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Motown M 1072 (B), December 1964
B-side of Come See About Me
(Written by Norman Whitfield, Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson)
Tamla Motown TMG 517 (B), June 1965
B-side of Mickey’s Monkey
(Released in the UK under licence through Tamla Motown – note UK-only A-side)
Another rousing big band cover of a Motown R&B pop hit, courtesy of Walter “Choker” Campbell and (a version of) the Motown live stage band. But unlike the A-side, a fun but fundamentally misjudged cover of the Supremes’ Come See About Me, this flip makes for a much easier conversion into a swinging Fifties workout.
Marvin Gaye’s original version of Pride And Joy, getting on for two years old when Choker’s version appeared, had been a curiously dated number from the start. In its first edition, as featured on Marvin’s That Stubborn Kinda Fellow LP, the song was a straightforward blast through the halls of boogie-woogie and rock ‘n’ roll via gospel and jazz. The 7″ version we covered here on Motown Junkies had been buffed and polished to give it a bit more of a pop sheen for the folks on the radio, but underneath it all the song’s roots always showed through. It’s those roots which Choker brings to the fore on his version, and he seems to think he knows what the underlying melody and rhythm really needed to make them come alive. (Rightly, as it turns out). So, he ends up turning in a tight, bumptious, aggressively-modified track that – pound for pound – fits the song even better than the backing Gaye had used. I wonder if Marvin ever heard this version, and what he made of it?
What’s missing, of course, is Marvin himself. The main vocal line is taken up here by some flirtatious horns, but there’s a tantalising hint always lurking in the background, a hint of a reality that never came to be; Marvin Gaye, the frustrated MOR/jazz icon, standing on stage in an immaculate tuxedo belting out Pride And Joy over the jazzier, livelier Choker version of the backing track, two forces of almost perfect cockiness coming together in a perfect storm of blinding, brilliant arrogance. And they’d be singing for you.
But, of course, it didn’t happen. Oh, this is a better record than Come See About Me because its creator’s stylistic motives are more in tune with the basic feel of the song, and so it stands up better as a standalone 45 – but it’s not Marvin’s version. It’s not the Pride And Joy we know and love.
Of all the various reinterpretations included on Choker’s Hits Of The Sixties LP (left), this is probably the most tasteful; by which I mean, this is the one where Choker’s approach, while still not constrained by notions of deference and respect, still takes full account of what the original record was trying to achieve. So, it’s a lot of fun, and it comes across as less cheesy than his take on Come See About Me, simply because it translates very well to being a big band instrumental; the new elements (rippling, balalaika-like guitars, for instance, or blaring trombone that rises up the scale to approximate Marvin singing the word “my”) all add to the experience.
But what it adds up to, eventually, is an amusing and entertaining diversion, fun but absolutely lacking in ambition beyond the here and now; with Marvin and the lyrics gone, while it’s still a song of riotous celebration, it’s not just that the groove is king, it’s that the groove is all that’s left behind. And what that means is a record that gets progressively less good each time you play it. Once the novelty value has worn off, once the thrills have died down, it’s left as nothing more than a lively little instrumental romp. In the midst of Motown’s glorious mid-Sixties Golden Age, it’s a nice enough throwback to an earlier time, but one that feels more like an aperitif than a main course.
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!)
COVERWATCH
Motown Junkies has reviewed other Motown versions of this song:
- Marvin Gaye (April 1963)
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 Choker Campbell? Click for more.)
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| Choker Campbell’s Big Band “Come See About Me” |
Howard Crockett “Put Me In Your Pocket” |
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…And so to the first example of the way I’ll handle the British Tamla Motown label and its weird catalogue-mangling ways. TM used this as the B-side to their own Choker single, which we won’t meet until spring of 1965; I’ve left all mention of it out of the review for now, and will amend the masthead on this page when we get to review the new A-side in a few months’ time.
I hope it makes sense.
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Good review Steve D. Again I was only able to here a snippet, so not much to say.
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Hope everyone likes the new heading typeface… the old one was starting to drive me crazy. If you were wondering. You weren’t, I know, but anyway.
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All the old entries are (finally!) all graphically tidied up to match the new look now. Does anyone have any comments about it, good or bad…?
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Since no one has responded, I will. It looks fine. Is it Arial Rounded? Very neat. Looks better but I never minded the old style.
As far as Choker is concerned, this isn’t a bad track. Nothing great. Definitely better than Come See About Me. Probably because it has a stronger jazz base and these were jazz guys. (Or at least players with an enormous amount of respect for jazz.) And you’re right, it would have been cool if Marvin had guested on this track. Might have sated that side of his musical personality, too. I’d give it a 5.
I also have to say I’ve always been fond of this style of artwork on some of the old Motown album jackets.
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Yes, this is a bit jazzier, but not good when compared to what Blue Note, Prestige, Verve, Riverside, World Pacific, Pacific Jazz, and the better Jazz labels were producing. I’d give it a “4”.
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Agreed. My main listening is jazz and I probably would never give this a listen if it weren’t part of the Motown set. What surprises me is that since Berry was such a jazz fan (he initially had a jazz record store, correct?), why didn’t he make better attempts at releasing the music? Detroit had a fertile jazz scene. Many great jazz artists come out of there (the Jones brothers, Tommy Flanigan – even a strong avant-garde scene in the 70s) why didn’t Motown release better jazz recordings? That’s always been a mystery to me.
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I often see comments about ‘jazz rock’ or ‘blues rock’ linked to music artists including Choker Campbell, as far back as the 40’s when ‘rock’ never existed as a music form until the 70’s. It was an extension of progressive blues that brought the genre to what we know as ‘rock music’ to its purest form, and perhaps the finest of those protagonists were Blind Faith. They pushed the envelope to the limit and from there to ‘progressive rock’ and thats where rock music evolved. Rewriting history and returning to artists in the past and labelling them in different styles that they should not be labelled with is inaccurate and unfair and the worst culprit is the keyboard cowboys who get on Wikipedia, what a load of BS that is.
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