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UNRELEASED: scheduled for
Motown M 1080 (A), July 1965
b/w He Holds His Own
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)
Oh, how much I love this.
Mother Dear was the second of Motown’s three attempts at choosing a follow-up single to Back In My Arms Again from the bounty of riches gathered for the superb upcoming More Hits by the Supremes LP, after the abortive promo-only release of The Only Time I’m Happy. This time, happy to report, they got it right – only to overthink the pick and pull Mother Dear from the release schedules before any copies were pressed up, the single withdrawn in favour of another song from the album sessions, Nothing But Heartaches.
(I believe that was a mistake, if you weren’t already sure where I stood on the matter.)
This, though. Wow. Whilst it’s not perfect – and the Supremes themselves had already had several brushes with pop perfection by now, so we know what that sounds like – it’s a record that for me encapsulates everything about the Supremes in the summer of 1965, for good and for ill, and ends up as one of the most overlooked of all Motown’s pop classics.
What if it had been released? Would it have kept alive the Supremes’ winning streak, extending that near-mythical run of Number One hits and becoming their sixth straight Billboard chart-topper? I don’t know if I’d go that far; on the one hand there are strange things going on in the background here and it’s not a particularly comfortable listen lyrically, and on the other hand there’s more than a hint of Motown-by-numbers about it, the song very obviously drawing from the same well as Come See About Me and Back In My Arms Again, the least radical two singles in that amazing run of five Number Ones. Plus, it’s hard not to mention the elephant in the room that is the Beach Boys, of which more in a moment. But despite all of that, this is a great pop song and it would have made a splendid addition to the Supremes singles canon. Ah well.
HIGHWAY TO HAWTHORNE
So, anyway, the chorus to this seems to borrow quite a lot from the Beach Boys’ Help Me R(h)onda, a song which Holland-Dozier-Holland would already have had the chance to hear in two distinct versions earlier in the year, firstly on the fairly-awesome Today! album and then as a completely re-recorded hit single a month or two later. But (a) the two songs aren’t really all that similar, apart from the Help! Help! me! refrain, (b) Help Me Rhonda is a genuinely excellent record and well worth mining for underused hooks, and given a quick respray, they work just as well here – Mother Dear is as catchy as all get-out – and (c) if we take it as read it’s fairly likely HDH owned a copy of Today!, well, on the evidence of that album’s magnificent centrepiece Please Let Me Wonder, Brian Wilson had heard this single’s proposed B-side He Holds His Own (originally a Mary Wells cut from the My Guy LP) once or twice too. Honours even, I’d say.
AND BACK TO THE MOTOR CITY
Enough about the Beach Boys. Mother Dear is the Supremes through and through, so much so it might veer perilously close to self-parody were we not talking about geniuses here, on both sides of the glass. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea – it’s been fascinating, when discussing More Hits on this blog, to see the spread of opinion among readers when it comes to which tracks on the album they really love, and I wasn’t so very surprised to see this cited as the first one some people would consign to the ashcan. But for me, if you like the mid-Sixties Supremes – or even the idea of the mid-Sixties Supremes – Mother Dear has what you came for.
I love that it somehow manages to be at once traditional and experimental, the sound of an ultra-successful group regressing and progressing, all in the same space. We start out in a totally different place to where we finish, musically, lyrically and thematically, and the whole thing ends up stuck in my head for hours to boot.
The intro sounds like it’s from another planet, never mind another record, the rat-tat-tat machine gun drum fill that heralded The Only Time I’m Happy taken to crazed extremes, with an instantly-unnerving stop-time arrangement featuring blaring horn blast for good measure. Diana Ross starts out sort-of-reprising her spoken word intro from that song, but she’s much, much cleverer here, cuter in both the American and British sense, transitioning so smoothly from an anguished semi-narrated cry in the dark –
SOMETHING’S ON MY MI-IND!
Mother dear, the boy keeps me crying
Don’t know which way to turn
KEEPS ME SO CONFUSED
Keeps me so confused…
– to the beauty and grace of Baby Love, so beautifully that after a hundred listens I still can’t pin it down, can’t quite see the join where the song proper begins.
