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UNRELEASED: promo copies only
Tamla (no cat. no.) (A), November 1964
b/w My Way
(Written by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams)
After a dismal little run of sides, the unexpected return of Marvin Gaye warmed my heart. Sure, it’s too soon to be meeting him again, coming just a couple of weeks after How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), but when it comes to extra Marvin, who’s complaining?
Me, as it happens. This is awful.
Marvin’s third (third!) LP of standards and show tunes, Hello Broadway, had already yielded up the rather good Walk On The Wild Side for use on the flip of his earlier single Baby Don’t You Do It, but Motown’s marketing mavens felt the album could do with some more exposure, and so they threw together this promo-only 45, pulling two tracks from the LP to give DJs and distributors a flavour of what they were missing.
And what they were missing, it turns out, was two lifeless cuts of the tiredest, least-inspired whitebread crooning you’re ever likely to encounter from a soul legend. Quite why Motown felt it important to highlight this is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they just greenlit this with a resigned shrug – “Eh, maybe SOMEONE will like it.”.
Nobody did.
In mid-1964, with an increasingly respectable stack of R&B and pop hits, Marvin Gaye still cherished his dream of being a mainstream entertainer, singing for well-dressed grown-ups rather than screaming teens; if he no longer harboured ambitions to be the new Nat King Cole, he nevertheless wanted to do something serious, something more prestigious than shaking his hips and dancing around a stage belting out Hitch Hike.
Motown boss Berry Gordy, who’d tabbed Marvin as a future R&B superstar from day one, was happy enough with the returns on his investment – and tempted enough by the idea of developing a bona fide MOR circuit “name” – to indulge Marvin in his expensive fantasy, even as the R&B records sold by the crateful, while the adult contemporary stuff gathered dust on the shelves. But the routine was starting to wear thin. As mentioned, Hello Broadway was Marvin’s third album of this stuff – Broadway tunes, hokey old standards, hokey new songs written to sound like hokey old standards – and none of it was selling.
Worse, it was starting to send out mixed messages. Gordy had hired etiquette coach Maxine Powell and instituted the Artist Development department, Motown’s “finishing school”, to turn his roster of rough-and-ready public housing teens and hard-drinking street-corner doo-woppers into genteel and respectable performers in satin gowns and sharp suits, groomed – in Powell’s words – to play just two venues: the White House and Buckingham Palace.
But however much Marvin Gaye might have wanted to earn the respect that came with becoming a mainstream entertainer of older (and whiter) audiences, he just wasn’t cut from that cloth. Gaye was a brooding, headstrong, moody individual, a troubled soul convinced of his own greatness. Motown played up this angle in their marketing, the smouldering, handsome Gaye portrayed as a rebellious figure, slightly enigmatic, slightly dangerous, with a dark energy brewing behind those beautiful eyes; the recipe sold buckets of records and cemented Gaye’s place as a successful chart star, and as the Sixties progressed, the label would reap the benefits of him being both a hugely commercial pop star and a talented, intelligent artist.
But all of that was in the future, and in the meantime, here’s Marvin the obedient showbiz apprentice, begging for scraps at the feet of the old order, a slave to the establishment. Not exactly on message.
This is a thoroughly dispiriting record. It’s a schlocky, schmaltzy little song, an excerpt from the contemporary Sammy Davis Jr. stage musical Golden Boy (where it serves as a brief moment of happiness in amongst a lot of gloomy, heavyweight stuff) lifted out of context to become a simple celebration of success – “hooray, I’ve finally made it!” – and much-covered as a standalone standard, most notably by white crooner Matt Monro, missing the point on every level.
Marvin’s version is better than Monro’s turgid stylings, for sure, but don’t take that as a recommendation – it’s still not good.
