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UNRELEASED: scheduled for
Tamla T 54121 (A), July 1965
b/w Who’s Lovin’ You
(Written by Smokey Robinson)
There can be no greater illustration of the fickle nature of showbusiness, and the way Motown now handled acts who weren’t pulling their commercial weight, than the story of what was happening to Brenda Holloway in the summer of 1965.
When Brenda was invited to join the Beatles’ upcoming American tour (following in the footsteps of Mary Wells, the Fabs being big Motown fans), an itinerary which would soon take in the unprecedented show at Shea Stadium in front of 55,000 screaming Beatlemaniacs, it must have seemed to outside observers that things were still going smoothly. Miss Holloway had been the “It” girl of the previous spring, earmarked for great things, and this would have seemed like another step in the right direction.
But in reality, the Beatles engagement was a rare positive in what was becoming a terribly disappointing time, a temporary high papering over the cracks that had started to develop. Back in the corridors of Hitsville, where she was already unpopular for her West Coast background and sometimes uncouth demeanour, and where (as the Velvelettes had already found to their cost) an extended absence could see you lose ground you’d never make up again, Brenda Holloway was in danger of becoming irrelevant.
Back in the spring of 1964, when she had first hit it big with Every Little Bit Hurts, her sun had looked like it would never set; bold, beautiful and possessed of a powerful voice, her début Motown single had sailed into the high reaches of the charts, an album following swiftly on its heels, and everyone had her down as One To Watch, tipped to be a big star. So big, in fact, that Motown were able to use her burgeoning reputation as a bargaining chip to get package tour gigs for a struggling, little-known girl group they’d had on their books for years.
Fast forward just fifteen months, and that girl group had racked up five Number One hits in a row, lavished with new material from Hitsville’s top writer-producers, while Brenda slogged her way through a torrent of ill-suited hand-me-downs and uninspired original songs. She’d never see another Top Twenty hit, never mind any more Motown albums. But hey, at least she got to open for the Beatles.
Her fortunes weren’t entirely unrelated to those of that no-hit girl group, mind you. Motown had recently vaccillated – fatally – when choosing the Supremes’ new single, resulting in a last-minute switch from one planned A-side (Mother Dear) to another (Nothing But Heartaches); now it was Brenda’s turn to undergo the same treatment. Thus, You’ve Changed Me ended up being shelved, and its catalogue number (unusually) re-used for a completely different song a month later.
But this doesn’t feel like the same sort of situation in which the Supremes had become tangled; it’s doubtful Motown were carefully considering their options, making sure they made absolutely the right choice before greenlighting the 45 they hoped would score Brenda a Number One. Charitably, the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 5 posit instead that Motown simply decided You’ve Changed Me was the wrong choice of new single to be promoted in stadiums full of Beatles fans, but I don’t think that’s it either.
Rather, this feels like Motown visibly losing interest in their one-time bright young hope, the Watts girl who’d ironically failed to become a chart-bothering superstar during Hitsville’s incredible annus mirabilis while several of her less hotly-tipped (and Detroit-based) labelmates had leapfrogged her to Number One.
In other circumstances, this might have been a big-ticket affair, but instead it feels like an afterthought, to be added to the release schedules only if there was enough room that week – and certainly not at the expense of another, more profitable act. Brenda, it seems, had been pushed so far down the pecking order that her record would never even appear.
For sure, there’s nothing here to have caused the girls and boys in Quality Control much optimism; any excitement caused by the presence of Smokey Robinson as Brenda’s writer-producer fairy godfather – and this time finally coming good on the long-awaited delivery of a new Smokey song for her to sing, rather than one of Mary Wells’ old cast-offs – would likely have sagged once the song was unveiled. It’s the oldest-sounding “new” number Smokey could possibly have turned in, bearing as it does rather more than a passing musical resemblance to Mary Wells’ version of What Love Has Joined Together, two years out of date.
Plus, Brenda is once again trying far too hard, treating the song as if it’s her last possible opportunity to show off every facet of her remarkable voice; she uses this as a show reel, and to hell with the emotional punch of the lyrics. Understandably enough, sure – Beatles or no, she was still an outsider and a minor, and Motown was becoming such a volatile environment there was every chance this really would turn out to be her last shot – but it’s to the detriment of the song, which wasn’t a masterpiece to begin with.