The song proper is a rolling 8/8 stomp in the finest HDH fashion, here punctuated by a stop-time break that acts as a kind of refresher pause for the band – and the tune – to gather their musical forces ready for another drive. Despite the outwardly simple setup, the arrangement is probably the most complex of any Supremes record we’ve seen so far, both the musicians and the backing vocals rising and falling in the mix, peaks and troughs throughout the song, HDH showing their genius (there’s that word again) by bringing each ingredient to the boil at precisely the right moment and in precisely the right proportions before letting it fall away again, the Supremes showing their genius by taking those intricate, interlocking vocal patterns – that looped cooing six-note Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh rundown is an absolutely killer backing vocal refrain, incidentally, one of the loveliest tune-within-a-tune miniatures we’ve yet seen here on Motown Junkies – with such aplomb.
There’s more than a hint of the Velvelettes in the way all three ladies tackle the vocals here, and more than a hint of the Marvelettes in the way Diana alternates between slavishly following the main backing vocal line and pealing away from it altogether in a seemingly-maverick move; but the real similarity is to Where Did Our Love Go, two seemingly unrelated vocal lines suddenly coming together and splashing the listener with the force of a bucket of water being thrown in your face.
The lyrics are all over the place, but I’m absolutely sure they’re intentionally so. Diana’s narrator, a psychological wreck to compare with any of the characters HDH have drawn for her so far, engages in an ostensible monologue asking (praying?) for her mother to help her out of her current predicament. It’s a familiar pickle for Motown female narrators: she’s in love with a guy who’s obviously bad news, but she can’t take the decisive step and walk away, so she needs a helping hand. Help me, mother dear! But as the song progresses, her resolve wavers, sliding drastically back and forth (he’s not that bad, is he? What would I do without him, anyway? Oh God, I can’t live without him! What am I doing?) before Flo and Mary interject/intervene to remind her again – that staccato, almost barked “HELP! HELP!” like a literal slap in the face for Diana’s narrator, ironically giving her some of the help she’s asking for. But she’s almost self-defeating – it’s no use, I can’t break loose – and by the end of the song we’re no closer to a resolution than we were when we started.
(The closest analogue I can think of, actually, is the quick-cut montage from the film Tangled where Rapunzel can’t process the magnitude of what she’s done. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not, um, never mind. But it’s like that, anyway.)
Brilliantly, the music keeps up with all these changes, so that it reflects the narrator’s mood without ever playing it too much on the nose that it lacks subtlety. The foreboding horn break from the intro keeps cropping up to remind us all is not well; the vocal refrain is beautifully sad in the way only Holland-Dozier-Holland can make a song beautifully sad; the verses, where the narrator seems to be flirting with some kind of masochistic pleasure in her dilemma to match the masochistic pleasure of loving her bad boy in the first place, bounce along with the unbridled brio of Come See About Me. As with so many of the great Motown records, I find it hard to pick a defining moment of greatness which adequately represents Mother Dear, just because there are so many of them packed in here. It’s fantastic.
Why was it pulled? Surely not because of the similarities to Help Me Rhonda; rather, it seems that Motown were paralysed in the agony of choice, unsure what to do when presented with a sheaf of material like More Hits where almost every song had all the attributes Quality Control had come to prize when selecting sure-fire hit singles. Easy enough to pick something like this out from an album which was otherwise a pile of sludge, like the Vandellas’ Heat Wave or the Miracles’ Mickey’s Monkey, but what’s the plan when they all sound bright and breezy and catchy and impeccably well-produced and effortlessly commercial? The magic of Motown runs in the veins of Mother Dear, and it’s only a pity it didn’t seduce the decision-makers deeply enough; while it might not have topped the charts, it would have made a fine, fine single.
The Supremes were riding high, perhaps higher than they’d ever ride again. This is right up there with their best to date, an outside candidate (though ultimately unsuccessful) for a place in my top fifty and the corresponding ten out of ten here at the bottom. This will have to do.
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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Beautifully expressed ,sir. And as you indicated, this is a record that comes within a wisp of parody – but without sacrificing one bit of its puff pastry perfection. Yes, the album’s an embarrassment of riches – but over the years I always keep coming back to two tracks. I love “(I’m So Glad) Heartaches Don’t Last Always” yet I’ve never thought of it as a potential hit single. “Mother Dear”, on the other hand had everything it needed to extend the group’s run of #1’s. Millions of happy listeners would’ve been bobbing and grooving to this one if only somebody at Motown had said “Yes, release Motown M1080”.