In 1978, when Marvin cut the astonishing Here, My Dear LP, a self-portrait of a man driven to the very edge of complete mental breakdown by the collapse of his marriage and working through his tensions on vinyl for everyone to hear, there are a couple of tracks (the opening Here My Dear/I Met A Little Girl medley, for instance) where Marvin puts on a weird, high voice with a strange sing-song cadence, sounding almost stoned; a disturbing indicator of the narrator’s mental state as he delivers a passive-aggressive kiss-off to his ex-wife.
That’s what springs to mind every time I listen to This Is The Life, which seems to be performed using that same voice – but on a song about celebration and blissful joy. He’s anything but joyful, giving a nice-sounding performance (especially after Monro’s attempt!), but rather than investing the song with his own character and taking risks, Marvin shrinks back into his shell, reading out the lyrics with no empathy and no real emotion.
As so often with Marvin’s MOR material, his technical ability isn’t really in question – though he’s not on his home turf and can’t play this game as well as he thinks he can, a realisation that was only just dawning on him – but rather he’s hamstrung by an out-of-proportion respect for hokey Tin Pan Alley material that borders on reverence. That’s the story here, where he’s obviously copying Sammy’s delivery, doing the whole thing with a huge forced smile (including some audible half-laughs between lines) just because that’s how he thinks the song is meant to sound.
It’s a song about all your dreams finally coming true, but Marvin makes it sound as if he’s just found an extra beer at the back of the fridge. When he sings Children, make way / I’m here to stay!, it’s meant to be the culmination of a lifetime of struggle giving way to fame and fortune, but there’s no confidence in his bullish pronouncements – you’re not even sure those children will recognise him, never mind move out of his way. Which is the problem with the whole record: it doesn’t sound real, doesn’t connect with the material or the listener. Essentially, he’s pretending to be happy, and not particularly convincingly.
The ultimate conclusion is that Marvin Gaye, eventually the beloved, million-selling jewel in Motown’s crown, just wasn’t a skilled interpreter of MOR material. It’s not that he doesn’t love the songs, it’s that he loves them too much, becoming afraid to impose himself on them without realising that’s exactly what we’ve come to hear. With that approach, Marvin is no longer free to be Marvin, and so he’ll never do great things. At best he’s a tribute act – and it’s no coincidence that his upcoming fourth and final standards LP was billed as such (A Tribute to the Great Nat King Cole).
I’m not giving this 1, because his voice does sound nice, and because he’s not Matt Monro. But this is still a lifeless, rote rendition of a song that wasn’t all that great in the first place, and its very existence underlines the fact Marvin Gaye still wasn’t quite the finished article.
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 have the reissued cd of Hello Broadway. I haven’t played it in ages so I don’t remember the song. I’ll give it a listen but I know I’m not a big fan of the album overall so I’ll probably agree with you.
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It could make you wonder if anybody at Motown noted, ‘this is what Aretha is doing at Columbia and it’s not working.’ History has been kinder, judging Franklin’s Columbia output as ‘great turntable hits,’ and learning years that taught her familiarity and comfort in recording studios, so that when the time came, and Jerry Wexler determined to let her be herself at Atlantic, the miracles came one after the other, after the other. But as far record sales, the Columbia stuff didn’t move.
By now, other artists at Motown had to be watching the atypical, long line of patience Marvin was granted by his brother-in-law with some envy.
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Lol agree about the others at Motown
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I like the Aretha Columbia music I have heard. Of course, I love the Atlantic (& some later stuff) music but Miss Franklin was a very good jazz/pop singer. She did some great mellow stuff at Atlantic as well which tends to get ignored in the light of endless replays of “Respect” & “Think” Damecia, you need to check out Aretha’s Columbia stuff. In an alternate universe I wonder what Motown would have done with Aretha. Something tells they would have done one of 2 things – 1) They may have tried to continue to record her in a pop/soul setting a la Barbara McNair OR 2) They might have heard what Jerry Wexler was hearing & put her on the SOUL label & maybe hook her up with Whitfield/Strong like they did with Gladys Knight. Who knows? Interesting that it took a white guy like Wexler to hear Aretha’s “soulful voice”.
