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Tamla T 54124 (B), November 1965
B-side of Uptight (Everything’s Alright)
(Written by Clarence Paul and Ted Hull)
Tamla Motown TMG 545 (B), January 1966
B-side of Uptight (Everything’s Alright)
(Released in the UK under license through EMI/Tamla Motown)
The light and fury of the A-side Uptight had been a quantum leap from what had gone before in so many ways, suggesting a new beginning for Stevie Wonder as one of Motown’s brightest new stars. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the vestiges of the long years of slog from Little Stevie would take time to eradicate; the journey to Innervisions is now underway, but there are a lot of stops along that road.
Even with that in mind, it’s a jarring experience to find something like Purple Rain Drops coming straight on the heels of Uptight: a throwback in more ways than one. This is a two-year-old recording, a slow bluesy ballad joint which would sound out of place even if it was an instrumental, but the circumstances make it even more glaring, the difference between 13 and 15 readily evident in Stevie’s shaky, gangly voice.
What we have here, effectively, is a rehash of (or, given the timescales involved, a dry run for) Tears In Vain, not bad as such but showing its age in a disheartening fashion. It’s clunky, it’s stitched together with no great care, it lurches from hook to hook in an ungainly manner… it’s the sound not of Motown in 1963, but of Stevie two years previously, the live show firecracker who couldn’t really yet master a tender ballad and whose musical development trod such a different path to his labelmates as to make his story almost irrelevant.
To add to the old-school flavour, Stevie’s schoolmasterly tutor Ted Hull – a key figure for the unsophisticated dirt-poor blind tween as he grew up away from home and out on tour, but marginalised as the mature artist developed – gets a writing credit (the subject of some controversy, Hull implying in his autobiography that Clarence Paul’s contribution was minimal at best, while another anecdote has Uptight producer Mickey Stevenson only half-jokingly accusing Hull of “getting a free ride” on this B-side and subtly warning him not to get any more ideas about becoming a songwriter).
Motown, too, seem to have had mixed feelings about Purple Rain Drops, leaving it gathering dust for two years and then sneaking it out on the flip here (with no indication that Uptight would blow up like this) before never mentioning it again. Unusually for a big-ticket Motown B-side as late as 1965, Purple Rain Drops never features on any studio LP or vaguely contemporary greatest hits collection.
And it’s understandable; this song begat another demo, Purple Snow Flakes, which eventually became Marvin Gaye’s astonishing Pretty Little Baby, while all the time the “original” languished on the shelf. It’s pretty in its own way – the guitars are lovely, and the key refrain, Stevie cooing oh what am I gonna do?, straight out of one of Clarence Paul’s Supremes country and western cuts – but it’s impossible to ignore the context, ignore the glaring, flashing signs that mark this out as the work of a boy on the wrong side of the cusp of adolescence. I don’t just mean the reedy, wavering singing, but the whole package; everything about Uptight suggested the future, whereas Purple Rain Drops is a trip back into Stevie’s cupboard under the stairs.
This is noodling fare, background music, middle of side two stuff; pleasant enough, but I wanted to hear more from the new Stevie Wonder, the Stevie as introduced on the A-side, the Stevie as we now know him. Whatever the reasons for exhuming Purple Rain Drops, this just isn’t him any more.
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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Well, I like it two or three digits more than a 4, and I thought Uptight had to have something slow on the other side, even if something fresh wasn’t ready. Perhaps too, I’m more fond of it than it actually deserves precisely because Motown sent it into such deliberate eclipse after original Tamla 54124’s stopped being pressed. If Motown had to hide something “Little Water Boy” is the better candidate, but “Purple Rain Drops” wasn’t dreadful.
But it’s onward and upward from here and when Wonder shows up again on Tamla 54130, I’ll be surprised if either side of that comes in under 6.
A shout-out too to the great Uptight album. The first half of ’66 saw splendid Motown LP releases. In sequential Tamla catalog numbers was Moods Of Marvin Gaye, Going To A Go-Go and Uptight. Symphony was released in mid-February, Four Tops Second Album was still fresh, terrific Greatest Hits packages came out on The Marvelettes and the Vandellas too, and Gettin’ Ready would be there as summer dawned.
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Okay, am I the only one in this joint who LOVES THIS SONG??????? I tend to love offbeat Motown songs & this one is near the top of my “Favorite Offbeat Motown Songs” list. I can understand why people might not be into this song, but I really love it. Would love to hear any feedback from folks who love this song!
I love the guitar & the background singers. And I think that for a tween Stevie sounds pretty good. Anyway… that’s my 2 cents. FYI – Looks like we are getting another snow storm here on the east coast!
