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Motown M 1088 (B), December 1965
B-side of Ask Any Man
(Written by Hal Davis and Frank Wilson)
Knowing the previous form of white crooner Tony Martin, here making his last appearance on a Motown 45 and therefore the last time he’ll feature on Motown Junkies, I was immediately suspicious of a song called Spanish Rose – this is going to be a borderline racist thing about a facelessly stereotypical Latina woman, isn’t it?
But no, on actually listening to it, it turns out this is about an actual rose. From Spain. Which he saw in the street, and which reminded him of… Okay, why does this remind him of his ex-girlfriend? And what on earth is going on with this chorus?
Going through the Motown catalogue one side at a time, in order, as we’re doing here, is artificial on a number of levels. I’ve got the benefit of hindsight, I’ve got information about both the future careers of these artists and their reputations in posterity which wouldn’t have been available at the time, I’ve got all the records and yet I wasn’t there to take in any of the context first-hand. But doing it this way also throws a number of these things into my path, records that no self-respecting Motown fan would ever have knowingly bought at the time, strange additional narratives that now directly cross the path of the main Motown Story instead of being forgotten footnotes for collectors only.
And some of them are really awful, and I’m not allowed to skip any of them, even though I was very sorely tempted to do that with Spanish Rose. Or maybe this is my punishment for leaving you all waiting for two months a while back; kind of a penance, a redemptive act of self-flagellation for having neglected the blog. What can I say? I’m really sorry.
Anyway, this is dreadful. The song is hokier than anything we’ve seen on Motown (“proper” Motown, not the Mel-o-dy country & western subsidiary) in years, the instrumentation and arrangement is pure light-entertainment cheese, the lyrics are inscrutable slop, and the vocals… oh dear. Apart from that, it’s fantastic.
You’d think that the virtual tsunami of fondue served up here by the tacky band would suit a veteran crooner like Martin, that he’d respond well to finding himself in more comfortable surroundings, but actually all it does is leave him cruelly exposed.
Tony Martin had enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a star of stage, screen and shellac (his first national hits for Decca came before the Second World War!), scoring international Top Ten singles in the Forties and Fifties along the lines of his rendition of Stranger in Paradise, overshadowed in the wake of Tony Bennett’s competing version. But by the time Tony pitched up at Motown, he had had no hits for eight years, and his film career had long since hit the skids.
Tony’s quasi-bel canto singing style, all the rage in pop circles in previous decades, had, ironically, gone out of style; fair enough, it happens. But the material needed to show off his voice had also gone out of style, and that’s more of a problem. Check out his beautiful version of La Vie En Rose – not really my thing, but I can appreciate when it’s being done well. And then listen to Spanish Rose, which by comparison is like a child’s daubed finger-painting compared with a Caravaggio.
Why does this fail, and fail so spectacularly? Is it because Tony’s voice had lost some of its power in the years since he’d been a top draw, or is it because Davis and Wilson were excellent pop/R&B writers and hugely out of their element, assuming one kind of staid and cheesy was as good as another? The strangulated, uneasy, vocalising here is a tough listen, both in terms of sounding dreadful, and in terms of the sympathetic cringe for such an obvious fish out of water. On the one hand, you could argue Tony’s performance isn’t a million miles away from those Fifties examples – a little looser, a little less able to stretch for the biggest notes, but in the same sort of ballpark – and that it’s actually the song, a wince-inducingly jaunty dinner-theatre sort of number, which doesn’t suit his voice at all. On the other hand, you can certainly say that however ropey the source material, Tony does it no favours – he’s phoning this in, he misses a couple of important notes in awkward, clashing style, and the whiff of a man who believes himself to be slumming it, believes his current situation is beneath him, comes over clear and rancid.
Either way, this sounds awful. If this had been bought in from some third-rate Tin Pan Alley hack, dashed off on the back of an envelope between takes of some ghastly daytime TV variety spectacular in exchange for some beer money, it would still be inexcusable. To find it’s actually written and produced by two of the most talented writers in the Motown stable – and lacking any kind of self-awareness which might let them play the pastiche card – it’s nothing short of shocking. But Tony doesn’t get off the hook either: as with so many of the worst Motown singles, this is bad material badly cast and sung badly, and it makes for an all-round miserable experience.
This is total, irredeemable garbage, the absolute worst of all Martin’s six sides for Motown, and a fitting note to end one of the most improbable careers in Motown history, as incongruous as anything from Irene Ryan, Albert Finney or the Abbey Tavern Singers. That this blip should have come in the middle of such a sustained run of R&B greatness, a Golden Age upon which Motown’s reputation now largely rests today, is to add insult to injury, but at least it’s over for the time being. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
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 Tony Martin? Click for more.)
Tony Martin “Ask Any Man” |
Jr. Walker & the All-Stars “Cleo’s Mood” |
DISCOVERING MOTOWN |
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Motown Junkies presents the finest Motown cuts, big hits and hard to find classics. Listen to all past episodes here. |
Landini said:
I just listened to this song. I was actually expecting it to be much worse, if you can believe it. I think Martin actually sounds a little better here than on “Ask Any Man”. He seems to drop the faux operatic vibrato here & tries to sing in a more “normal” fashion. Oh to be sure this is a bad record, but not quite as bad as I imagined.
I am wondering if Davis/WIlson had Ben E King’s “Spanish Harlem” in mind when they wrote this. If this song was a bit better & better arranged & produced I wonder what Ben E King and/or the Drifters might have done with it. While we are on the subject (kinda sorta) it seems that as Motown progresses (most of the time!) through the mid-1960s, concurrent releases by the Drifters on Atlantic are starting to sound bit more old fashioned & MOR-ish. Just an observation. Cheers all!