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Thanks Ken. Sadly, they did say that, but with a different A-side as a last-minute replacement – of which more later in the week!
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In my imagination, if “Nothing But Heartaches” had gone even to No. 5 pop, this would have been the next single in line, and “I Hear A Symphony” would have simply waited till maybe December, instead of October. I join your opinion that this is certainly a 9, and I would put “Heartaches Don’t Last Always” right behind it at an 8. No wonder I still love More Hits so much.
I can’t think of any Supremes or Motown song whose end result is such a happy feeling, totally undercutting its lyrical romantic dilemma. A shout out too, to “Mother’s” precursor, “It’s All Your Fault” (February 1965) which was stripped for parts to make “Mother”. It has exactly the same effect for me, and finally getting it in 1986 (25 Anniversary) was like finding a hidden Easter egg in the grooves of More Hits that only 1980s record players could access.
And where the hell were “Mother Dear” and “Heartaches Don’t Last Always” when an iffy A like “The Happening” could have used their much stronger help than a dog like “All I Know About You?” The vibes, the saxophone, the tambourine, Diana, Florence and Mary, this is Supremes Heaven, 🙂 I’m glad to read this one getting the spotlight it’s deserved for 48 years.
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It’s not just your imagination; rumour has it that, had “Nothing But Heartaches” been a success, this would indeed have been revived as the next single. It’s only speculation, though, despite what Wikipedia says; HDH did go back (twice!) to re-record “Mother Dear”, indicating they had bigger plans for it, but those plans (whatever they were) ultimately came to naught.
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Oh, how I love this! If someone (from another planet) knew nothing about “The Motown Sound” this would be a great place to start. As usual, a superb review.
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It is remarkable to listen to the evolution that led to the final product. I just listened to :
It’s All Your Fault from “Let The Music Play: Supremes Rarities” – very Bably-Love like
It’s All Your Fault on “More Hits Expanded Edition” – lighter, boppier
It’s All Your Fault from the pink fuzzy box set
The boppier, lighter Mother Dear from “More Hits Expanded Edition”
The Mother Dear from the 2000 box set – it starts like a sputtering car engine, and is edgier, harder and more driving
The released single
Kind of amazing!
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Yippy! A Supremes review always brightens my day. How can anyone not like this song? It’s so syrupy sweet done the Motown way. The “ooo ooo ooo ooos” and the “help help me mother dear’s” provided by Mary & Flo are so memorable that you basically learn the backing vocals the first time the record is played. Miss Ross vocals are silky smooth here. One of my all-time favorite lines she sings is in the first verse when she says, “But he treats your daughter bad, keeps your daughter sad” the way she sings keeps gets me every time. Her phrasing and vocal inflictions were the best.And let’s not forget the Funk Bros. Jamerson on bass is …..AMAZING!
HDH are brilliant here. I am particularly fond that there is no resolution to this song. Maybe we encounter this girl again in “Nothing But Heartaches” and “You Keep Me Hangin On”. She’s still a little foolish, but slowly making up her mind that this guy has got to go. By the way, nice Tangled comparison Steve D. lol, I’ve seen it and if I was teaching a class on this song, I would’ve shown that scene.
I think “Mother Dear” is a much more pop sounding song compared to “Nothing But Heartaches” that has a stronger R&B influence. I never thought about the “Help Me Rhonda” influence until now! Great song, but not Supreme (lol) I will agree with this 9/10.
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I can’t believe we’re listening to the same song . This one reeks album cut. Which is not a bad thing, as many recording artists would love to record something that sounded like an album cut by the Supremes. Yet it’s not even that great of a Supremes album cut. Consider “Everything Is Good About You”, “Put Yourself In My Place”, “Any Girl In Love “, “Going Down For The Third ‘ The trouble is we’re all trying to replace “Nothing But Heartahes” with anything! Berry Gordy wanted a more rhythmic sound ( the kind of sound that was selling),but was conflicted by the sugary donuts HDH was bringing him. Let’s face it : a Supremes record not hitting #1, but #11 instead, demands an explanation. I think I know why, but I’ll wait for ‘Nothing But Heartaches ‘ turn.
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Can’t wait to hear your explanation on why “Nothing But Heartaches” went to #11 and not #1 !