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Interestingly enough I have NEVER heard any of Aretha’s Columbia stuff. Like most people of my generation or I think it may be safe to say like most people period I am only familiar with the soul music she has become a legend for. Like some people said about “Baby Love” on the blog it’s one of those songs that gets played sooo much you forget how great it really is. I think that’s what has happened to alot of Aretha’s work. For example, my grandma used to play “Chain of Fools” all the time when I was little, but it wasn’t until recently that I actually “heard” the song and released the great vocal work that she and the background singers were doing.
IMO if Aretha was on Motown she would have never became the Queen Of Soul. She would have most likely gotten lost in the shuffle and left like Glady’s did. Besides there’s only room for one Queen and Miss Ross already held that title lol.
Also, I think Aretha would have been too much for Motown. She would have made any H-D-H song sound completely different by doing what she does best — the runs & riffs. IMO this can be a bad thing sometimes. For instance, I hate her soundtrack for Sparkle. In no means does she sound bad, but I would have preferred if they had released the cast singing the songs like the sang in the film instead.
Listen to Aretha’s Columbia stuff is definitely on my to do list.
And yes it is funny that it took a guy like Wexler to say this girls needs to be doing soul lol.
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Aretha would have been too independent and headstrong for Motown’s regimented studio system. Also note that by 1965, Columbia had started to funnel her into soul material – but it was Columbia’s watered-down rendition of soul. Tracks like “Runnin’ Out of Fools” and “Lee Cross” made some noise, and Van McCoy’s “One Step Ahead” (actually my favorite Aretha song) is a fine number with a Smokey-ish extended metaphor. But Columbia in the 60s was still “Sing Along with Mitch” Miller’s MOR kingdom; it simply was not a soul label.
Damecia, Jerry Wexler knew more about soul than any 20 people at 51 W. 52nd St., having been at the helm of Atlantic’s R&B product for more than a decade when Aretha arrived. Note that Wexler originally wanted her to record with the Stax musicians, as Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave had. But by 1967 Stax was too busy with its OWN hot material to accept any more outside acts. Instead, Aretha and Wexler first recorded at the FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which had a similar sound. (The story of that session is very interesting.)
Finally, almost all of Aretha’s Columbia albums are on Spotify, including her best one for the label, “Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington.” Still weak compared to just her first two Atlantic singles.
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Hi Randy!
Thanx for the insight. I’m going to checkout the titles you mentioned above, especially your favorite. My favorite Aretha song just happens to be “I Was Made To Love You”
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I believe that this promotional demo of “This is the life / “My way” was issued to a few radio stations it was never the intent to promote it as a single ,that is why there seems to be no regular record number on it.. but it was to promote the album only!! I can not remember who gave me my copy back in the day.. It was either from w t i x or w y l d in New Orleans I don’t remember seeing it at all in Detroit or Chicago,how ever I really wasn’t’ looking for it at the time., But It was around in 1965 in March I Believe. I was a whole lot younger at the time so I really was not in to the album at that time ‘ I did not care much for the MOR style of music at that time!! I Remember being surprised hearing Marvin Doing more of MOR , And crooning. of coarse later I found out that he had a little fondness for that type of music!! AH SO!! I Never Paid any attention to the album at the time. I noticed on my promo 45 it also has 1965 on it on the label. The complete Motown singles collection puts it a the nearing the end of 1964.. which makes it a bit confusing… I wonder if that was when the album was recorded or possibly when the track or song was recorded for the album?? unfortunately I do not have any information on the album’s release date right here at hand. i saw recently another one(promotional or demo single) that was also labeled as 1965 as printed and a received date stamp on it in 1965 as well . It sounds better to me now than it did when i was younger, but all in all I would give it a “3” at best ‘I did noticed that it was a Davis and Gordon production west coast ? or did they come up to Detroit for a time or 2 in the early days ?? This seems like the era when Berry was trying to get into show tunes and MOR but Marvin can sing in a variety of styles and still come out on top!!!!! I wish the Album did better though!, This single’s mission as a promotional tool at least in my recallation didn’t help that much to boost the album , Not many stations played it!! maybe they perceived it as to much out of Marvin’s Character and MOR Radio stations associated Marvin with R&B and POP!! and remember of coarse it was to push the album and not as a single on it’s own!! it was only available on the album at the time.
