Harry’s Place Arts

1. The Miracles - The Tracks of My Tears.
2. Stevie Wonder - Uptight.
3. The Temptations - Just My Imagination.
4. The Temptations - I Wish It Would Rain.
5. Jackson 5 - I Want You Back

Picking five - even though I just did - is nigh impossible. I left out ‘Superstition’, for a start, and now I’m feeling terrible…

1. Just My Imagination - The Temptations
2. Tracks of My Tears - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
3. Dancing in the Street - Martha & The Vandellas
4. War - Edwin Starr
5. Money - Barrett Strong

No space for more Temptations, like Ball of Confusion, or any Supremes? Man, this ain’t fair!

BTW, there was a stunning documentary on BBC4 a few months back about The Funk Brothers - the house band that drove the Motown sound. It was released on DVD as “Standing in the shadows of Motown” and I’m happy to say I found a copy very cheaply. It is awesome story, awesomely told…

‘Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)’ - Frank Wilson
‘In My Lonely Room’ - Martha & The Vandellas
‘There’s a Ghost in My House’ - R. Dean Taylor
‘I’m Still Waiting’ - Diana Ross
‘You Ain’t Livin’ Till You’re Lovin” - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Cutting down the shortlist was a cruel and somewhat arbitrary process. I have not included any that other people have mentioned, for no reason other than that it made it easier to cut down my list.

I believe that there’s another BBC Motown documentary in the works, that a friend of mine is working on.

Also, if you’re able to get hold of it, try and get a listen to Hip-O-Select’s ‘Complete Motown Singles‘ collection. It is an ongoing series that does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s now up to 10 volumes (comprising 55 CDs) and the year 1970, and attempts to collect every single track ever pressed on a Motown 7″, which means all the original single versions and their b-sides, along with countless other oddities, and abandoned b-sides or mixes. As you’d expect, it contains many wonderful surprises.

Dammit! I forgot The Temptations’ ‘Since I Lost My Baby’, which would certainly have found its way into my top five.

The Supremes - Stoned Love
Temptations - I Know I’m Losing You
Jackson 5 - The Love You Save
Frank Wilson - ‘Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)’
Stevie Wonder - If you Really Loved Me

can i have another go in half an hour?

Norman Whitfield last week, now Motown. And i thought it was wimpy indie kids and the odd grizzled punk round here. More of this new direction, please.

Oh, top 5 Motown tunes….where on earth to begin?
(I must echo Sy’s request, too…)

I must confess that the first Motown disc I ever purchased, as a (very) young lad (out of several weeks’ pocket money) was this (still - splendid, but hardly typical Motown…) number sung by a chanteuse who, six years after recording the song (and it, and the associated album being completely ignored) was working on the till at a sweet shop/tobacconist a couple of miles from where I was living in Essex…

Not necessary all-time top 5-worthy, but worthy of at least consideration…

Jimmy Ruffin, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?
Billy Preston/Syreeta Wright, With You I’m Born Again (I think this was on Motown, wasn’t it?)

1. You Need Love Like I Do - The Temptations
2. I Choose You - Willie Hutch
3. All I Do - Stevie Wonder
4. Mercy Mercy Me - Marvin Gaye
5. I’m Gonna Make You Love Me - Diana Ross and The Temptations

“Billy Preston/Syreeta Wright, With You I’m Born Again (I think this was on Motown, wasn’t it?)”

Mrs Wonder may have left the label by then, but this absolute beauty is Motown gold for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEWXYc46f8E

Such great music! I mostly heard these songs on the radio when I was a kid. If anyone in my house played a record, it was usually the Paul Mauriat Orchestra or Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, etc. It was always a treat to visit my cousins because they had lots of Motown 45 rpm records.

I think the first Motown record I bought was Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

I take that back. Come to think of it, I bought the soundtrack to The Wiz first.

FIVE !!!!!!!!!
Fifty won’t even come close!
Five hundred is getting there, [but I'd have to scrap about a thousand favorites].

FIVE?…. Jeeez!!! ……….. here goes…..

Brenda Holloway “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy”
The Contours “Say You”
Caroline Crawford “I’ll Come Running”
Syreeta “How many days”
Fantastic Four “I Love You Madly”

Could not possibly cut it to five of even ONE act.

ian

That Syreeta tracks was lovely, Sy, and not one I’d heard before. However, it can’t top this one, which I’d forgotten to even consider for my top five, recorded as ‘Rita Wright’. It was originally written for and recorded by Diana Ross & The Supremes, but remains unreleased as such.