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Everything Is Good About You, granted, but for me this is a far stronger record – certainly a stronger SINGLE – than those others you mentioned. One of the biggest problems I have with Nothing But Heartaches – as we’ll discuss shortly! -is that it’s so quintessentially an “album cut”, whereas this strikes me as a single all the way. Different strokes for different folks and all that jazz.
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Mmmm….I’m curious to see how the “Nothing But Heartaches” review will turn out.
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I don’t want to spoil the, um, surprise, or rather I want to make sure comments about NBH get left on the NBH page, so I won’t give too much away now, but basically I think it’s a great piece of music, a great way (as part of the “suite” with the Ask Any Girl remix) to launch the More Hits LP, and never in a million years is it a Supremes single. But more on that in a few days’ time!
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LOL okay. So far I’m nodding my head in agreeance, but have already found something you said something for me to agree with. Can’t wait for the review.
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I agree with you completely, Dave. Hindsight is always 20-20. But IMHO, if “Mother Dear” was selected as the follow-up to “Back in My Arms Again,” it wouldn’t have even made the Top 20. For me this seemed more like filler in “More Hits by the Supremes” than (almost) any other cut. Yes, it’s a good song, but it’s very one-note and extremely light compared to the Supremes’ hits up to this point. It would have been a step backwards. Now I’ll have to prepare myself for the review of “Nothing But Heartaches,” which I know I’ll also disagree with!
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I think 9 is way too high. I’d give it a 7. It sounds like a “crank-out” HDH song. Not a lot of spirit and individuality. It makes a good album cut, but doesn’t compare to the better Supremes’ hit sides.
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Hi Robb! Yeah I agree. Very good album cut but not single material. I feel like the folks at Motown had good taste in picking A sides/B sides/album filler (with the exception of some of those awful “remakes of current non-Motown hit songs” that got stuffed into various albums) Also thought Nixon’s musings about Beach Boys/Motown paralells were spot on. I feel like in the 60s, all of the various sounds (Motown; Brill Buidling, Beatles/Brit Invasion; Beach Boys/surf rock; other stuff) all influenced each other probably mostly unconciously. I could argue that we might not have ever had folk/rock (Byrds, etc) had it not been for the existence of Motown. I have been listening to the Byrds’ “Younger Than Yesterday” album & find that the tracks when tossed into a random playlist seem to fit in well with Motown music. I read somewhere about a producer who wanted to figure out how to make Bob Dylan songs into “danceable singles”.
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On the other hand, I like “Father Dear” by The Miracles (Claudette on lead) much better, which would get an “8” over the weak 7 for this recording.
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Ugh. I hate to sound like the “music police,” but right in the opening moments of the song there’s an ugly clash: Diana singing a G natural on the word “mind,” over an F# diminished chord. This might partly account for what Nixon hears that makes him describe the intro as sounding “like it’s from another planet.” Presumably a planet where they haven’t learned basic music theory yet.
If I had been part of Motown’s quality control team, this moment alone would have caused me to reject this record as a single release, or at least to insist that it be retooled a bit.
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LOL the Music Police has spoken! = )
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🙂 It’s a nice enough record other than that. Unfortunately a “proofreading” error of this type is enough to spoil the mood for me, especially occurring at the very beginning of the song as it does. It could have been avoided easily by, say, making the chord an F major, or perhaps changing the melody note to a G#.
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If you don’t mind me asking, how do you have this ear for music? I find this incredible.
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I was a freelance musician in New York for many years. This type of skill is not uncommon among professional musicians.
But I want to make something clear: I think some people might think that pro musicians listen to music with something akin to a mental scorecard, knocking off points for every slightly flat vocal or each instrumental lick that isn’t perfectly executed, and basing their evaluations on an absence of mistakes rather than on the more “visceral” criteria of a layperson. Quite the contrary! We feel the emotion/energy/passion of a great piece of music at least as deeply as anyone, the only difference being that we also know the technical side of music – that is, exactly how certain effects are achieved, and how they translate into a moving performance.
Conversely, if something is a little (or a lot) “off,” a layperson might notice it but not know the reason, whereas we musicians know exactly why. So, whereas a knowledgeable and passionate layman like Nixon might observe that an intro “sounds like it’s from another planet,” a musician will know that this is because there’s a flat 9 interval between the melody and the root of the underlying chord, creating a momentary dissonance. To me, it’s a bit like watching a movie and seeing a microphone boom accidentally caught on camera, for example; it shatters the illusion and pulls me out of the moment.
