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Mel-o-dy 117 (A), January 1965
b/w Come On Back
(Written by Howard Hausey)
It’s a surprise to still be encountering Mel-o-dy Records releases in 1965, and even more of a surprise that Motown’s unloved, soon-to-be-shuttered country label was still unearthing new acts even at this late stage.
Label mainstay Howard Hausey, who recorded several singles for Mel-o-dy under the pseudonym “Howard Crockett”, is again called upon to write a song for one of his labelmates, and again he proves to be a better writer than a singer. This time, his beneficiary is Texan singer Dwight Mullinax, who enjoyed a long and sporadically fruitful career away from Motown as “Dee Mullins”, recording for umpteen different country labels before and after this, his one and only Motown single, finally coming to prominence in the late Sixties with the snappily-titled answer song “The Continuing Story of the Harper Valley P.T.A.”
On the evidence of this one single, Mullins seems to be cut from slightly different cloth to the rest of Motown’s country signings; this is quite a catchy, pop-inflected song, but Mullins brings to it elements of honky-tonk and bluegrass. Neither of which are words I was expecting to be using on a Motown blog, I’ll be honest.
Hausey knew his way around a tune, that much we’ve already discovered, and this has a strong and catchy melody. Plus, Mullins has a decent voice (very similar to labelmate Dorsey Burnette, in fact, just a bit higher pitched), and he’s likeable with it; his little semi-guffaws and raised eyebrows, combined with his Texan burr, give this lots of personality. And the guitar work here is plenty good.
But as a lyricist, poor old Howard is all at sea; beyond the clever title, which I like (and which raised a genuine smile from your correspondent the first time I saw it), the main theme – finance trumps romance – isn’t really developed. Rather than make any kind of point, the song has Mullins describe a few different situations where money has ruined a relationship, or where money is the only reason a couple is together, or where money is causing even darker problems, as in the song’s meanest moment:
Take that ol’ millionaire with one foot in the grave
And the other on a banana peel
But there’s a pretty girl gonna give him a shove
Before he has time to change his will!
(Yes, Mullins’ accent makes a rhyme of “peel” and “will”).
There’s no kind of comeuppance for any of them, and no broader observation made (it doesn’t even have an ending, it just sort of stops after Mullins has told a few of these stories). I’m as fond of cynical humour as the next guy, but this isn’t really humour as such, it’s just Mullins asking us to consider a long list of unpleasant people.
Still, even if it’s mean-spirited, it is a good tune, and I find Mullins sneakily likeable as a vocalist. If it’s not that great a record, it’s still probably among the better Mel-o-dy country releases, and I’d have been interested to hear more from his partnership with Hausey. Instead, the label had a less rosy outlook than that ol’ millionaire in the lyrics: Motown would be shutting it down barely three months later.
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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| Earl Van Dyke & the Soul Brothers “Too Many Fish In The Sea” |
Dee Mullins “Come On Back (And Be My Love Again)” |
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I’d gone to at least 7 on this. It seems as though Motown thought Mullins would be their “Buck Owens”–the flip even more so
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Holy Mack’al! A Buck Owens clone on Motown! No thanks! Thank goodness the Mel-O-dy experiment failed. One Buck Owens on the airwaves is more than enough!
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THIS gets a 4 out of 10, and “Hot Cha” by Junior Walker and The All Stars gets a 3! Different Strokes for different folks is quite an understatement, considering that the two of us both claim to be Motown fans.
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Even leaving aside the blog itself (which must, by now, be a pretty hefty book if you printed the whole thing out), you and I have spent three years building perhaps the most voluminous public Motown correspondence/dialogue that’s ever existed, so I don’t think anyone can doubt either of our fan credentials on that score 🙂
What can I say? For me, “Hot Cha” is a bad record, and this one’s slightly more fun. That one is nominally R&B and the other is nominally country & western is irrelevant to me; neither of them really has anything to do with the Motown sound, or whatever else “Motown fans” are apparently contractually obliged to enjoy, so, as always, I calls ’em as I sees ’em.
I’d guess that most people reading and commenting aren’t solely into Motown, but rather that Motown is the sole intersection between us on life’s great Venn diagram. So the further a record deviates from the hypothetical Motown standard, the greater the possibility for disagreement. Ed above likes his rockabilly, something I know next to nothing about. Damecia sings her own covers of modern R&B. You don’t really listen to anything made after 1972. Yet all three of you like the Marvelettes, and so you’re more likely to agree with each other (if not me) over them than over, say, Nicki Minaj, or Johnny Fallin, or Roland Bonet.
