Tags
Tamla T 54113 (B), March 1965
B-side of Ooo Baby Baby
(Written by Smokey Robinson and Pete Moore)
Tamla Motown TMG 503 (B), March 1965
B-side of Ooo Baby Baby
(Released in the UK under license through EMI / Tamla Motown)
Always thought a better title for this one would be That’s All Good. But I digress.
Hearing Smokey Robinson on fine form, and the Miracles in full flow, is always a treat. They’d spent 1964 treading water – no proper album release, no great singles, all Smokey’s best songs given away to other people – but the Miracles returned with a vengeance in 1965, recording their finest album to date in Going To A Go-Go, packed with excellent songs.
Here’s one of them. Relegated to a B-side by the outstanding Ooo Baby Baby, but stronger than any Miracles single for a year and a half, this is a sinuous midtempo groove in the mould of I Like It Like That, only tighter and smoother. Clunky wording aside, there’s almost nothing about this I’d change.
I’ve talked on this blog before, at some length, about Smokey’s gift for lyrics, and how it went so much further than a clever turn of phrase and a few snappy quotables. He could get inside a character by finding the right singer, matching their words, the shapes of their mouths, even their breathing to the story he told, all in the cause of delivering the greatest impact.
What’s not really been mentioned yet is his similarly stunning ability as a tunesmith. Smokey was, is, a guy who always looked at the big picture, but the amount of trick plays and brilliancies he was able to sneak into his best tunes is remarkable; he was able to wrap complex and inventive themes within a more conventional setting, and net the rewards for both.
All That’s Good (that title is still grating) is a case in point. The antithesis of the A-side in tone (if not tempo or quality, Smokey again delivering an absolutely beautiful vocal), it’s overflowing with joy rather than pain, the lyrics here aren’t necessarily among Robinson’s greatest work – a straightforward run-down of how the narrator loves everything about his girlfriend, peppered with sweet little vignettes of their life together, and laden with future aphorisms (Your loving picks me up just like a cup of coffee / And when the gloom is on, you take it off me) – and yet it’s a superb record.
Without listening back to it, you’ve probably skim-read this review, looked at the big green number at the end and thought to yourself that I’m being over-generous. At worst, this is a sketch, a doodle; it’s a bouncy, slinky little midtempo number, more of a groove than a great tune, a lighthearted romp with a few fun rhymes to raise a smile (Don’t you know that if Romeo and you had ever met / There never would have been a Juliet, Smokey trills at one point), end of side one.
But play it back, and you realise just what an ambitious track this really is; the chunky wandering James Jamerson bass that opens the record goes on to absolutely dominate, ominous and spare, while the rest of the instrumentation and backing vocals are not so much pared back as they are simplified, one- or two-note bursts of minor-key organ, ominous horns and ultra-basic doo-wop harmonies, interspersed with frequent dead air stops leading to moments of complete silence.
And the middle eight, taken in isolation, seems to have been grafted in from a completely different record – let me hear you blow your horn, Smokey exhorts the sax player, who then embarks on a solo. Standard Motown practice by now, except that this solo doesn’t follow the melody line in HDH fashion, doesn’t propel the groove along a la Mickey Stevenson; in Smokey’s world, the sax is an instrument of power and mystery, and this is a proper, meandering jazz solo, straight out of some dark, smoky bar-room. In the middle of what I remembered as an inoffensive midtempo Top 40 finger-snapper, and not for one microsecond does it feel out of place, even though it manifestly actually is out of place.
A listener at the end of 1964 might well have wondered, with good reason, whether the Miracles really had a place in Motown’s brave new world of corporate greed and thundering cash registers. This pair of sides not only put such doubts to rest, but showed the Miracles to be at the vanguard of the company’s very best acts. Quite exceptional stuff.
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.
(Or maybe you’re only interested in Smokey Robinson & the Miracles? Click for more.)
 |
 |
| The Miracles “Ooo Baby Baby” |
The Temptations “It’s Growing” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
|---|
Like the blog? Listen to our radio show! |
| Motown Junkies presents the finest Motown cuts, big hits and hard to find classics. Listen to all past episodes here. |
Motown Junkies 
…And lying ahead, and all from the same album, are b-sides “A Fork In The Road,” “Since You’ve Won My Heart” and “Choosey Beggar.” Two of them I like much more than the third but none of them has worn out its welcome. And they never will.
You didn’t over praise this either with an ‘8’; there’s truly no moment of boredom that’s part of the Going To A Go-Go album.
LikeLike
I would have settled for a 7 – given the devastatingly exacting standards to which you’ve accustomed us!! – but I’m always happy when you get excited about Smokey. This song has not palled for me in the near-half-century since I first heard it; its sheer good nature invariably picks me up just like that fabled cup of coffee. I like the ‘little note where I can find it’ (a motif that he’ll develop much further in the wonderful ‘When the words from my heart/get caught up in my throat’). And is this Mona Lisa’s Motown debut? (I know Marvin Gaye will soon fantasize, with marvelous grotesquerie, about ‘Mona Lisa/mixed with a girl from a Playboy book…’) Beautiful review – as always, you bring those delicious details into such splendid focus.
LikeLike
John your commentary is always great to read!
LikeLike
I’d give it a 7-which is still a very good recording. It’s an excellent “B” side.
LikeLike
a (gr)eight song! very deserving of your praise!
LikeLike
Decent B-side. Nothing I go out of my way to play but I won’t skip it either. Rating: 6.5/10
LikeLike
Bring on the Anvil Chorus! (..if those are, indeed, anvils…) What a cornucopia!