The middle eight in particular is a disaster area, both Miss Holloway and the band collapsing into swooping, whooping, wandering melisma just shy of the two minute mark before everyone quickly pulls themselves together again, but there are plenty of other moments where playing it smaller might have borne dividends. Yet again, I find myself coming away from a Brenda Holloway record with the impression that she was a great singer who needed to be reined in a bit more; the vocal melody gets lost in places thanks to her quite frankly showing off, and there are parts of this which might as well have been in Portuguese for the amount of feeling she brings to it.)
The lyrics, though, are really interesting, albeit in a Mary Wells circa 1963 kind of way; the narrator’s boyfriend has engaged in months, possibly years, of emotional abuse and petty blackmail, taking over her life, telling her how to dress and wear her hair and who to hang out with, all but erasing her personality, and reprogramming her into a completely new woman, a disturbing premonition of Neil LaBute’s The Shape Of Things… only to then find that he’s given his new “creation” the strength and self-awareness to dump his sorry ass. It’s the sort of thing where you could imagine Mary Wells having an absolute field day, but Brenda treats it as nothing more than a vocal showcase and, I have to say, I don’t really like it all that much.
In fact, with almost every successive Brenda Holloway 45 that comes up for review here on Motown Junkies, I’m finding myself re-evaluating my perception of her Motown career (as told through her released seven-inches). She has at least an entire double album’s worth of incredible Northern and deep soul cuts, to the point where the Cellarful of Motown series could serve as some kind of alternate-universe Greatest Hits collection (we’ve already seen her knockout version of How Can I, but how about Walking Out With My Heart or All Your Love or My World Is Crumbling or Trapped In A Love Affair? And that’s without even delving into the Motown Anthology pictured at the top of the page, which contains things like Reconsider (yes, I know that’s not its real title), which might have been Number One for a month had things shaken out differently. She was brilliant.)
And yet when it comes to her actual singles, every time I’ve found myself getting all keyed up – ooh, Brenda Holloway, I like her, this ought to be good!… it’s a disappointment. Oh, I don’t really like this one. Oh, or this one. What’s next? Oh, this isn’t one of her best ones. And so on, apparently forever at this rate.
Poor Brenda.
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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Brenda Holloway “Who’s Lovin’ You” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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I can’t disagree with your assessment of Brenda’s career since the high points of “Every Little Bit Hurts,” “I’ll Always Love You,” and “When I’m Gone,” but I have to take issue with the low marks on this record. “You’ve Changed Me” isn’t really an ideal choice for a single but it’s much better as a record than your rating implies.
It’s a challenging song and Brenda meets the challenge in her delivery. She’s learning to express emotion in the clarity and nimbleness of her singing rather than the dramatic highs that fueled “Every Little Bit.” In her follow-up album, those highs and her tendency to oversing leached into almost every song, making listening to the LP all the way through something of a slog. But here the way she embellishes the bridge and then pulls back into the last verse with purpose is where the song becomes moving.
After I listened to this I went back to the Supremes’ “He Holds His Own.” Both that and “Whisper You Love Me Boy,” which rated higher than this, sound rote compared to Brenda’s performance. I agree that some of the choices for her singles were odd given the unreleased material that has since surfaced. Indeed, this went up against Gordy’s “You Can Cry on My Shoulder,” which is a much more mainstream, average record to me. But this is the better record. I think it deserves a 6 or a 7.
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Thanks Mark!
I personally don’t like Brenda’s “When I’m Gone” (which may explain why I’m lukewarm towards this one, I’m guessing I’m missing the same magic ingredient that everyone else seems to be hearing in both records); I find it lacking in empathy compared to the original, sacrificing nuance for showing off her remarkable voice, and it baffles me to then see people lining up to praise her, as if her voice being amazing means she can do whatever the hell she likes to a song and we’re meant to sit and applaud (see also: Liz Lands). I don’t understand why Brenda gets a free pass while if Mariah Carey does it, she (correctly) gets brickbats. I gave it a 6 and even that feels absurdly generous now.