Me, I like a bit of almost everything (non-Motown stuff currently on my stereo this week: Bat For Lashes, Pet Shop Boys, Pacific Gas & Electric, David Byrne & St Vincent, Baxter Dury), and I’m the first to admit my tastes aren’t everyone’s tastes. But then that’s part of the fun of doing this – seeing how my own personal reactions differ from other people’s personal reactions. I like being disagreed with. Long may it continue.
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It’s not as if I like only Motown-produced songs. I like Gospel, Jazz, Delta Blues, City Blues, Bluegrass or traditional Country/Folk music, bagpipe music (including Bulgarian), ancient Chinese and Japanese music, some western Folk music. I absolutely HATE Buck Owens’ songs and singing style. But, I like a lot of the 1940s-’50s King Country music (York Brothers, Grandpa Jones). I LOVED the Ford Nix banjo playing w/ Blue grass singing he recorded for Motown 9as well as many of his other recordings). I like Flatt and Scruggs. I just don’t like what became “commercial C &W” music in the late ’50s through the present. I think that this particular cut is weak an uninspired, and sounds kind of hokey. The flip is REALLY bad.
I think I bought a copy of this in 1965, when I was buying EVERY Motown-related release. But, eventually, I quit that, and got rid of the records that had no “redeeming” qualities (for me), including all the Mel-O-dy country records except for a couple Dorsey Burnettes and one Bruce Chanel, and also dumped the VIP Pop garbage. I kept The Messenger’s weak surf song (“California Soul”) because The Funk Brothers’ instrumentation was fabulous. Of course, had The Messengers’ singing sounded like The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Bruce & Terry, or The Fantastic Baggys, I’d have kept it for their singing.
I’m prejudiced only related to my taste, not for or against genres, per se.
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come now!! i don’t claim to be a country western fan but I Believe that berry must of seen some short of the effort in Al Klien’s country productions ( big or small) in this case or he would of shut down the label much earlier than he did.. I just did not have a listening value back then for a lot of it. but I tended to order back in those days records from the record store by the record number as they became on the distributor release lists and release promos. so I still bought them all Say it was a label costumer loyalty thing!! but at the same time I was opening up to different types of music and sounds that if I were in to country music at the time , maybe my out look on them might Be a better one!! but at the time it was not to be !, but there are a few that I played On my show in the Motortown files as more than a novelty type of record!! this one got some response from my listeners back then!!! there are about 3 Melody ( Country era records that I would play that I would consider To represent the melody label input on the show and this was one!!!!! I would Give it a 4or5 for good measure
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I’d read that Berry tried to get Jack Scott for Mel-O-Dy back in ’63 but Chet Atkins got Jack to sign with him at RCA. I honestly think Gordy was a closet country fan–after all, when Mel-O-Dy failed he DID try again with MELOYLAND/HITSVILLE–he never again tried jazz or gospel.
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It’s entirely possible, though I think it’s more the case that he was just a money fan. Country, with its network of radio programming and geographical reach alien to Motown even in their Golden Age heyday, sold more than jazz, while gospel had always been a dependable but comparatively tiny source of sales.
That said, there are some more gospel and jazz-blues sides to come here on Motown Junkies via the main labels and via their deal with Chisa. As to why we got a Melody 2 in Melodyland/Hitsville, but not a “Toolbox Jazz” or “Testament Records” or whatever to succeed Workshop Jazz and Divinity? Well, while I think Gordy believed country – like FM rock – was an area where an iconic label known to specialise in “black music” would be more competitive with a new “blank slate” imprint.
But honestly, I get the feeling that if Bulgarian folk music had suddenly become the next big thing, Motown would have opened a new specialist subsidiary label (Звукът на млада България!) the next month.
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Nixon by that kind of reasoning, he could’ve have had a nationality label for Scandinavian, German, Italian, and Eastern European music–mainly polka. As A Clevelander, I know LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
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Well, you laugh, but I think you’re right – and it’s a relatively short step to that kind of territory from the (shudder) Abbey Tavern Singers, who we’ll be meeting in a few years’ time thanks to their supposedly scheduled VIP single.
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LMAO!
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>”I’d gone to at least 7 on this.”