I’d have to include Charlene “Never Been To Me”…hope it makes it on to the album…better get on with deciding the others…..Stevie WOnder will clearly have to feature…along with Diana Ross I would imagine….HELP! How do you enter your choices then?

Aha! Just worked it out! I saw yours up there Joe and have rated your choices…cracking website!

IMHO:

Best hits -
1. I heard it through the grapevine - Marvin Gaye
2. Living for the city - Stevie Wonder
3. (Love is like a) Heatwave - Martha & the Vandellas
4. My girl - The Temptations
5. Heaven help us all - Stevie Wonder

Best flops -
1. You’re gonna love my baby - Barbara McNair
2. Just look what you’ve done - Brenda Holloway
3. Destination anywhere - The Marvelettes
4. Why when love is gone - The Isley Brothers
5. Child of love - Caston & Majors

Five to prove no label is infallible -
1. Three times a lady - The Commodores
2. I’ve never been to me - Charlene
3. What the world needs now - Tom Clay
4. Love machine - The Miracles
5. I’m living in shame - Diana Ross & the Supremes

No-one’s mentioned “This Old Heart of Mine” by the Isley Brothers. Or “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men, but that’s more understandable.

The Motown list possibilities are endless:

Best/worst covers of Motown songs -

You keep me hanging on - Vanilla Fudge
My girl - Otis Redding
Love hangover - 5th Dimension
This old heart of mine - Rod Stewart
Tears of a clown - Beat
You’ve really got a hold on me - Beatles
Really saying something - Bananarama

etc. etc.

Best/worst Motown covers of others’ songs

Walk away Renee - The Four Tops
When you’re young and in love - The Marvelettes
Ain’t no sunshine - Michael Jackson
We can work it out - Stevie Wonder
Rockin’ robin - Michael Jackson
and if you fancy a really good laugh listen to Cupid by The Supremes…

Most tragic Motown deaths:

Tammi Terrell’s brain tumour
Marvin Gaye’s (what’s the opposite of patricide?)
Florence Ballard’s death in destitution
David Ruffin’s overdose
Eddie Kendricks’ lung cancer

One could go on and on….

There’s a good cover of I Was Made To Love Her on the Beach Boys album “Wild Honey”, and Frank Sinatra did an ok For Once In My Life, but strangely I’m not aware of anybody ever having tried to cover anything from Journey through the Secret Life of Plants.

“There’s a good cover of I Was Made To Love Her on the Beach Boys album “Wild Honey””

Yes, it’s fantastic that - a great Carl Wilson vocal.

The Beatles’ Motown songs were particularly good covers - all featuring sterling Lennon vocals: Please Mr Postman, You Really Gotta Hold On Me and, especially, Money (which, as Greil Marcus, said: “delivered everything that rock and roll had ever promised” or something like that).

The Stones’ version of Just My Imagination is also superb. As is Rod Stewart’s great take on (I Know) I’m Losing You.

The Fall’s version of There’s A Ghost In My House? Nah.

Didn’t Phil Collins do what amounted to a carbon copy of Can’t Hurry Love?

Nothing particularly offensive about it, but what was the point in just replacing Diana Ross’ voice with his own?

Not much to add to people’s lists - but no-one’s mentioned Baby Love, Reach Out, or How Sweet It Is.

Which are obviously all great.

Tim
cracking that. Heard the song before (Dusty, I think) but not that version.

Chris C, you were going great until you included Tears Of A clown and Walk Away Renee (actually, I’m not sure I’ve heard another version of WAR, so maybe I shouldn’t comment)

“Frank Sinatra did an ok For Once In My Life”

Isn’t that song just a supper club standard, not a Motown original? Seen Tony Bennett sing it too.

“Most tragic Motown deaths:”

The Temptations deserve their own list here - there’s only Otis Williams of the original five left alive (sniff).

6 degrees of Motown anyone? Spoke to Smokey once upon a time, but I guess phoners don’t count.

“Walk Away Renee (actually, I’m not sure I’ve heard another version of WAR, so maybe I shouldn’t comment).”

