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Tamla T 54117 (A), June 1965
b/w Now That You’ve Won Me
(Written by Marvin Gaye, Clarence Paul and Dave Hamilton)
Tamla Motown TMG 524 (A), August 1965
b/w Now That You’ve Won Me
(Released in the UK under license through EMI / Tamla Motown)
Here’s an unusual thing.
Marvin Gaye’s last single, the storming (if lyrically dubious) I’ll Be Doggone, had topped the R&B charts, going Top Ten pop and shifting a million copies, in the process establishing once and for all the template for Marvin’s coming period as one of America’s hottest, sexiest, most magnetic pop stars.
At least, that’s what I thought. But for the follow-up, we’re abruptly jerked in a radically different direction; instead of consolidating what was achieved on I’ll Be Doggone, this is a baffling digression, a diversion. Gone is the guiding hand of Smokey Robinson, and instead we get a throwback to the bad old days, with Marvin, his one-time regular writer-producer Clarence Paul and Funk Brothers vibes man Dave Hamilton putting together a backing track jam for Stevie Wonder – to be entitled Purple Snow Flakes, a reference to an obscure old Stevie song called Purple Rain Drops which we haven’t met yet here on Motown Junkies – before Marvin decided he liked the backing track for himself, and wrote a new set of lyrics.
I don’t know if the would-be Stevie version of this was ever recorded, or if it ever had words, but this sounds like it would have been right up the maturing Wonder’s alley. Certainly, it’s a very different proposition to anything Marvin had recorded before; not only is it pitched for a much higher voice, meaning Gaye spends almost the entire song in a breathy upper-register space, but it’s also melancholy and forlorn in a way we haven’t really heard yet. So, it ends up being a pointer for Marvin’s future – but not his immediate future, his chart-topping 45 star phase. Rather, it’s a sign of things to come almost a decade from now, the pained pleadings of a tortured soul we hear on Marvin’s seminal run of Seventies albums – and it’s set to the saddest tune in the world, a tune that’s full of strange changes and surprises.
It’s absolutely remarkable, this. I don’t just mean that it’s good – although it definitely is, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll be going into that in a moment – rather, I mean that Pretty Little Baby sounds like absolutely nothing else we’ve heard so far and I can’t properly process it, stuff it into a box. It’s a simple melody built on top of an even simpler melody, somehow adding up to something very complex indeed but coming across almost parodically naive.
There are three distinct phases to this, all of them, well, remarkable. I keep using that word because it’s so appropriate here. The first phase pitches this as a children’s Christmas record in the middle of June: sleigh bells, tinkling arpeggios to simulate snow, a verse vocal riff borrowed straight out of Oranges and Lemons, flat, shouty call-and-response female backing vocals that sound like nobody I can identify, and then over the top of all that, Marvin Gaye bouncing around somewhere in the clouds, his tears making it rain.
That an almost comically Christmassy “sleigh ride and nursery rhyme” section can work as well as this anyway is remarkable, because it should by all rights be powerfully annoying, and instead Marvin just makes it flat-out powerful, his voice full of yearning, apparently having started taking his vocal cues from other great Motown singers like David Ruffin and Levi Stubbs rather than the MOR crooners he’d previously idolised – and he adds some weird, unnatural phrasing on top, emphasising all the “wrong” syllables as he sing-talks his way through his problems. The effect is startling.
DAR-ling, PLEASE stay / Don’t go A-way
(If you leave me!)
WHAT a HEART-ache / For HEAV-en’s SAKE
(Don’t you need me?)
It’s this newfound voice which leads us into the second phase of the song, as the nursery rhyme folds away and Marvin instead starts out in another direction entirely, bridging the gap with a semi-chant – don’t you know, you… – and then, as the music peels off and the backing singers switch to straight cooing, it’s almost a different song altogether:
…Gave me the world
Little girl, when you gave me your love
So, if you take your love
You take my world with you too, mmm
Another verse, as strange and alien as the first; another bridge, as strange and alien as the first; and then Marvin and the backing singers unite for the chorus, which is even more strange and alien than anything else:
And I said: BABY
Oh, pretty little BABY
Don’t leave me, BABY
Pretty little BABY
Writing it down can’t possibly do it justice. He scrapes the sky; he turns what might have been a standard-issue, off-the-peg plea for another chance from a little boy’s lament into a grown man’s tragedy. It’s not enough that his “baby” know he’s desperate; rather, she needs to know that nobody, ever, in the history of romance, has been quite so on the edge as Marvin’s narrator is here. It’s astonishing.
Right towards the end, he interjects an apparently ad-libbed “Baby, PLEASE!” between lines of the chorus, and it instantly calls up ten different pleading songs by Seventies Marvin, from What’s Going On, Let’s Get It On, I Want You and Here, My Dear, and for the first time since I started doing this blog, you can see a direct, shining path from here to there.
