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Motown M 1060 (B), June 1964
B-side of Where Did Our Love Go
(Written by Norman Whitfield)
Stateside SS 327 (B), August 1964
B-side of Where Did Our Love Go
(Released in the UK under license through EMI / Stateside Records)
Back down to earth following the splendid, alien majesty of Where Did Our Love Go, but landing without too much of a bump.
He Means The World To Me was cut all the way back in January 1963. Things had moved on apace, at Motown and in America at large, during the intervening year and a half; but in truth, the A-side represents such a sea change that this sounds positively prehistoric by comparison. It’s a throwback to the time when the Sound Of The SupremesTM was best represented by the likes of Your Heart Belongs To Me (note the similar titles), and it’s now mostly notable as one of young Norman Whitfield’s first solo writer-producer efforts.
As with a lot of the pre-fame Supremes’ material from the time of its recording, this one is strongly reminiscent of Smokey Robinson’s calypso-tinged ballads for Mary Wells cut around the same time (the likes of Two Lovers, say, or Laughing Boy). Reminiscent in a good way, too; Whit also had an ear for a strong tune, and so while this comes across as clunky and derivative, fussy compared to the clean lines and almost insultingly simple structure of the A-side, it’s still a nice little record, a low-key pause for thought.
If it works much better as a reflective moment on the softer, more contemplative second side of the Where Did Our Love Go album (right), which features a whole crop of pop ballads with similarly skyscraping high vocals from the still young and unsophisticated Diana Ross – I’m Giving You Your Freedom, for instance, or A Breath Taking Guy, or Standing At The Crossroads Of Love – than on a 45, never mind this 45, well, it still serves that purpose when taken out of the album and pushed into service as a B-side. And it’s all rather pretty – we shouldn’t lose sight of that.
The things that are wrong with this – the rough edges, ungainly moments, wobbly music cues – are the things that the Funk Brothers had long since left behind them, or the things that Holland-Dozier-Holland had spent eighteen months ironing out of the Supremes in order to get them to Where Did Our Love Go, and so we can’t really blame either the girls or Norman Whitfield for them.
Instead, listen to what’s on the record: Diana’s sudden leaps up the register (or maybe touch MY hand) are startling, in a nice way, and the backing vocals are sounding good. Diana is as good here as she ever was around the winter of ’62/’63, (still prone to lapses into too-high, whiny territory, but also capable of real emotional impact).
A reminder that the A-side was made by very mortal human hands – you can see a lot of the joins here, and the Funk Brothers had indeed got a whole lot better in the fifteen months between the two sides of this single being recorded – but I certainly don’t hate it, it’s charming and sweet, and rather successful in its own limited way. More of a kindred spirit to Meet The Supremes than the later material on Where Did Our Love Go, it’s still, well, nice. It’s just that the world, Motown, the band and the Supremes had all moved on by the time it finally appeared, through no fault of its own; there wouldn’t be many more Supremes records like this one to make it to the surface.
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 “Where Did Our Love Go” |
Dorsey Burnette “Jimmy Brown” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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While we waited for you to get back, Nixon, I bet I’m not the only one of us whose heard this playing in his head in the meantime, despite my not having put a copy of it on any kind of audio hardware this past week. A little more proof then that a Motown record doesn’t have to be one of the uncontested monuments to remain agreeably memorable.
You own review isn’t up yet as I type this and my impulse is to give this at least a ‘6,’ but I could be talked upward by whatever you have to say. It’s an agreeable little song and all three Supremes put passion into their singing. As long as one isn’t measuring this by the newly-discovered ‘Ross sound’ of the A-side, no fair review should slay it. Even if it were less worthwhile, after all these years, it would readily have curiosity value thanks to Whitfield’s name for the only time on a Supremes single.
I can’t remember what book now, but I know I read that while Norman waited for his shot as The Temptations’ key producer, some wise head at Motown suggested he continue proving his mettle in the interim by warming up on less hot acts at the time. Thus, Motown record buyers got another stone classic single of Marvelettes, and a clutch of kick-ass good Velvelettes sides.