The original version is lovely:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:w9fixql5ld0e

Easily one of the best Motown covers of someone else’s song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecVD_q7DKFQ

“For once in my life” is a Motown original, but is also the most covered Motown song ever (over 500 recorded versions) and has indeed become a supper club standard. It was written by the late great Ron Miller who could reach dizzy heights (”Touch me in the morning”, “Yester me yester you yesterday”, “Heaven help us all”) but he also wrote “I’ve never been to me”. Ah well…..

Sy, yes, Dusty covered that track, hers was the version I heard first, and I only discovered the Syreeta version on a CD of songs that influenced, or were made famous by, Dusty. That said, I’d always defer to the Rita Wright original now. Listening to it, you can imagine Diana Ross singing it, and my guess is that it has the same instrumentation as the unreleased Supremes version.

As for your six degrees of Motown separation, my uncle used to do the books for a nightclub in Watford called Blazers, and he once took my elder brother to a show, where he met and got autographs from The Four Tops. My uncle eventually took me along too. Chas and Dave were headlining that afternoon. I met them. All they said to me was ‘wotcher!’. Really.

I couldn’t make head nor tail of ChrisC’s lists. He couldn’t really have been saying that all those songs / versions were crap, could he?

Sorry Tim, I was amalgamating “Best” and “Worst” lists on the assumption others would spot the cut-off point: hence all cover versions of Motown songs I listed I think are great except Banarama’s drivelly cover of The Velvelettes’ “He was really saying something”, and all Motown covers of other songs are great except for the hideous “Rockin’ robin” by Michel Jackson.

I got the Sam Cooke/Supremes song wrong and plead for everyone to accept my apologies: if you really want to hear a dreadful cover version, listen to The Supremes doing “Chain Gang”: makes Donna Summer’s “Love to love you baby” sound suitable for Sunday School…

Well, thank goodness for that!

My favourite cover by a Motown artist is The Supremes’ spectacular ‘Love The One Your With’ (another suburban pub DJ failsafe).

Oh and talking of Syreeta, I think I would have to put this incredible Stevie-written and -prodcued number in my top 5 for sure if I did it again (Stevie went on to “cover” his own song later but it was a single for her first): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrn-WF7MPA

Thanks for that. I never heard her original before, and it’s sublime: better even than Stevie’s. Who’d have thought that Syreeta would be leading the way in HP’s Motown top fifty?

I’m sorry but no way was anything by Syreeta the best thing Motown ever did. The competition is just too strong.

Anyone for “Best Motown cover of a Motown original”? Maybe “It should have been me” (Yvonne Fair cover of Kim Weston)?

“Anyone for “Best Motown cover of a Motown original”

At the risk of stating the obvious, I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Mr Marvin Gaye would have to be a fair shout.

Christ, every Motown hit was rehashed a thousand times, so it’s hard to say. And it seems inappropriate to consider them covers, given the in-house, integrated nature of the Motown A&R machine. Still, with that in mind, I’ll concur with Sy until someone comes along to remind me of another classic I’ve forgotten about. There are just so many of them.

[You will have to imagine the maniacal laughter] Aha Sy/Tim, caught you in my trap!

Gladys Knight’s version of “I heard it through the grapevine” was the cover not the original. Marvin Gaye’s version was recorded between February 3rd and April 10th 1967. Ms Knight’s was recorded in June of the same year.

And given the obvious superiority of Marvin’s version, the cover can in no way can be said to be the best Motown cover of a Motown song.

If you really hate the Yvonne Fair suggestion then I would suggest “Ain’t no mountain high enough” by Diana Ross?

No one likes a smartarse :p

But that diana Ross cover is the bollocks, especially the album version that takes a week or two to get going.

OMG! Now I know I’m REALLY getting old! But these songs will be on my playlist for the rest of my life.
1. Stoned Love - The Supremes
2. Up The Ladder To the Roof - The Supremes
3. I Got A Feeling - Barbara Randolph
4. Reach Out, I’ll Be There - The Four Tops
5. What’s Going On? - Marvin Gaye
The first two songs will be played at my funeral (which I’m hoping is a LONG way off yet!) Because I love the Jean Terrell-led 70’s Supremes. Her voice is so beautiful and she has amazing control. The 70’s Supremes will always have a special place in my heart.