LikeLike
I’m already hearing the implacable piano summons, John! 🙂
LikeLike
The Anvil Chorus … and the Andantes!
LikeLike
Oh, Man, I can’t wait!!! And I love this song – definitely an 8 in my book.
LikeLike
The bass got me from the beginning. Smokey’s voice is so sweet here and the lyrics are simply cute how could anyone not like this song. I especially love the line that shoutouts Mona Lisa lol. Great B-Side to an exceptional A-side. It reminds me of a song they would’ve have dance to in Hairspray.
LikeLike
I finally heard this one. Not a bad B-side. Does anyone know? Was this recorded earlier? Though it is a fine song, it sounds “older”.
LikeLike
The Miracles actually DID have an album release in 1964, but it was withdrawn from sale in the U.S. shortly after it’s release, and released in Europe.
The album was entitled “I LIKE IT LIKE THAT” T-249 (withdrawn) orTML11003 in the rest of the world ; named after the hit single. I have two copies of it myself .
Not many Miracles and Motown fans in America have ever seen it , though, It was superseded in the U.S. by the Miracles’ double album “GREATEST HITS FROM THE BEGINNING” (TS2-254) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Like_It_Like_That_(album)
LikeLike
I was about 15 when I bought this album; just from the cover, I felt that this one was going to be really full of some good stuff…and was I ever right.
This song was such a break from what I expected a Motown song should be and it intrugued me to no end. I kept replaying it as if trying to discover some secret of the universe. I love how it starts by creeping in on cat’s paws with the drums playing a bit of hide and seek, with an incredible burst introducing the first verse. That line that couples “coffee” and “off me”, as corny as it COULD have been actually spurred me to start writing songs myself, using Smokey’s lyrics as a blueprint. I absolutely love his word play and you’ve done a remarkable job of discussing just what it is he does.
Sometimes, a song doesn’t have to be a blockbuster or have all the dominoes lined up just right, so to speak. It’s the songs that don’t sound like number one hits that stay with me much longer than those hits. This song has never, ever lost its luster for me. A great little jazz, blues, soul, Motown hybrid. I agree with the 8 rating and would even go for 10- the 10 being purely subjective.
LikeLike
Just recently played on http://masterzradio.com as a backup to FUNKY TOWN two classics from yesteryear….. Always GREAT to hear and feels even better to play! Thanks Smokey for all your efforts throughout the years!
LikeLike
Pretty sure that “that’s all good” or “it’s all good” didn’t enter the slang vernacular until the 90s. (http://www.inthe90s.com/generated/terms.shtml)
A topic I’d like to see more written about is the contribution of African Americans to the development of the English language – not only in terms of slang, syntax and vocabulary (which are all obvious), but in terms of transforming English into a much more musical language. Think about how many operas were written in Italian and French and how few in English, and the very logical technical reasons given to explain this (vowels, dipthongs, etc.). Even English operas of genius (like those of Benjamin Britten) have a certain awkwardness to the flow of the language. But with African Americans at the helm, English has today become perhaps the world’s leading language for music – shedding its stiff, gutteral Germanic limitations and taking on a soaring, poetic feel full of beautiful vowels and flexible, expressive consonants. It’s hilarious to me that the vast legions of white American racists infesting this country are oblivious to the fact that their slang, humor, grammar and diction are all so profoundly Afro-Americanized.
Oh well … it’s all good … I guess …
LikeLiked by 1 person
That reminds me of the unbelievable degree of ignorance and irrationality displayed by prejudiced people, who are so involved in their make-believe agenda, that they are ignorant of all the things that are related to it, that would tear it down and PROVE that it is hogwash. A good example of that is a super-racist high school acquaintence of mine. We attended an “integrated” high school in South Chicago in the early 1960s (Bowen High). It was located in a mixed neighbourhood, and was about half “Caucasian” and half “African-American” at that time. This racist absolutely HATED EVERYTHING related to “Black” people. He listened to the “Pop” music stations which, at that time, ( unfortunately for him) played a lot of music by African-American artists. He used to make fun of their diction and explain how he didn’t like their music. But he told me The Crests were his favourite singing group. Apparently, he had liked songs by The Crests, and probably saw their lead singer, Johnny Maestro, singing as a solo artist, and or lip-sinking to a Crests’ recording, but, with the other group members not on stage. So, he had thought the group was made up of all Caucasians. He didn’t know that they were a mixed group. I guess he could tell from Maestro’s voice, that he wasn’t a Black man. So, the group’s sound was “acceptable” to him. When I told him that the original Crests had 3 Black members, and most of the songs he liked by them had 2 Black members, he told me that they were no longer his favourite group, and that “he didn’t really like their music”. The ironic thing is that Maestro loved the music created by The African-American community so much, that he emulated it. So, that EVEN if his group had ALL been Caucasians, this irrational racist would have been liking something (an art form) produced by “these devil-spawned African heathens”, which totally refutes his “hatred”, and shows it’s irrationality and hypocrisy. The shame for that messed-up racist is that our high school had one of the best music departments in The Chicago City School System, and churned out several session musicians, solo singing artists and R&B and Soul groups of very high quality, that he could have enjoyed, if he hadn’t irrationally hated their having dark skin.
LikeLike
And, yes, that same racist was using slang and sayings that had originated from The African-American Community, that if he had known that fact, would have washed his mouth out with soap for months, to remove the offensive “stain”. Humans are strange!
LikeLike