For me, it’s subjective as to how bothered I am by a particular anomaly on a record. It’s not an exact science – e.g., minus 5 points for an instrument being slightly out of tune, minus 10 for a wrong chord, etc. In the case of something like the out-of-tune guitar on “My Girl,” I pretty much overlook it because the record has so much else going for it. But when there’s a blatant clash such as in the intro of “Mother Dear,” it actually bothers me that it escaped the attention of the writers, the arranger, the musicians on the session, the producer, etc. It strikes me as unnecessarily careless.
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I’ve been letting this go so far, but now I must ask. What makes you think the dischord is not intentional? Unlike the “My Girl” guitar flub you mentioned, the clash here is obvious to an untrained ear, but I took it to be something done on purpose to reflect the narrator’s mental state. I’ve really enjoyed reading your observations and the ensuing discussion, but I confess I find it odd you’d leap so readily to believe that the greatest pop writers of all time suddenly “forgot” a basic precept of musical theory *and* that all three then somehow failed to notice on playback.
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I can’t prove it. All I know is that it sounds bad to my ear (just my opinion, mind you!), and that mistakes are not unheard of on pop records, even good ones!
Incidentally, what I’m referring to in “My Girl” is not exactly a “flub.” Back in the ’80s Alan Slutsky published a book called “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” which eventually inspired the movie of the same name. The book is primarily a tribute to bassist James Jamerson, with musical examples, but it also discusses the other Funk Brothers and Motown in general. Slutsky mentions that the studio air conditioner was left on while the musicians were running through their parts, but was turned off when the tape machine was running, so that the noise would not be heard on recordings. As a result, the temperature in the studio would vary quite a bit, affecting the tuning of the instruments. This can be heard, for example, in the slightly out-of-tune guitar playing the signature lick on “My Girl.”
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Hey Gang! Speaking of “mistakes” in Motown songs… What about “There’s No Stopping Us Now” by the Supremes. There is that awful squeak in the sax solo. I asked my sax playing brother about it & he said it had something to do with the reeds. Sounds like something that could have been fixed easily. Any thoughts Joe?
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I just listened to “There’s No Stopping Us Now” to refresh my memory… Yep, that’s an ugly squeak! The whole solo sounds like a subpar effort, presumably by Mike Terry. Maybe he was hungover that day!
How easy it would have been to fix the problem would have depended largely on whether the sax was overdubbed or all the instruments were recorded at the same time. If the latter, it probably would have been difficult or impossible to overdub a new sax solo without the old, “squeaky” one remaining on the recording as well.
But I speculate (again, merely one man’s opinion!) that the original session producers didn’t sweat details like a reed squeak in a solo or a momentary clash between a melody and an underlying chord. I’m guessing that they didn’t dream, or care, that the music they were recording would be listened to, analyzed, and adored fifty years later. The main goal was cranking out the hits for the kids of that era, and making the bucks. Probably no one cared about a squeaky reed as long as the record sold!
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HI Joe! Thanks for your prompt response. Yeah probably because it wasn’t a hit single they weren’t that concerned. It is interesting, though,, even at the age of 10 when I first heard the song I heard the squeak. I’m not much of a musician. I’ve fooled around on the piano & have done some singing & so have somewhat of an ear for music & sometimes hear “mistakes” in records & performances. I was recently at a wedding where a young woman sang. She did beautifully but the piano was in bad need of tuning! I definitely noticed that. People are nice to me when I sing & say I have a good voice but when I hear recordings of my singing I cringe at every bum note!!! All the best to you friend. I am enjoying your comments.
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This comment thread is fascinating! Love that people on this blog are so knowledgable. As a musician who was on the fence about learning music theory (that it was somehow “too analytical” “scientific” etc…) I really appreciate Joe’s comment about how knowing music theory doesn’t diminish your emotional reaction to songs, in fact i find it can enhance the enjoyment when you have a deeper understanding of what the musicians are doing.
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Funny… that clash and subsequent resolve is one of the things I love about this song!
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I think I’m going to prefer to live in that alternate universe where “Nothing But Heartaches” is released, fails to make Gordy’s precious Top Ten, and “Mother Dear” follows it, reaches number six or so, and then they REALLY go out on a limb and follow that with “Who Could Ever Doubt My Love.” (That would have been the most radical cut to choose to follow “Back in My Arms Again” anyway.) But then they’d have to come up with another side to put on the flip of “I Hear a Symphony”!