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It’s a West Coast recording, yes. Somehow can’t imagine the Funk Brothers tearing it up on “What Kind Of Fool Am I?”
The album was released on 12th November 1964; this promo single seems to have first been sent out at roughly the same time, maybe a couple of weeks later. I can only guess that Motown either kept on sending them out into 1965 in the hope of persuading jocks to spin them, or alternatively the date on the labels is wrong.
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Goldmine, the US record collectors’ “bible,” lists it as a 1965 release, using the “S4KM” matrix number as a catalog number.
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Indeed, the matrix number seems to have been assigned (by RCA Custom in their Chicago studios) just prior to that for Marvin’s doggone “I’ll Be Doggone,” probably pinpointing this release to some time in February ’65.
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I never saw this in any record shop. It was exclusively printed up in very small quantities to promote the album. Marvin did a great job on this cut. The instrumental is really good too. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s quite listenable. I’d give it a “5”.
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I haven’t a clue why, but when I first heard this on TCMS (never heard originally – at age 4, Kyu Sakamoto was about all the MOR I could handle), I thought it might be a parody down to the farty trombone blat at the end. In any case, that ending made me chuckle. As a song, I considered it not good at all for his talents. It’s certainly no Walk On The Wild Side.
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When writing these reviews, WordPress often tries to automatically suggest tags and headlines based on computer analysis of the text. Not only does “Farty trombone blat” sound like something it would suggest, it’s actually as perfect a summary of this record as you’ll get.
I’m not sure if anyone outside Motown or Marvin’s immediate family heard this originally, other than disappointed teenagers who’d just blown their allowance on the “new Marvin Gaye LP”.
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Hey! Kyu Sakamoto is da man! I love “Sukiyaki”!
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I once read that if we understood the lyrics of that melancholy Japanese-language hit, we’d know calling it “Sukiyaki” would be the equivalent of calling “Moon River” “Beef Stew.”
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Yeah I heard that too! LOL! By the way, a few years ago, jazz/pop singer Bobby Caldwell did a really cool remake of “Sukiyaki” with the original English lyrics. Very sad lyrics indeed! Also, R&B Group, A Taste of Honey, did a cool remake as well. I believe in the case of TOH they simply wrote new English lyrics. It is so funny, I have a soft spot for a good MOR song!
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That is so true! Not only is the melody of S-ki-yaki beautiful, -but the words are beautiful as well. It was one of my favourite songs of 1963. His follow-up, “China Nights”, was garbage. His hit was the only song from Asia I can remember charting on US pop radio.Although Charlie Drake, Frank Ifield and The Gibbs Brothers did come from Australia (at least, originally).
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That’s very true. The lyrics say he is a happy man because of the love of his girl. It should be titled: I’m a Happy Man”, in English.
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Sure it’s no rythm and blues and there are no “funk brothers” here but I found you very severe on this one. He’s far more at ease on this one than on When I’m alone I cry. Sure it would have been a lot more enjoyable if Nelson Riddle had backed Marvin up but I like very much the smile, the sweetness in his voice. A 6 for me.
P.S : It’s very difficult to disagree with you because of the strength of your arguments but I had to.
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Thanks Eric. Never feel the need to apologise for disagreeing, that’s what the comments section is all about!
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Hi Eric!
