The Surpemes- "Come On Boy" A great missed opportunity.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I'm prepared. Anytime one person finds something absolutely beautiful, there is another who finds it absolutely horrible. The Supremes' recording of "Come On Boy" is the "something" that I find absolutely beautiful. Years ago, I've learned to stop questioning why this or that wasn't released at the time, but this song kinda automatically raises the question in my mind every time I listen to it.

Easily, it's one of the most sophisticated of the early Supremes recordings and along with "Your Heart Belongs To Me", was an early revelation of how Diana sounded oh-so-sexy when she was allowed to sing in a lower register. I also love it because it's such an ensemble piece for the group. Florence's voice rings high and clear and Mary's provides a nice warmth- the mix of all three is fantastic.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T82ZtGk4hzY" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://youtu.be/T82ZtGk4hzY

[Coppelia-Birdsong]

I think there were a goddam HUGE ton of missed oppertunities from the 25th anniversary record alone, a lot of their absolute best work was shelved. I believe the following should have been singles:

Ooowee Baby: just... wow. The girls are EVERYTHING.

Send Me No Flowers: Haunting breakup song. Diana is haunting here. Also some of HDH's most gorgeous and sublime lyrics.

Treat Me Right John Henry: I love this song so much. I was sad to find out Flo and Mary and Cindy were not on it, but I really came to like that this was a song Diana picked out for herself to sing, and a show of her creativity and her flexing her muscles as a singer and experimenting. I think it sounds like a feminine Beatles song. Amazing.

Are You Sure Love is the Name of This Game: Ummm what? This is a classic Supremes song with some insanely catchy lyrics. Why was this not even a single?

Manhattan: Oh this is a pure delight to hear: Diana and Florence sound magical sharing lead together. This song truly is an art of joy.

If I ruled the World: Another sublime classy club tune.

Sleepwalk: See above.

I agree with what you say about how sexy Diana sounds when she deepens her voice: she has impeccable control of her pitch and tone: I love how in a live performance of Back in my Arms Again, when she sings "twice" her sweet voice drops into this catlike purry growl. It's beautiful. I get a similar feeling when I hear Jean sing Up the Ladder to the Roof, and when she sings "closer to heaven" again it drops from Jean's natural sweet as honey voice to a catlike growly purr. And then she looks at the camera and you see a hunger in her sweet eyes, and I actually get super intimidated. You know this girl wants this. This is a girl who fights for what she wants. Mercy.

[RanRan79]

"Come On Boy" is definitely one of my favs from the pre-hits period. I don't think the song would've ever hit but it definitely should've been an album track. Perfect to my ears from the vocals to the music. Definitely showcases the Supremes' true appeal.

[sup_fan]

hmmm - my picks for missed tracks left in the vaults?

Blue Room - this is one of my fav R&H tracks. their vocals are so smooth and they sound amazing singing in unison in their lower registers. I'm guessing the performance is too group heavy and Berry probably wanted tracks that spotlighted D a bit more

Stormy - soooooo much better than some of the other covers they put out at the end. Cream of Crop would have been better with this vs Blowin In The Wind

The Look Of Love - although I'm guessing it wasn't completed since no background vocals. but I love this song and Diana's vocals are great

A Little Breeze - again, given some of the junk issued on Reflections it's hard to understand why this was left behind.

Just a little misunderstanding

I saw him standing there - now I completely agree this is NOT an amazing rendition of this song. but I think it's better than some of what WAS on Bit of Liverpool

The Boy from Ipanema - I love their group rendition of this. might have fit into the Symphony set? it's a bit different style and tone from the others. but would have carried the MOR feeling and added some variety

Tears left over - love this Jean track

Mother Dear [[3rd version) - I would have gone with this over some of the older tracks on Sing HDH

After All - I think this is a better song than I Want A Guy. frankly most of the tracks recorded by March '61 would have been better than IWAG. Boy That Got Away. or lead with a ballad like Never Again

[sup_fan]

and I would have done a lot different with the MSC period too! some of the better material was left off of Sup 75

I would have done:
He's My Man [[extended version)
I Can Never Recover
Can We Love Again
Seed of Love
Where Do I Go from here
This is why

It's all been said before
Color my world
Give out
You Turn me around
You can't stop a girl in love
Dance fever

Or if they'd gotten off their cans faster, they could have issued a more "pop" album first with:

It's all been said
You can't stop a girl
color my world blue
give out
You turn me around

shoop shoop
where is it belong
seed of love
can we love again
sha la bandit

and then followed up later with a disco album with the dance tracks

[Coppelia-Birdsong]

Boy from Ipemana [[spelling?) I love that song. I have my Baby Love: The Essential Diana Ross and the Supremes cd, and I have a chunk of songs that I like particularly love listening to as a set: Baby Doll, That's the Sound of the Men [[Working on the Chain Gang), Beach Ball and The Boy from Iguanabananalalalalawhatever.