Too much trouble by half!
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Landini: I just listened to “There’s No Stopping Us Now” to refresh my memory… Yep, that’s an ugly squeak! The whole solo sounds like a subpar effort, presumably by Mike Terry. Maybe he was hungover that day!
How easy it would have been to fix the problem would have depended largely on whether the sax was overdubbed or all the instruments were recorded at the same time. If the latter, it probably would have been difficult or impossible to overdub a new sax solo without the old, “squeaky” one remaining on the recording as well.
But I speculate (again, merely one man’s opinion!) that the original session producers didn’t sweat details like a reed squeak in a solo or a momentary clash between a melody and an underlying chord. I’m guessing that they didn’t dream, or care, that the music they were recording would be listened to, analyzed, and adored fifty years later. The main goal was cranking out the hits for the kids of that era, and making the bucks. Probably no one cared about a squeaky reed as long as the record sold!
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OK, so maybe I’m weird… but I LOVE the sax squeak in “There’s No Stopping Us Now.” Like much about Motown, it that song is a fantastic blend of polish and rawness. One of my favorite Supremes’ songs.
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That’s funny, I’ve always noticed and enjoyed that split second ‘squeak’ at the end of the instrumental break on TNSUN, I’m surprised that someone else has mentioned it. There are some other recordings with some momentary peculiar sounds that have also intrigued me that I listen out for each time I hear them. It peculiarities like that which seem to add that something extra and in most cases are probably not even intentional.
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And one more thing: on some of the versions of Mother Dear, there is a strange twang or honk before the drum intro. Of all the versions I have, it is most prominent on the original More Hits CD. Can anyone peg what that is? (I’m fond of that, as well). 😉
On some versions, it is completely edited out, and on others it is concurrent with the first drumbeat.
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One of the greatest introductions to a Motown record ever. I’m pretty fond of that twang, honk, or thunk too. Have no idea what it might be, though.
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http://youtu.be/8MM91AzuRO4 not issuing this was a mistake a 10 in my book
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“Mother Dear” had more pop appeal to it—almost too much which may be one of the reasons they went with “Nothing but Heartaches”. NBH had the formula most consistent with most of the girls’ hit records like that propulsive beat and the repetition but it had one other thing—a real street feel to it. The only way i can really desribe it is NBH sounded more like something blaring from a corner bar jukebox than “Mother Dear” and thats what gives it that sort of urban appeal.
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Two thoughts on this one: First, there is the matter of the “from another planet” introduction, which is an unrelated verse before the string of choruses. Typically, at least with Diana Ross and The Supremes’ Motown hits to that time, the songs built on a quickly established idea and a series of repetitious builds, and the gap before the momentum starts in this song might have been considered risky. However, the concept of an unrelated verse before the chorus was handled much more elegantly on I Hear A Symphony.
Second, the audience for Motown songs was principally teenagers, and — especially in an era when much was made of the “generation gap” — the idea of going to one’s mother for advice was anathema. It was one thing to listen to one’s peers, as in Back In My Arms Again, but it was quite another to talk to one’s parents, to seek out or rely upon their judgments. (For instance, consider The ShangriLas’ hit The Leader Of The Pack, from the preceding autumn, in which the narrator discusses her dilemma with her friends while remaining diffident to her parents, rebelling against the idea of heeding their counsel.)
I agree with your observations about the intricacies of the background vocals; it’s especially thrilling to hear the interplay between those and the lead vocal. Too, it is interesting to consider The Beach Boys’ connections you’ve outlined.
Still, I see this mostly as an album cut, not a single. It comes across within the context of the songs around it on the album, but it does not really have the necessary stand-alone quality to be interspersed amidst whatever other songs might be in the weekly Top 40. And to my ear, it becomes tiresome on repeat listenings. It is one of those songs I would like to hear maybe once or twice a week, when I would have a chance to pause, to concentrate and to appreciate the many attention-grabbing elements involved in the production, but I would not want to hear it once every hour or two.
To an extent, hit singles broadcast over the radio airwaves had to serve as background to other activities, and this song is almost too demanding to subside in the background. Rather than a single, simple dominating pulse that was “easy to dance to,” supposedly a key reason why songs caught on with the American Bandstand crowd, it was complex and challenging, especially during the “help, help me mother dear” climaxes that interrupted the otherwise easy-to-sing-along-with catchy character of the song.