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W.B. said:
“Spanish Harlem” was exactly what I had in mind when reading about this tune. Talk about the proverbial great minds thinking alike . . .
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The Nixon Administration said:
I think that was the intention; it’s bound to come to mind given the title (which suggests not so much inspiration as outright ripping-off), but that’s really as far as it goes – musically they’re completely different from each other, and lyrically the whole point of this song is that the rose is actually a rose, not a slightly laboured metaphor as in “Spanish Harlem”. (It could have been called “Swedish Tulip” for all the relevance it has to the actual song, so surely it was a case of someone liberally appropriating the title in the hope of making that connection with a more famous/familiar record.)
And even Ben E. King couldn’t possibly have saved this, it’s just a terrible, terrible song.
Interestingly, we will come across a fairly radical Motown version of Spanish Harlem here in quite a few years’ time….
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144man said:
Compared to “Ask Any Man” this side is a masterpiece. If Tony Martin had been at his peak, at least the material would have been suitable for his voice. This is twice as good as the a-side. Let’s see, I gave that 0/10, 0 x 2 = 0, so this side rates 0 as well.
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The Nixon Administration said:
See, I don’t think it would have been suitable for his voice, which is much more in the bel canto mould, needing lots of long sweeps and stretches to work, falling apart when the material is choppy like this – I think that’s the same mistake Wilson and Davis made, equating all MOR slop and all MOR slop singers, but it’s actually too fast and too beat-driven for Martin to properly handle, no different at all than if they’d asked him to do “These Boots Are Made For Walking” a few months later or something.
I honestly believe this is worse than the A-side. “Ask Any Girl” is a good song, and until you take the lead vocals into account “Ask Any Man” is a cheesy but not offensively bad Hollywood take on it (it’s not in the same league as the original, but the instrumentation and backing singers aren’t in 1/10 territory), which just happens to have some hammy idiot steamrollering through it, demolishing any nuance or pathos. Tony Martin is really, really bad on it, but he’s really bad on everything he cut for Motown, and I like the backing track on Ask Any Man slightly (only slightly!) better than any of his other cuts. This, on the other hand, is an abomination.
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144man said:
I personally believe that ruining a good song is a worse crime than ruining a bad song.
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John Plant said:
We deeply appreciate the suffering you endure on our behalf! The insights are always fascinating… and merely whet our appetite for the glories to come. Bring on Junior Walker!
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Randy Brown said:
Not too soon, John…two singles down the road I fear I may have to go to war.
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Randy Brown said:
Correction: three singles.
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jam said:
We can’t wince sympathetically for a fish out of water for the singers, can we for the songwriters?
Damn, I’m going to have to listen to it now.
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jam said:
*singer
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Randy Brown said:
Having most of the sets at my fingertips on the PC makes it ridiculously easy to go right to it. I’m afraid Mr. Nixon is right on the money.
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nafalmat said:
I realize this probably wouldn’t appeal to the majority of Motown fans, but actually this is not a bad song or production/arrangement. The song has a decent melody and is well orchestrated. I don’t like Tony Martin’s voice, but he certainly sounds more comfortable on this than the top side. This song could have been a hit if Al Martino had used it as the follow up to ‘Spanish Eyes’. America was making hits of songs similar but no better than this at this time. Examples the aforementioned ‘Spanish Eyes’, ‘One Has My Name the other has my heart’, ‘The door is still open to my heart’ to name just three. There are loads more. I think people ought to judge this without thinking about Motown and then they might consider it’s not that bad. It’s certainly no classic but it’s a competent recording that’s worth 4 or 5 out of 10.
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Landini said:
Agree with ya. This really isn’t a completely awful song. Possibly if a more pop oriented label put it out, it might have been arranged better. And Martin sounds better here since he is laying off the whole vibrato/faux operatic vocalizing. Interesting you mentioned “The Door Is Still Open to my Heart”. It was originally a ddo wop song by the Cardinals (written by Chuck Willis). Funny how r&b can intersect with pop music at times. I thought one of Sinatra’s best 60s records was “That’s Life” which had a definite r&b feel to it.
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Randy Brown said:
Might have made more sense coming out on the V.I.P. label, instead of tainting the Motown imprint.
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W.B. said:
Tony Martin’s penchant at this point in his career for incongruous combinations of artist and label would carry on after the end of his Motown association. By early 1967, he was recording for Dunhill Records (then home of The Mamas & The Papas, later the label for such acts as Three Dog Night, Steppenwolf, The Grass Roots – and at least two other acts who either were or would later be associated with Motown, the Four Tops and Thelma Houston), where he recorded “Theme From ‘The Sand Pebbles’ (And We Were Lovers)” (D-4073, released February 1967). The producer? Marc Gordon, by then having split from Motown and Hal Davis – and managing a group called The 5th Dimension who would break out later in the year with “Up – Up And Away.” Compared to Martin, however, Richard Harris (of “Mac Arthur Park” fame) was a better fit for Dunhill.
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W.B. said:
Another thought: This was not the first or last time that people associated with R&B would do something that was waaaay out of their element (as were Hal Davis and Frank Wilson in penning this schmaltz). Think legendary New York R&B producer Zelma “Zell” Sanders (famous for bringing to the world such gems as Johnnie & Joe’s “Over The Mountain, Across The Sea” and The Corsairs’ “Smoky Places”) and her handling of a white hippie psychedelic group, Pugsley Munion, for one album and one single near the end of her long career in 1970. And the results were just as disastrous, in their own way, as with Motown and Tony Martin.
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Nico barrett said:
It’s one of those things where they seem to mistake Spanish i.e. Spain, for Mexican tourist brochure 1950s Kitsch romanticism tacos Cerveza and some other Shit. I doubt he was in a Spanish town that he couldn’t remember the name of… Oh dear god this is terrible!
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