Stand By Me...Motown

[RanRan79]

I love "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King. I also love Spyder Turner and Maurice White's versions. I wonder why Motown didn't cover this song more. Marvin Gaye would have done a fantastic version. I think David Ruffin with the Tempts would have also done a great version. His duet with Jimmy falls a little flat for me because of that added audience noise. It takes away from the song IMO.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJioV2BtMMk

[RanRan79]

Earl Van Dyke's live versions are pretty good though.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqPe7rBZYdQ

[RanRan79]

Recently released.......


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnwK_DmVL0

[danman869]

In case you weren’t aware, on the re-release of Ruffin Brothers’ album a few years back, there was a bonus cut of “Stand By me” that mixed out the audience overdubs [[or was the original track before overdubbing). I preferred the track without the fake audience.
http://youtu.be/JVJqsWAcvAk

[RanRan79]

In case you weren’t aware, on the re-release of Ruffin Brothers’ album a few years back, there was a bonus cut of “Stand By me” that mixed out the audience overdubs [[or was the original track before overdubbing). I preferred the track without the fake audience.

Thank you so much Danman! No, I wasn't aware of this version. I do like it better than the released version, but still not by much. I'm not a big fan of Jimmy Ruffin's voice so I think I would've preferred it as a David solo.

[marv2]

Earl Van Dyke's live versions are pretty good though.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqPe7rBZYdQ

I remember Ben's Hi Chapperal's . It was a very cool, very lively place.

[midnightman]

Well if you look on YouTube, you have dummies who use Marvin instead of Ben E. King as the singer of the song lmao

Sometimes I wished it was a Motown song but it's Ben E. King's song and no one can ever take that from him. No one.

[RanRan79]

I remember Ben's Hi Chapperal's . It was a very cool, very lively place.

There was a video I ran across on Youtube of an abandoned Detroit nightclub where some of the Motown acts and other music acts performed but I can't remember the name of the club.

[RanRan79]

Well if you look on YouTube, you have dummies who use Marvin instead of Ben E. King as the singer of the song lmao

Sometimes I wished it was a Motown song but it's Ben E. King's song and no one can ever take that from him. No one.

Couldn't you hear Marvin doing it though? Two of my Motown unreleased wishlist cuts: the Supremes doing "Chapel of Love" and Marvin doing "Stand By Me". Of course in Marvin's case I would hope the arrangement would be better than what they gave him for "My Girl", "There Goes My Baby", "This Magic Moment" and "Some Kind of Wonderful". Those Drifters cuts are among my favorite songs in life. Couple that with my favorite male singer of all time, Marvin, and you'd think I'd be in heaven. But by the time he seems to have recorded them, the sound the producers gave him seems so dated by 1966, and a little on the corny side. And then they took the already dated sounding cuts out of the vaults years later for two albums released when music was going through some serious sound changes as the 70s was about to arrive. Thank goodness for What's Goin On.

[midnightman]

^ Not really. His voice at that time was pretty much on the sweet side. Not saying he didn't have the voice to take it as high as Ben did but I don't think any of the Motown male acts could've matched it. Not Marvin, not Stevie, not the Tempts, Jimmy Ruffin, MAYBE. But even then, who knows?

Maybe it's because I just can't see anyone else doing it in retrospect. The sound of the song was up Motown's alley though!

And yeah that's what I meant: it would've been corny. Lol

Like I heard Marvin's My Girl and why it was good, it never matched the intensity by David and the Tempts. Only Tempts covers of Marvin's I really loved were I Wish It Would Rain and Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, the latter because he made it his own song and made the Tempts' version forgettable and the former, because he made it funkier [[which probably influenced Aretha's version less than 14 years later).

I'm sure he would've done a decent Stand by Me though because he would've Marvinized it lol

And I wouldn't mind Marvinized versions of other songs that were already cemented in history by others but it is what it is.