I completely agree with you. = )
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Wonderful analysis Steve D. especially the last two paragraphs. I agree with that other person so far who had diasgreed with this verdict. I would give this an 8/10. Yes, Marvin sounds bored. Yes, is not his best vocal work. But, I find this song to be plesant. IMO his voice is quite lovely here & so is the instrumentation. A nice song to listen to in the morning as you prepare for the day. It reminds me alot of “The Things I Will Not Miss” a duet him & Diana Ross recorded.
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Thank you Damecia. Sometimes it’s good not to be alone ;).
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Hey Damecia. I LOVE the Diana/Marvin duets. Wish they would have made another album together. Of course, I realize their one “duet album” was actually a cut/paste job & they weren’t even in the studio together. A pregnant Ross didn’t want to be around a dope smoking Marvin! Anyway, for a cut/paste job it is still a fantastic album!
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By the way, I didn’t mean to leave you out Sonic Eric. Are you new to the site? Welcome friend!
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Thank you for asking. I’m addicted to Motown Junkies (by far, my favorite blog) for one year and a half and I’m looking forward to all the good things to come. If I didn’t make all the comments that I planned to make, it’s because I’m french and my english is very awkward. Good to have you back on the site, Mr Landini !
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If the Gaye-Ross duets proved anything it was that the effortless dovetailing of Marvin’s talent with Tammi Terrell’s was real magic and couldn’t be manufactured even with the Queen of Motown willing.
No teaming of these two could be terrible and it wasn’t: the wistful “My Mistake” sounds great to this day, and though it’s too short, I’m partial myself to the furious and jammin’ 45 version of “Don’t Knock My Love.”
But with Marvin’s “What’s Going On,” “Trouble Man” and “Let’s Get It On” already out there and taken to the heart of his every fan, he seemed at that point ascended to some high priest figure of soul, a place that made more boy-girl duets feel somewhat retro. And with Ross, at the time duets appeared, there was probably greater fan curiosity about whether she’d ever get another acting challenge as juicy as “Lady Sings The Blues.”
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Absolutely agree with you Dave L about why the album wasn’t the huge success it should have been. I never took into consideration the other major things that both artist were doing at the time. There are some real killer tracks on Diana & Marvin. Like you I love “Don’t Knock My Love”. Everything about the song is just great. The intro, the dramatic background vocals, the horns, the bass & the soul Marvin & Diana both oozed made this one funky track. I too like “My Mistake” as a matter fact as soon as you mentioned it I began singing it lol. 2 other great tracks I love off the album are “Falling In Love” I love the easy, sweet melody and “Include Me In Your Life” I love the “darling, darling, darling” bit Marvin & Miss Ross do at the start of the track.
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Hi Grandpa Landini! Hope you’re feeling well today = )
Agree for a cut & paste album Diana & Marvin did have wonderful chemistry. I especially love “Love Twins”. One of my favorite songs off the album. I love the talking bit they do before the chorus when Marvin says “I love you baby” and Diana says “I love you to Marvin.” Sweet = ) lol. Miss Ross also did a duet called “Dreaming of You” with Lionel Richie that I’m sure would have been a Top 10 hit if it were released, but due to labels conflict it wasn’t.
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Thanks D. Am feeling pretty good. Wasn’t feeling so good earlier in the week. Thanks for your concern/prayers. Oh Yes Ma’am! “Love Twins” is my jam & I love that same spoken part. My friends just give me strange looks when I mention this song. LOL! Also Iove their version of “Pledging My Love”. Just beautiful!
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Tell your friends to stop hatin’ on “Love Twins” lol.
While Miss Ross & Marvin both sound great on “Pledging My Love” that is my least favorite song on the album. The lyrics are very touching, but it is just something that is too “old-timey” about the song lol.
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You hit the nail on the head m’lady. It is old timey because it is a remake of an old Johnny Ace song from the 50s
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Aha something else I didn’t know. Thanx for dropping this knowledge on me Grandpa Landini = )
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I liked it better when Sammy Davis Jr did it.
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