The single sold well enough, though hardly troubling the sales records of its predecessor (Pretty Little Baby eventually went top 30 pop and top 20 R&B, solid if not spectacular), and when the follow-up Ain’t That Peculiar appeared a couple of months later, it bore far more resemblance to the work begun on I’ll Be Doggone than anything suggested by this diversion; Pretty Little Baby was reduced to the status of a bewildering curio, never included on any of Marvin’s albums, a record that wouldn’t properly make sense until Marvin had been universally accepted as a troubled genius rather than a handsome guy who got up on stage and shook his ass for a living.
It’s a million miles away from the cocky swagger and sexy snarl and hip-shaking confidence and drive of Doggone, a record that – sexist overtones or not – had gone a great distance to paint a picture of Marvin Gaye as a character for fans to latch on to, a distance now hastily backtracked by this baffling curveball of a follow-up.
But I get the feeling that Motown recognised something special here; perhaps this was so strong – but so strange – but so strong – that Motown had no choice but to ensure it was released. Whether to fill in some gaps in our knowledge of the brilliance of Marvin Gaye, or whether simply because it’s very good, well, even now I couldn’t say.
What I can say, with some certainty, is that while this isn’t Marvin’s best Motown side so far – it’s bizarre, and it’s miserable (and I just realised I haven’t mentioned the production, which is fuzzy and distorted and generally sounds like it was recorded from inside a shoe) – it’s probably my favourite. It’s raw, it’s honest, it’s painful, it’s beautiful, it’s everything I want when I go to Marvin’s later albums. Quite some going.
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 Marvin Gaye? Click for more.)
Dorsey Burnette “They’re Only Words” |
Marvin Gaye “Now That You’ve Won Me” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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Nick in Pasadena said:
I’m (happily) in complete agreement with you on this one. Have always loved it. After a string of uptempo hits, I recall it was something of a shock to hear Marvin’s incredible vocals on a ballad, accompanied primarily by guitar and piano. It had, and has, an other-worldly quality to it, sounding not quite like anything else.
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ThinPaperWings said:
Never knew a version of this song existed with these lyrics. There is of course the version Marvin sang over the same backing track that is called ‘Pretty Purple Snowflakes’ with exactly the same melody. (I have it on Motown’s 2 CD Christmas compilation.) I wonder how far apart the vocals were recorded and which came first.
There is something really mesmerizing about this tune, sorrowful and epic in a way we haven’t really seen from Marvin up until now.
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The Nixon Administration said:
Purple Snow Flakes is the original, Pretty Little Baby the rewrite (the new lyrics are apparently Marvin’s). I haven’t actually heard Marvin’s Purple Snow Flakes (I didn’t know it had been finished), but according to DFTMC they’re both from late ’64, recorded about a month or so apart.
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Iwantyou1976 said:
I heard Purple snowflakes first. However this was a treat when I first heard it. I think 65 is the year marvin gaye came into his own and it just goes up from here.
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treborij said:
Really like this song and always thought it was apart from the rest of Marvin’s output but it seemed like a natural progression. He sings it in a such a beautiful yet forlorn voice. In retrospect, it seems as if it’s a step towards his desolate, desperate classic One More Heartache which is one of my Motown 10s. While the singing is very different on that one, it seems as if he’s on his way there with PLB.
Also like that you follow this through to the 70s recordings. Never really thought about it that way before but it makes sense. A weird time warp glimpse into the future brilliance that awaits.
I’d give Pretty Little Baby an 8.
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Rhine Ruder said:
a “nine”! a stunning surprise for a stunning record. i think you hit it when you said it leads more to gaye’s late career than anything we’ve heard up to now. hey, what’s wrong with that? totally agree with your score … a first!
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Dave L said:
It has stayed good since 1965. Like “Try It Baby,” it feels like a welcome, brief detour before returning to the more recognizable string of HDH & Smokey productions which run from “Can I Get A Witness” to “Your Unchanging Love.”
It did get on to an album though before the 60s ended, it’s on Greatest Hits Vol 2, Tamla 278, from the autumn of 1967.
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Sonic eric said:
I remember buying Moods of Marvin Gaye at HMV in London during my christmas vacation in 1996. The Cd had three bonus tracks :When I had your love, I’ll take care of you and eventually, Pretty little baby. I was and still is overwhelmed by the tenderness in Marvin’s voice, a true insight of his soul. Definitely a 10 to me. As powerful as One more heartache.
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Landini said:
Wow! I hadn’t heard this song in years. I am glad i took a fresh listen before commenting because I remember hearing this years ago & not thinking much of it. Well, after listening afresh I think this is a great production & a great record. Definitely not crossover hit material but a great song nonetheless. I have a feeling this wasn’t a huge hit with the top 40 crowd because they were most likely looking for Marvin Gaye/Motown records that were uptempo (Has a good beat – you can dance to it! You know the routine!)
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144man said:
I remember first hearing this through the crackles on AFN radio and thinking that this was the best Marvin Gaye record yet. It’s such a pretty melody, sung well, and is so completely different from anything else around at the time.