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I like it, too, sir. I think it’s his best pre-voice-change recording. Just as Mr. Devereux said on “Tears in Vain”, he sounds an awful lot like Mary Wells on this. And The Andantes (who did a lot of great work with Ms. Wells) are on top form, which gives this even more of a Wells-ish feeling. Oddly enough, as I write this, I’m listening to Ms. Wells’ “Oh Little Boy (What Did You Do To Me)”, which makes wonder what Stevie Wonder could do with a song like that (with “Boy” changed to “Girl”, of course).
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I agree with you! I LOVE Purple Raindrops, also. I think it is a beautiful song.❤️
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I love it too. Yes, I used the word “love”. Not the way some use the word as casually as they use the word “hello.” There is a real sincerity here. An odd sort of melancholy runs through this too, with its churchy organ and bluesy guitar work. Stevie surprised me here as he sounds genuinely invested in singing as tender a ballad as someone his age could. To me, this was one of Motown’s better early 60s recording. Sorta sad and beautiful.
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I had a hunch that this was holdover from an earlier recording session; this song was always spoken of favorably in oldies circles but as far as how it was received in 1965-66, I would defer to Dave L or somebody else older on this blog to tell you. I was never a fan of this song and although I have two or three copies of this song on 45, it was a crisper cleaner copy of “Uptight” that I was always searching for. I’m glad this signals the end of Motown’s Country/Western experiment with Stevie, even though there are a few more asexual Folk/Pop songs to suffer through before he hits his stride (In my opinion, the last one was “Never Had A Dream Come True”). I would have to agree with the “4” rating, although a “5” due to its time and place on the Stevie/Motown landscape is not out of the question.
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Hi Lord Baltimore (I live in Annapolis – Do you live in Baltimore?) Anyway, I first heard this song in 1970 when I bought the UPTIGHT single as an OLDIE. I was 12 at the time. To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to the B-side. A few years later I heard someone talking about the song on an oldies show probably around 1975. That made me check the song out & i realized that I really liked it. Not sure what exactly attracts me to the song. I think the arrangement is right purty! Was frustrated that it was never on an album until a compilation later. Anyway… I think you are pretty new here so WELCOME FRIEND!
PS – I wonder how Marvin Gaye might have sounded on this song?
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Leaving it off the album would make sense if Motown was determined to feature only the maturing Stevie, but Uptight carries “Contract On Love,” which is pre-Fingertips itself, and definitely Stevie is in his ‘child voice’ then.
Worth mentioning too, for those who don’t know, Uptight, along with Clarence Paul’s very sizable guest-starring on “Blowing In The Wind,” features a totally surprise and unbilled Levi Stubbs with Stevie on “Teach Me Tonight.”
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“Teach Me Tonight” was a very pleasant surprise on the “Uptight” LP; I was shocked to hear Levi Stubbs in an uncredited Duet. Thank God it was an uptempo arrangement because Phoebe Snow had a slow version that I couldn’t stand to hear anymore around the time I bought Stevie’s LP.
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I always thought it was Marvin Gaye. Thanks, Dave L for setting me straight!
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Thanks for the welcome, Landini!
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This has always sounded like a Clarence Paul composition to me, yet it is credited to Ted Hull. Paul obviously had a liking to Country & Western and Folk music as he produced the Supremes C W & Pop album recorded some C & W folk standards on Stevie, The Originals, etc. “Tears in Vain” was a lovely C & W style song and this seems similar to me. I reckon Paul wrote the music and Hull wrote the lyrics. Anyway, it’s a pretty little song nicely arranged and deserves at least one more point.
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Per Ted Hull’s autobiography, as quoted in the liner notes for The Complete Motown Singles, Volume 5:
“I did both the tune and the lyrics in about fifteen minutes one Saturday morning… before Stevie recorded it, Clarence Paul wanted me to write one more bridge to it, which I did. When the song came out, I discovered Clarence got one third of the royalties and had his name on it as co-writer, I guess because he had suggested I change the tune slightly.”
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A quick visit to youtube was enough to convince me of the justice of your evaluation – not without charm, but ultimately directionless. Four seems about right, though perhaps I would have gone to 5. Definitely under the 99-cent itunes threshold! Alas, my UpTight LP is long gone – I must have pawned it in my hungrier days – but I was astonished to learn that it was Levi Stubbs duetting with Stevie on ‘Teach Me Tonight.’ In cloudy retro-audition, that seems right, and makes me sorry I can’t put it on the box right now. Speaking of thresholds, a purchase I have NEVER regretted it is the dollar I spent on a 45 of the next song on deck – can’t wait for your take on ‘A Bird in the Hand!’
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I still have mine, but it’s pretty unplayable.
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I, for one am looking forward to your take on Billy Eckstine’s “I Wonder Why” (M-1105), which I just heard for the first time last month!
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I loved this record when it was first released because i was always a sucker for a Detroit ballad. Not only that but it was clearly “dated” which gave it that atmosperic sound i dig so much
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I love the song, performance, and arrangement! I think it’s hauntingly beautiful.
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This is music to fall asleep to. Almost as bad as “My Cherie Amour”.
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