This comment prompted me to give it a try – I’d gotten to the point of skipping the C&W stuff. But in the end I have to agree with Robb Klein that giving this even a 4/10 when Hot Cha got a 3/10 is counter-intuitive at best. A while back I jumped on the bandwagon of trashing a 1-rated C&W track only to have the original artist – still out there in the cybersphere – reply to me – making me feel like a jerk. I guess the question is whether the rating should take into account the genre. I mean, if these sides were being rated at http://www.hankwilliamsjunkies.co.uk, maybe this track would get a 7/10, and Shotgun would be panned because the lyrics don’t bemoan the death of the singer’s dog or the demise of his pickup truck’s carburetor.
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Well, at least VIP released The Abbey Tavern Singers’ album. And I quite like “We’re Off to Dublin In The Green”. I’d give it a 6+. It’s not as good as The Chieftans’ songs, but still quite good. It’s real music, as opposed to that break-in song on Mel_O-Dy, and “Happy Ghoul Tide”.
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I don’t think Keith Hughes found any evidence when researching TCMS that the Abbey Tavern Singers ever had a single scheduled. The album came out in 1967, but the two sides said to be the VIP single had already been released in the US the previous year as a 45 on HBR.
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I agree that The Abbey Tavern Singers’ supposed VIP single never came out. If It had, I’d have gotten a copy of it, or at least seen it in The Motown Corp. Record File, or Jobete Music Record File, or it would have surfaced among the record pressing plant pressing store stock test run of 6 copies (2 kept at plant), which were discovered and saved by Ron Murphy around 1969 or 1970 (along with the Andantes VIP, Frank Wilson Soul, etc.).
I was only referring to VIP’s release of the LP. I have heard the title song off the HBR single and off the VIP LP.
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i was only referring to the Nixon Admin’s decision to review the single. Hopefully he;ll change his mind.
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I’m not going to review it, because – unlike other recent controversial non-singles like the Merced Blue Notes, Downbeats or Hattie Littles – it doesn’t ever seem to have been a real thing (hence my “supposed” comment), but their single not existing means there’s another suspicious gap in the VIP numbering system where 25048 should be, which I was going to explain in passing while talking about the Monitors’ “Step By Step”, which was originally slated to be the *actual* next VIP record.
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It should be interesting. There’s another suspect in the frame as well.
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Why would you “review” originally scheduled releases which were transferred to another label, under the label and number that was cancelled, when they were actually released on the other label (i.e. Serenaders on Motown 1060, “These Things Will Keep Me Loving You”-Velvelettes VIP, Monitors’ “Step By Step”, etc)?
Why is The Abbey Tavern Singers’ VIP releases’ “scheduling” any less real than some of those other “phantom” releases? If you review “Hello Love” by The Majestics, which I don’t believe was actually scheduled for release on VIP, why not review the Abbey Tavern Singers’ supposed VIP single? I don’t believe EITHER were ever really scheduled. Perhaps someone penciled in guesses as possibilities?
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I wouldn’t, obviously. “Step By Step” came out on Soul, and that’s where it’ll be reviewed, but with an aside during that review to discuss the glaring gap that leaves in the VIP numbering system for curious readers. But we won’t get there for years yet, so there’s no point worrying about it for now 🙂
As to your second paragraph question, as 144man has already touched on, the compilers of TCMS couldn’t find anything to substantiate it ever existing beyond someone’s guesswork (as you said), whereas all the other “scheduled” non-releases (including Hello Love) had at least some documentary evidence – internal memos, label copy sheets, order forms – to attest that they were once meant to have been singles. Everything on TCMS gets an automatic pass straight into the site; it’s where things were left out that it becomes more of a judgement call.
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Boy do I like this title! LOL. Too bad I can’t hear the WHOLE record. I’m lost in the land of 30 second snippets = ). I wonder if Motown would’ve have kept the Melody label would a legit country artist would have emerged……mmmmm
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I’d give it an extra point just for the title!
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Dorsey Burnette was a legitimate C&W artist. But, his being on the label didn’t save Mel-O-dy Records. I like “Everybody’s Angel” very much. Motown C&W shouldn’t be judged against Motown Soul, but against how good it “could be” (e.g. other C&W), just as Motown’s Workshop Jazz releases should be judged against Jazz recordings, and Divinity releases against other Gospel recordings. But, naturally, if a listener doesn’t like ANY C&W music, all of Motown’s Mel-O-dy C&W releases would get poor ratings.
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3 years later, I totally agree with you Robb!
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If Berry Gordy had fired Al Klein and placed Mel-o-dy with either John abdnor, major bill smith or Huey P Meaux, there would have been better records on the label.
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Probably – but then again, if Klein wasn’t in the picture, there likely wouldn’t be any reason for the label to exist at all.
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