678. Jr. Walker & the All Stars: “Baby You Know You Ain’t Right”
The ingredients all seem to be here for a raucous good-time All Stars jam, but the end result is oddly uninspiring.
The ingredients all seem to be here for a raucous good-time All Stars jam, but the end result is oddly uninspiring.
Berry Gordy was vindicated again, the record both gaining plenty of new fans, and selling well; people bought it and people played it, and I find that heartening. Certainly I like this a lot more than I might once have expected to. (8)
Very much the All Stars’ Wild One compared to Shotgun‘s Dancing In The Street, for good and ill. I like it a lot, but I like their previous two singles even more. (7)
Almost endearingly crazy, and it ends up being entirely likeable. Splendid stuff. (8)
This is a messy, dirty kind of a record, little-loved and completely at odds with everything else Motown was aiming for in the spring of 1965. It’s also brilliant. Go figure. (9)
It is just a whole lot of fun. It’s also quite stupid, and proud of it (as with Stevie Wonder’s Fingertips, another unashamedly direct Motown stomper), but that plays in its favour; it’s a gas. (9)
It all balances out, more or less, into a mildly diverting instrumental that doesn’t cause revulsion but doesn’t live in the memory. There’d be much better, and much worse, from Junior Walker yet. (3)
A great start, even if there was better to come. (7)