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I’ll expound on this soon enough, of course, but I consider Whitfield’s production work with the Velvelettes as some of the most underrated in Motown history.
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Here’s wishing continued talent to your typing fingers, Nixon, and we hope you’re eating plenty of brain food.
By my reckoning, by the end of this ‘summer,’ and comparable in importance or lasting beauty to “Where Are Love Go” are at least three more milestones: Motown 1062, Gordy 7033, and the b-side of Tamla 54102.
You’re doing a terrific job 🙂
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OK. Time for some help from the Motown Junkies brains trust now. (If you’re reading this, that means you.)
Dorsey Burnette’s “Jimmy Brown” is the first time we’ll encounter the iconic (for UK readers anyway!) Tamla Motown label. This marks the point at which the US and UK Motown discographies begin to diverge.
This presents me with a problem. At the moment, since the two discographies are the same – a select handful of UK releases simply following the US releases a few months later – the chronology is easy. But what happens when it’s not so easy? What should I do with a single that appears in Britain first, and the US later? What about the many, many British TM singles that have alternate B-sides (or indeed A-sides!) to their American counterparts? And how about the small but significant minority of British releases that never came out in America at all?
My gut instinct is to stick to a strict chronological interpretation, and do it this way:
If you’re following this, you’re doing better than me… Still, this seems the “least worst” way of avoiding horrible clashes, and better there be a couple of dead “/notyet” links up for a while than I get stuck in a loop reviewing things that weren’t released until months, sometimes years, later. But I’d love to know what people’s thoughts and suggestions are on this, if anyone cares!
(Also, if you’re out there and have any Tamla Motown scans to send me, now’s the time to begin…!)
Thanks everyone.
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(bonus question: Tamla Motown EPs – include, or not include?)
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(Most of the EPs are just glorified “maxi-singles”, or multi-artist mini-album compilation efforts, but there are a few interesting curios that I wouldn’t otherwise get to cover – a bunch of stuff from We Remember Sam Cooke, for starters – and that does tempt me. But I might be opening a giant can of worms. I could adopt a similar policy to the singles, and only review EP tracks that haven’t already been covered.)
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Wow! A spectacular dilemma, exposed with all the lucidity one could reasonably expect! – If I were feeling particularly sadistic (which I’m not) I’d ask ‘What about the singles they released in other languages, in other countries… such as Stevie Wonder’s ‘Passo le mie notte qui da solo’ which I picked up in Rome in the summer of 1967 – I see that the Supremes did a few of those too (Se lo filo spezzerai, aka You keep me hangin’ on!)’ – But I think your solution is as elegant as possible. As far as EPs go, I will abstain, since I never bought one…
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No sadism, it’s a legitimate question – and if I were Italian rather than British, or if I at least knew the Italian equivalents of you, Dave, Gordon, Robb and 144man, then they’d likely be included. But having made the rather arbitrary decision to include British releases (mainly because that’s where I’m from, but also due to the reputation of the Tamla Motown brand and the sheer weight of interesting “new” material I’d get to talk about), I had to draw the line somewhere to prevent future spontaneous combustion.
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My humble vote goes for your final option, and I would skip the Eps, just as you will be skipping the Lps. Another consideration is that this blog is a helpful companion to the Motown Complete Singles sets, and I believe the Eps are not included in those sets.
Thank you.
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I’m with Steven and John, Nixon. It seems like the way to make it easiest on yourself is to review the record at the moment it is publicly ‘born’ in one country or the other, UK or USA. If that means we sometimes wait a little longer for some favorite, what of it? It’s your wonderful writing that’s making us loyal visitors, not any chronology.
The EP’s, yes, are tempting, but go ahead and skip them, and don’t make your work load any greater. As it is, there’s been plenty of mention by all of us about this or that favorite album track, a little discussion gets started, and I think eventually we’ll all be heard on what we thought were lost hits that never found their way out of an album. 😮 I’ve probably dropped “Knock On My Door” in 10 comments already.
