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VIP 25024 (A), August 1965
b/w Moonlight On The Beach
(Written by Berry Gordy)
Tamla Motown TMG 536 (A), October 1965
b/w Moonlight On The Beach
(Licensed for British release via EMI/Tamla Motown)
The second, and final, Motown single release for respected songwriters Helen and Kay Lewis – here now billed as “The Singing School Teachers!”, hardly a strapline to get the fans’ hearts racing – is almost as daring and offbeat as their first, the genuinely confusing He’s An Oddball. One of the more off-kilter entries in the Motown canon, that single is often explained away with a dismissive wave of the hand: clearly, it was just released as a favour to the sisters, a sweetener to make sure they stayed at the LA office, etc etc. And Motown must have been keen to keep them onside – how else to understand Motown signing Kay’s daughter Little Lisa to a recording contract too?
But I don’t think that’s the case at all. For a start, the charts were rife with similarly unusual fare in the summer of ’65, and He’s An Oddball is weird rather than awful (though lots of later commentators have confused the two). Plus, this one – recorded not in Los Angeles but Detroit – boasts an increasingly rare songwriting and production credit from the big boss, Berry Gordy himself. They weren’t abstract no-hopers – and the very fact they even got a second single (never mind one released internationally with a lavish picture sleeve – see below!) tells me Motown hadn’t given up on the idea of having hits with these two just yet.
It’s much harder to see that ever happening with You Need Me, mind you. We start with a beguiling intro, the sisters’ vocals again apparating rather than suddenly appearing, like a ghostly presence in the room – “no man’s an ISLAND!”, they wail, like wounded sirens getting desperate. If radio was baffled by the opening, the rest of the track provides a sobering illustration of what might have happened to Brenda Holloway’s beautiful You Can Cry On My Shoulder if it had fallen into the wrong hands; it’s a big production alright, positively drenched in echo, but it’s musically messy, too many tempo changes and different melodic threads and sudden blaring horn riffs out of nowhere for the listener to ever get comfortable. The massive amounts of reverb (applied, according to the sisters in the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 5, because Gordy was trying to ape the sound of the Righteous Brothers) end up making the record sound tinny and cluttered, and even some awesome harmonica work (Stevie?) can’t quite fix things. Lyrically, too, it’s unlikeable, a selfish whinge that never gets more sophisticated in its persuasion than chanting the title, and which culminates in a puffed-up but dismally forgettable non-chorus.
But it’s not a complete train wreck. For all its faults, and there are a great many of them, even though it’s ridiculous, ending up silly in the bad way (unlike He’s An Oddball which seemed to know how daffy it was, and played up to that accordingly)… for all of that, it’s never stupid. If anything, it reminds me of one of the Temptations’ very early singles, Check Yourself, with too many interesting little musical vignettes and half-sketched ideas for melodies all jostling for attention, none of them really getting up enough of a head of steam to carry the song home all the way. And they sound like no-one else on Earth, all high, wavering, otherworldly soprano harmonies that only ever sort of lock into the general drift of whatever’s happening at that part of the tune – which should be a big demerit, but which actually kind of adds to the weird charm.
Weird charm can only take you so far, and this isn’t great – it’s a mess, really, and probably an unsalvageable one at that (though Brenda Holloway did once gamely give it a go) – but it’s not completely horrific, and I keep finding myself strangely drawn to play it again.
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 The Lewis Sisters? Click for more.)
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| Brenda Holloway “How Many Times Did You Mean It” |
The Lewis Sisters “Moonlight On The Beach” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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Motown Junkies 
Though I don’t particularly like the record, I also often find myself drawn to play it. There’s something strangely compelling about it.
What rating would you have given Brenda’s version?
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Good question. Probably 5 or 6; there’s a lot less echo, and while Brenda is out of control in places, she handles most of the tricky turns well. A pity there’s no YouTube clip available for more people to debate.
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As both are Berry Gordy compositions which are not too different melodically from each other, I’ve never been able to work out why “You Can Cry On My Shoulder” succeeds whereas “You Need Me” does not.
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Brenda Holloway? Really?
Where can i get a copy?
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It’s on her 2CD Anthology set, but you’re best looking for a digital download – the CD is out of print and copies regularly run to hundreds of dollars.
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Thanks but im not into digital yet–i’ll take my chances on the Cd. If i can’t find it my wife usually turns something up—and sh’s not even into it like i am. Just from reading this blog i’ve actually turned up volumes 2 & 3 of “Cellar full of Motwn” and i didnt know they existed. I got vol 1 like 5 years ago. I also ordered that Velevelletes Motown Anthology which is off the chain!! Then i lost it and got the Earl Van Dyke 2 cd set and the re-issue of Shorty Long’s 2 Lps. Nix, you’re eating away at my mad money.
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🙂 There’s also a Cellarful volume 4 waiting for you to spend your hard earned cash – it’s not as good as the first three, but still well worth getting…
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its not yet available in the United States. I even tried private dealers.
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Can you not just get it from Britain (the exorbitant trans-Atlantic shipping is offset by it only being £7 in the first place)? I quite often have to get American records shipped over to Tiny Rainy Island from US retailers.
Amazon link
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I’ll get right on it. Thank you so much. Is L7 like ten bucks or something?
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£6.38 = $10.20 at current rates (according to the excellent http://www.xe.com) – not sure how much shipping would be.
Like I said, for me it’s not as good as the first 3 volumes, but still well worth having. The Brenda H. anthology is fantastic, but the prices on that are grossly inflated and only drifting downwards very slowly (second hand copies are still going for $100 a pop).
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Hmmm…not to keep bothering you…but…If i only paid 12 dollars 2 months ago for the Kim Weston anthology why would i pay 100 dollars for Brenda Holloway, overlooking the fact the shes fine as frog’s hair and a great vocalist?
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You wouldn’t, nor would any sane person – that’s the point. I was too late to buy a physical copy when it was in print, so I’ve had to make do with a $10 digital download, meaning I’m missing all of the annotations etc (thank goodness (and Keith!) for DFTMC).
The Spectrum series of Anthologies all date from the mid-Noughties (they’ve long since stopped doing stuff like this, the baton now having been picked up admirably by the superb Ace/Kent series); off the top of my head, I think the Billy Eckstine, Tommy Good and Barbara McNair sets are also now out of print and thus prohibitively expensive. On the other hand, I got the Velvelettes, Isley Brothers, Elgins, Jimmy Ruffin, Kim Weston, Chuck Jackson, Bobby Taylor and Chris Clark volumes brand new for peanuts, as well as several fine volumes from their accompanying single-disc best-of series (Mable John, Barbara Randolph, Valerie Simpson, Barrett Strong); you can also still pick up the R Dean Taylor and Velvelettes CDs in that series if you still need them, though I think I’m right in saying the Complete Motown Singles sets render them largely obsolete.
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bogart – certain US amazon sellers have it for less than $10 incl shipping. (Not to promote a company that cost me a job and closed a lot of great brick and mortar bookstores in my city)
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My wife is the amazon freak in the family. I’ll refer it to her and thanx for information!
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That TMG EP photo looks like it could have been an outtake from the Carol Burnett/Julie Andrews TV specials…
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Note to Mr. Nixon: the “Previous” link to Brenda Holloway actually leads to No. 528, “Throw a Farewell Kiss.”
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Oops! Thanks Randy, I’ll get that fixed now.
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Not all that good a song. Brenda did a lot better job on it, I’d give this a 2.
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