really have surprised me.
While I agree that “Run Run Run” is an underrated and fine Supremes track, I would have guessed that if either side of Motown 1054 got a ‘9’ from you it would be this.
“Run Run Run,” fine as it is, can never escape its obvious teenage giddiness and excitement. While it’s fun for what it is, it isn’t a record its lead singer could keep in her repertoire for very long. Whereas one could actually imagine Ross making “Freedom” sound heartfelt at her 67 years today, she’d probably laugh (and gasp for air) trying to get through “Run.”
I think this is a marvelous performance by Ross, all melancholy resignation that there’s no saving this relationship, and Florence and Mary are terrific in shoring Ross up in agreement and musical punctuation. In hindsight, it should have surprised no one that Gordy would eventually take Ross to Hollywood. On vinyl or celluloid, she’s already a convincing actress.
According to Hip-O Select’s now sold-out(!) 40th Anniversary edition of the Where Did Our Love Go album, “Freedom” was done as of September 13, 1962, highly likely the first extant result of the Supremes and HDH together. If nothing else, perhaps we can agree “Freedom” -then ready- would have made a better b-side for a flat ‘A’ like “My Heart Can’t Take It No More,” or surely a finer compliment to “Breaktaking Guy” than that banjo number…?
Both sides of this disc -for very different reasons- are solid ‘7s’ with me.
đŸ™‚
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Impossible to evaluate either of these two songs objectively… ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ was the first Motown album I bought, and only my fourth or fifth nonclassical album. All these songs are deeply woven into the texture of second-year university living, bleary late night study, being awakened by my very excited roommate who had just seen Fellini’s 8 1/2; and the beautiful melancholy splendor of sunrise after studying all night (to compensate for a certain degree of dissipation!) This song particularly evokes that period. Alas, my copy of the LP has long since disappeared, so my impressions are fairly distant memories. I think, having taken so long to ripen, that it was a fascinating album – unlike its successor, More Hits by the Supremes, which had three strong singles and (as I recall) a lot of filler – unlike the Temptations and Miracles albums of the same period, in which every second is pure gold. I know that after too many sleepless nights I was likely to find echoes of Diana Ross in the pages of Sophocles… just as James Brown seemed somehow to echo King Lear…
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James Brown and King Lear – really???
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“Howl, howl, howl!” We were convinced that the transcendent cosmic howling energy of James Brown had Shakespearean overtones!
And I distinctly remember scrawling some Diana Ross reference into the margin of my edition of Oedipus Rex. How we managed to
get through university with a few synapses intact is a mystery which still baffles – but we weren’t the only ones awash in a cross-cultural maelstrom. Look at ‘I Am the Walrus’ – with, indeed, a huge chunk of King Lear overlaying the final part of the song.
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Wow thanx for the info about this song possibly being The Supremes & HDH first collaboration. Knowing this it should have been apparent even then that HDH would be the guys to take them in a new direction.
I totally agree with you about Miss Ross trying to sing “Run” now. I saw her last weekend at the Universal Mardi Gras (she looked fabulous and sounded great!). I cannot picture her singing “Run” today in her Supreme Medley section at all!
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Its a pleasant record and well produced but there is no hook to make it a hit. The only reason I listen to it is for the backgrounds and to hear Mary and Flo. Ross can sing but there is no reason for me to listen to her sing this record I am more impressed with the music and the background scenery. I think this record would have made a great instrumental.
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This is a real favorite of mine. I think of it more as an album track from the wonderful “Where Did Our Love Go” album. I always thought this sounded a bit like a Shirelles song. I love the guitar. I have this song on my MP3 player & it is always a treat when it comes up in shuffle play. I think the Supremes were underated as a group when it came to doing ballads. I undertand Motown releasing the uptempo songs as singles but the albums contain some nice ballads.
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I agree with this verdict. Like you mentioned above this song isn’t so terrible that you would turn it off, but it’s not something you would turn up either. For lack of a better word this song is lukewarm. I’m surprised you didn’t go into more detail about Diana’s tone on this song. She sounds good, but it’s not that signature Ross sound that made The Supremes. Here she sounds like any other girl that possible could have been on the radio at the time. With that said, this song showcases the perfect amount of vocal drama that she began to invest in her voice. Years later it should have been no suprise that she’d turnout to be a competent actress one day too. Unlike the uptempo, A-side of this record, there’s nothing ‘teenage’ about ‘Freedom.’ Mary and Florence are feeling it too and perfect in their sympathetic backup of Diana’s painful choice here.
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I also think “I’m Giving You Your Freedom” is actually a great moment for the original Supremes. It’s one of the first recordings in which the three voices are quite distinct–and the harmonies are beautiful, even lyrical at times. It’s a mellower Ross, closer to the mic, not as nasal as her early soprano. I also agree with those who wrote that the Supremes should have done more ballads. Gordy could have developed this skill (in all three of them, especially Mary). I also like the slightly Latin feel to this record–Gordy abandoned this sound once “Where Did Our Love Go” hit, but more could have been done here, also. So, I’d say that “I’m Giving You Your Freedom” is actually one of the best tracks on WDOLG. A heartfelt lead by Ross, excellent harmonies by Mary & Flo (who are quote audible here).
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This is a standout song on an excellent album. It pushes side two right along and sets you up for the next cut. Thats what real good filler does as opposed to eating up 2 minutes and 15 seconds between hit singles.
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As with any great album, there had to be powerful songs to start and end each side — the first to capture attention and draw the listener in; the second to sum up the various highs of the album’s A-side and to hint at more and similar excitement to come; the third to keep anticipation for the album’s B-side at a high level; and the fourth to make the listener feel satisfied by the experience and compelled to listen to the album again (and to serve as a promise that the next album would be superb, too).
The fact that this song was chosen to be one of the four tent poles of the Where Did Our Love Go album — along with the title song, the unexpectedly muscular, giddy though intense rave of Long Gone Lover and the swirling, constantly enlarging drive of Your Kiss Of Fire –suggests that Motown recognized it as a very strong track.
Yes, I know that Ask Any Girl was the last song on the album, but it served as an encore or coda, reinforcing all that came before. (And as we saw, Ask Any Girl also fulfilled that premise, drawing people into More Hits the following year, again reprising the wondrous breakthrough of the Where Did Our Love Go album and the exuberance we felt in experiencing its three enormous hits.)
My only quibble with the Where Did Our Love Go lineup is that it failed to include the wonderfully haunting Always In My Heart, which would have fit, stylistically, far better than Standing At The Crossroads Of Love or perhaps He Means The World To Me, the two songs that seemed a bit dated, relative to the rest of the album.
As for I’m Giving You Your Freedom, lyrically and vocally it has a maturity that belies the fact that it was recorded almost two years before the young-sounding Baby Love. It is a companion piece with Never Again, an oft-overlooked early side that holds up remarkably well (as our host here has noted, happily). While it may lack the giddy excitement of Run, Run, Run or Long Gone Lover, It is exquisitely contemplative and moving; it is gentle, yet powerful. And it remains as one of the freshest cuts on the Where Did Our Love Go album, while certain songs like A Breath Taking Guy or Baby Love at once bounce along and seem a bit tired, because we have heard them so often now.
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Mary and Flo sound beautiful in the background. Their voices blend so well with the background. This song sounds like had it been say Marvin Gaye with them on background it may have been a top tier hit
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