You’ve got a captive audience, so whatever you can do to streamline the labor on yourself, go right ahead 🙂
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Wouldn’t the simplest way be to stick to the Complete Motown Singles as a basis, and review UK singles as and when they were released in the UK, but only if they were never released as a single in the US? That way all singles released in the US and the UK would still get reviewed eventually.. The US singles could still be cross-referenced to the UK issues, or indeed reissues.
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See, I thought so to begin with – there are only a small number of singles that came out in the UK first and subsequently came out in America (though some of them are very high profile: Tears of a Clown, The Onion Song, I’m Still Waiting), and it wouldn’t be so bad to review them in the US order. It’d just mean talking about US releases in a kind of artificial bubble, but I could live with that for the simplicity it would bring.
But then I looked through the discography some more, and realised that there are problems with that approach. The Onion Song, for instance, came out in the UK in October 1969, but wasn’t released in America until March 1970 – but the UK release features a B-side, “I Can’t Believe You Love Me”, that never appeared in the US. When stuff like that happens, everything collapses; I couldn’t just review “I Can’t Believe You Love Me” when we get to Oct 69 but leave the A-side until Mar 70 (leaving a dead link on the review and the Master Index in a mess), but it seems perverse not to review the B-side until Mar 70 when I can include the US single (meaning I have to go back and insert something in the Master Index several months previously, messing up the previous/next chronology and the order of the (automatically-generated) category archive pages).
The only way around it I could see was to take a pan-Atlantic view, and review things the first time they appear, regardless of where – the only drawback being, yes, that causes a break with the TCMS boxes.
But then, I’m breaking with TCMS anyway in order to review:
…and my mind’s made up on those things definitely making it in, so it’s just a question of trying to make something messy and complex more user-friendly.
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It could all get very unwieldy, and there’s the danger of falling between two stools. I’ve got a headache just thinking about it. At least you’ve got a great record like “Jimmy Brown” to review to take your mind off the problem for a while!
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Indeed! Let’s get back to the music. Sorry to the Supremes for hijacking their discussion thread! (though it’s not as if they need the exposure…)
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…And of course other artists’ threads are NEVER hijacked by Supremes’ fans [deep sarcasm].
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Wonderful verdict! You are absolutely right that this song can’t be judged too hard considering the quick advancement in not only music, but the Supremes sound. I really like the horns in this song and Flo & Mary’s backing. Diana’s lead is a little boring here.
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I always thought this song had kind of a starry eyed, girl group/Shirelles vibe to it. To me, it sounds best when heard in the context of the “Where Did Our Love Go” album. Hard to believe that Norman Whitfield went from this song to “Cloud Nine” & “Grapevine” a few short years later. Woah!
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Lets give it an extra point for the vibes in the background and the girls vocals mixed closer to the top than normal. Songs about girls placing guys on a pedestal never grow old!
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Agree!
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As Smokey would say “I Second That Emotion”!!!
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LOL = )
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Yikes – is this really also sung by Diana Ross? The A-side has a Billie Holiday-esque timeless quality and is exquisitely in tune. The intonation on the B-side is appalling.
The vocal on Where Did Out Love Go ranges from middle C up to A. This one spends most of its time in precisely the same range, but at key points jumps up to the higher C (“or maybe just MY hand”, etc.) – still only an octave in total range. By way of comparison, Baby Love, by the time it modulates at the end, gets up to B, and is also exquisite. So range doesn’t explain it – I guess DR either had a horrible day on this one or went from being – quite frankly – unacceptably unprofessional to being one of the great iconic vocal talents of the century in one year’s time! It’s not just the intonation – it’s … everything. If used for advertising a school for singers, this would serve one of the great “before-after” comparisons of all time!
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LOL! Great point Kevin.
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I just want to point out that Norman Whitfield was a very fortunate fellow. The way publishing royalties worked on singles, the B-side’s writer got paid the same as the A-side’s. Therefore Whitfield made as much money on this tune as H-D-H made on “Where Did Our Love Go.” (Kind of like the guy who made millions because his tune was the original B-side of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”)
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