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Hi Ben,
You make a good point about the matriarchal figure looming over this record and sucking all the fun out, lol. I never considered her presence as being perhaps the downfall of this record chart success.
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OK, but Mama Didn’t Lie, My Mama Done Said, Mama said there’d be days like this… and Papa was a rolling stone! 😉
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Lol, nice rebuttal….now I’ m thinking
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I thought about other Mama songs — You Can’t Hurry Love and Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart each have parental references — before making my observation about Mother Dear.
The difference is that in these other instances, the narrator is only mentioning in passing that the parent has offered an unsolicited opinion or couldn’t possibly be of help with a given situation, while in Mother Dear, the narrator is actively seeking out advice from the parent.
Too, of course, there is the infamous Mama who showed up later, after making homemade jam. The narrator’s reaction to that mother was akin to the one the ShangriLas voiced in their hit I Can Never Go Home Anymore — the narrator is filled with remorse, realizing only after the mother has died that maybe she should have been less dismissive of the older woman’s guidance.
The distinction I was trying to draw is that there is a tendency for teenagers rapidly approaching the age of majority to assert their independence, to convince themselves (and their parents) that they are capable of making what they perceive as adult decisions on their own.
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First of all, this is one of those ecstatic discoveries – a song I’d never heard that’s at the level with the better-known Motown classics.
Second, there’s the mystery chord again! The second chord of this track – a triad, with the 5th in the bass, used in a non-standard way. Paul McCartney, for all his legendary egotism, has always revealed his borrowings, or “nickings”, as if talking to a priest in a confessional. He seems to take glee in admitting everything he stole and where he stole it. So if Sir Paul says he got this chord from Brian Wilson, I believe him. The question is whether Brian got it from HDH, or vice versa, or some other explanation.
There are two “standard” applications for this chord being used on the I chord of the key. The first is from classical music. If you’ve ever heard a piano or violin concerto – just as the end of the first movement, the orchestra pauses dramatically for the soloist to play a big flashy unaccompanied cadenza. It’s this chord that they always pause on. It’s one of the most consistent clichés of classical music, but there are strict rules governing the use of the chord in any other context. It can be used on any degree of the scale, but it must be prepared and resolved. If it’s used out-of-context as a stand-alone chord (as HDH, Wilson and Paul use it), it’s considered very wrong (in the classical context).
The other standard application is of course gospel music and here it gets used not only in the I but on IV chord, but it’s still used in a predictable way. It seems quite certain that gospel was playing when one or the other of these great songwriters had their grand epiphany that the chord could be taken out of context and used to create endless hooks elsewhere. For example, the first chord of God Only Knows (“I may not always love you”) or the third chord of You Keep Me Hangin’ On (“get out of my life”).
Finally, it’s really a “12/8 stomp” (not 8/8), or as I call it, an “HDH shuffle”.
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ive always liked this song as an lp cut but never thought of it as a single like Nothing But Heartaches, which I love. I think Motown made the right choice , but that’s just my opinion.thanks
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Been meaning to comment on this song for a long time. This blog introduced me to “Mother Dear” and at first I was like “huh? this as their next single?” On first and second listen, it seemed too repetitive, too slight, maybe a little herky-jerky…BUT as I listened to it more, especially in context of other More Hits tracks, wow…it worked its magic on me to the point where I pretty much agree with Nixon’s 9 rating!
I do like it more than “Heartaches” but only a bit more. My ratings of More Hits tracks would be, most fave to least:
Stop 10
Mother Dear 9
Who Could Ever 9
Back in my arms again 8
Nothing but heartaches 8
I’m in Love 8
Honey Boy 8
He holds his own 7
I’m so glad 7
Only time I’m happy 6
Ask any girl 6
Whisper you love me boy 6
My two cents on the choice to release Heartaches is that while it might not be better than Mother it sounds more current/forward-thinking. Mother has dainty traces of Where did our love go, while Heartaches ramps up the louder style of Stop and Back. Still, I think Mother would have been a hit if released and if Heartaches had been bigger than it was, the more energetic 2nd version of Mother would’ve made an excellent follow-up. Interesting then how HDH seemed to go back to WDOLG (and MD) for Symphony! So fascinating to trace Motown songwriters’ ideas!
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