On hearing it again, I discovered that for the first (and possibly only) time on a Motown record that I did not like the harsh, staccato female backing vocals, which sound particularly unsympathetic. I did not hear “Purple Snowflakes” until the release of the 1993 Various Artists’ CD, “Christmas in the City”, and I find having heard the alternative lyrics offputting now when listening to “Pretty Little Baby”.
Even so, the track is still good enough to justify the 9/10 rating.
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The Nixon Administration said:
I don’t know who those backing singers are – they sound like New Yorkers, “CRACKED and BRO-kin!” – and their act is “tough girls” doing a chant, rather than the cooing harmonies of the Andantes: think the Pink Ladies from Grease rather than anyone who’d be wearing evening gowns and gloves, as the Andantes usually sounded. But for me it just adds to the strangeness of it all.
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MotownFan1962 said:
I think it is the Andantes. The “ooh”s and “baby”s sound like them, and sometimes they sound similar to how they sounded on Brenda Holloway’s “When I’m Gone”.
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Rupert K. said:
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The Nixon Administration said:
THAT’S what I’m talking about. Thanks Rupert.
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John Plant said:
Absolutely fascinating! There’s a deep undercurrent of sadness already, just begging to be unearthed – and yet if ‘Pretty Little Baby’ didn’t exist, we’d probably accept this as a charming bit of Christmas fluff, tinged with romantic melancholy and urban sweetness. The chasm between the two songs really opens up when the expected cry of ‘Baby!’ so masterfully characterized by Steve – fails to occur. But it’s quite instructive to see that two utterly incompatible sets of lyrics can cohabit in the same song – as a composer who racks his brain trying to find just the right notes and rhythms for a poem, it’s perhaps a little deflating! – The other triumph of the transformation is the replacement of the dreamy backup singers with the ‘NYC’ toughness, again beautifully described… One final musing – is this song genetically connected somehow to ‘Purple Rain??’
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John Plant said:
(Of course, I meant ‘Baby PLEEASE!’)
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Ed Pauli said:
but it didn’t make a “10” there hasn’t be a TAMLA “10” song since The Marvelettes STRANGE I KNOW..
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The Nixon Administration said:
You won’t have to wait too long for the next one.
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Mary Plant said:
I’m glad to see you back Steve – we’ve missed you, but for such a wonderful reason!
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Mark V said:
When first I heard this, it sounded like a minor Gaye tune, and I did wonder why it was a single. After many years I’ve grown to like it a lot, and I like very much your essay on where it fits into probably the strangest career of any Motown vocalist.
I’m not an expert on backing vocalists, but I’ve always been convinced that here we have the Andantes in one of their finest performances.
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Mickey The Twistin' Playboy said:
Always liked the arrangement but I never LOVED it so I don’t quite agree with 9/10 but it’s an 8 on a good day.
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bogart4017 said:
Originally purchased it for the flip—good makeout music you know? But slowly over time it just kinda pecked on me lightly—like a woodpecker with a headache! (Thanx George Clinton)
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Lord Baltimore said:
I am just now hearing the alternate track “Purple Snowflakes” and I am amazed at so much there is still to learn about the Motown Story. “Pretty Little Baby” was buried deep in my memories, hearing it on the radio as a small child back in 1965. As a college freshman in 1978, I borrowed a Dorm neighbor’s “Marvin Gaye Anthology” to listen to and song by song unlocked those memories once again. On a trip to New York City in April of 1978 I made a trip to an oldies store and picked up “One More Heartache”, another locked up memory which I might say was the strongest of all. Still waiting for your review of that B-side!
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papaman46 said:
Always loved this song, first heard on the ‘Hitsville U.S.A.’ compilation (TML11019) which I bought in 1965 at the ripe old age of 14. What an album, sadly no longer in my possession…!
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nafalmat said:
I also remember TML11019 with great affection. I bought it originally in 1965 and played it to death. What a compilation!. I bought a second copy in 1970 shortly before it was deleted and was still playing it right through until CDs took over. That superb UK compilation along with Motown Magic TML11030 were tremendous value for money in their day each with 16 A sides on each album.
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144man said:
“The enigmatic Marvin has again changed his mood and made a rather unusual number that has a tango-type rhythm and sleigh bells counter-balancing the cascading and tumbling melody. Certainly a disc that grows rather than one that makes an immediate impact, but perhaps all the more interesting because of that. 4/5
“Flip is mellow and warm, with the femme chorus sounding a little more sympathetic than the one on the top side which is too clean cut. 3/5”
[Dave Godin, Hitsville USA 8, 1965]
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tomovox said:
Your writing is fascinating. The way you pull in so many different considerations, musings on this affecting that and that having an effect on this. I’ve heard this before and thought it unusual to say the least. I didn’t linger for long but moved on to the more uptempo, Motown sounds.
Now, in 20-words-or-more, you got me reassessing this. I never thought it a bad record, so it’s not that I’m having my mind completely changed; you have me rethinking the slightly unearthly beauty of this and especially Marvin’s performance. Now that I’m a lot older I think I can appreciate this much more than when I was a teenager.
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therealdavesing said:
BTW I’ve reading this blog for years. I’m probably going to spam your site with my opinions very soon. We need new post
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