The comments thread for that one amply illustrates why I’m “wrong” on that point, in terms of the majority opinion – and I was expecting more for this one, if I’m honest – but for me, that point still stands. Indeed, it stands with particular relevance here, because she does the same thing again on You’ve Changed Me and I find it irritating.
Conversely – and we’ll see it played out when we get there in a few weeks – I really like You Can Cry On My Shoulder, along very similar lines. But that’s a story for another day!
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This may be a good illustration of the often intangible value a producer brings to a session. I’ve read that Brenda feels she’s more comfortable interpreting Frank Wilson’s writing, and “Sad Song” and “I’ve Got to Find It” are good examples of that. What she didn’t say, but perhaps implied, is that she wasn’t as comfortable with Smokey Robinson’s writing. Also, to follow up on my comparison above, I feel her version of “Who Could Ever Doubt My Love” is inferior to Diana Ross’s.
I firmly believe she’s a great singer, and that I’m sure influenced my comments, too.
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She is a great singer. Without giving too much away, she’s certainly not done troubling the higher reaches of the Motown Junkies marking scale just yet.
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I like it a LOT better than a “4”. I’d give it a “7”. But, I wouldn’t have included it in a review of Motown singles, as it was never even pressed up in a test pressing (let alone a DJ issue).
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A good point. As ever: for things that only existed on paper, if at all, as far as Motown Junkies is concerned, the Complete Motown Singles series is the final arbiter of what gets into the Motown 45 canon.
They researched the paperwork very thoroughly to find all manner of scheduled singles that never made it to the test pressing stage, and my golden rule is: if they include it, I automatically include it.
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I am fully aware of your policy for this website, that if “Complete Motown Singles series” includes it, you include it. I didn’t mean to imply that you included it incorrectly. Only that I wouldn’t have included it and the other record projects that were “slated” for scheduling, but NEVER got a scheduled release date.
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As a sidebar to this discussion, I didn’t feel comfortable including any slated but not released singles on my Top 50 list; otherwise I would have had to consider “Mother Dear” more seriously.
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I’d have a bunch of unreleased in my Top 50 Motown recordings, including “Tears From A Woman’s Eyes” by The Temptations, “I Should Have Known Better” by The Marvelettes, “Any Girl In Love” by Kim Weston, “Crying In The Night” by The Monitors,”Until You Came Along”-Carolyn Crawford, “All I Do (Is Think About You’ by Tammi Terrell, “Tears, Nobody and A Smile” by The Serenaders and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by The Versatones, among others.
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There’d be a few for me too – the ones that jump out right away are the Marvelettes’ “Knock On My Door” (and probably “This Night Was Made For Love”, too, which I know wasn’t unreleased per se) and Sammy Ward’s “Then You Changed”. My complement of 10s is already full, so quite what would have ended up being pitched overboard to make room on this overcrowded ship, I don’t know.
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Truly, “Until You Came Along” is sublime!
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Yes, I know, sorry Robb – I din’t mean to imply that you were implying etc etc. That comment was more for the benefit of new readers who haven’t seen our previous discussions 🙂
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The previously unreleased Smokey Robinson composition, “After All That You’ve Done”, recorded by Brenda in 1965 and included on the new Kent CD “The Artistry of Brenda Holloway with bonus tracks from the Motown vaults” is superior by far to any of the Smokey compositions she recorded as singles. I can’t stop playing it. The Quality Control Department slipped up badly here.
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Levi Stubbs once said that out of everything trhey recorded at Motown only 10 percent was released. I’m hoping some more of the Tops’ stuff resurfaces like Brenda’s seems to do every few years. I think i’ve heard more of her unreleased sessions than the grand total of her released singles!
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From what I saw in The Motown Vaults, I think Levi’s statement might be reasonably close to accurate. I think that the only major Motown artist whose total Motown catalogue has been released is Mary Wells. We should continue to hear “new” finds from The Vault from Ace/Kent Universal/Motown, Hip-O-Select and the like for some years. The quality will be varied, with some “sleepers” perhaps being big surprises (especially among the 2nd-tier artists).
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