Tall, and tanned, and young and handsome!

I have a boy I'm sweet on who I feel the same way. Only thing is I change tanned to toned because he's irish and therefore, not tanned. I'm italian so I'm the tanned one.

[Bluebrock]

and I would have done a lot different with the MSC period too! some of the better material was left off of Sup 75

I would have done:
He's My Man [[extended version)
I Can Never Recover
Can We Love Again
Seed of Love
Where Do I Go from here
This is why

It's all been said before
Color my world
Give out
You Turn me around
You can't stop a girl in love
Dance fever

Or if they'd gotten off their cans faster, they could have issued a more "pop" album first with:

It's all been said
You can't stop a girl
color my world blue
give out
You turn me around

shoop shoop
where is it belong
seed of love
can we love again
sha la bandit

and then followed up later with a disco album with the dance tracks
Your version of what the 75 Supremes album should have been like is remarkably similar to mine. I cannot for the life of me understand why such a dreadfully dull song as "where is it i belong" ever got recorded let alone included on the album. It has got to be the dreariest, most lifeless song the Supremes ever recorded. Truly dreadful.

[Bluebrock]

hmmm - my picks for missed tracks left in the vaults?

Blue Room - this is one of my fav R&H tracks. their vocals are so smooth and they sound amazing singing in unison in their lower registers. I'm guessing the performance is too group heavy and Berry probably wanted tracks that spotlighted D a bit more

Stormy - soooooo much better than some of the other covers they put out at the end. Cream of Crop would have been better with this vs Blowin In The Wind

The Look Of Love - although I'm guessing it wasn't completed since no background vocals. but I love this song and Diana's vocals are great

A Little Breeze - again, given some of the junk issued on Reflections it's hard to understand why this was left behind.

Just a little misunderstanding

I saw him standing there - now I completely agree this is NOT an amazing rendition of this song. but I think it's better than some of what WAS on Bit of Liverpool

The Boy from Ipanema - I love their group rendition of this. might have fit into the Symphony set? it's a bit different style and tone from the others. but would have carried the MOR feeling and added some variety

Tears left over - love this Jean track

Mother Dear [[3rd version) - I would have gone with this over some of the older tracks on Sing HDH

After All - I think this is a better song than I Want A Guy. frankly most of the tracks recorded by March '61 would have been better than IWAG. Boy That Got Away. or lead with a ballad like Never Again
Again, i agree for the most part Sup fan. There are so many gems on the 25th anniversary set. How these tunes got canned is mystifying, especially when you listen to some of the mediocre material that made the cut. Quality control were not doing their job properly at this time.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I think there were a goddam HUGE ton of missed oppertunities from the 25th anniversary record alone, a lot of their absolute best work was shelved. I believe the following should have been singles:

Ooowee Baby: just... wow. The girls are EVERYTHING.

Send Me No Flowers: Haunting breakup song. Diana is haunting here. Also some of HDH's most gorgeous and sublime lyrics.

Treat Me Right John Henry: I love this song so much. I was sad to find out Flo and Mary and Cindy were not on it, but I really came to like that this was a song Diana picked out for herself to sing, and a show of her creativity and her flexing her muscles as a singer and experimenting. I think it sounds like a feminine Beatles song. Amazing.

Are You Sure Love is the Name of This Game: Ummm what? This is a classic Supremes song with some insanely catchy lyrics. Why was this not even a single?

Manhattan: Oh this is a pure delight to hear: Diana and Florence sound magical sharing lead together. This song truly is an art of joy.

If I ruled the World: Another sublime classy club tune.

Sleepwalk: See above.

I agree with what you say about how sexy Diana sounds when she deepens her voice: she has impeccable control of her pitch and tone: I love how in a live performance of Back in my Arms Again, when she sings "twice" her sweet voice drops into this catlike purry growl. It's beautiful. I get a similar feeling when I hear Jean sing Up the Ladder to the Roof, and when she sings "closer to heaven" again it drops from Jean's natural sweet as honey voice to a catlike growly purr. And then she looks at the camera and you see a hunger in her sweet eyes, and I actually get super intimidated. You know this girl wants this. This is a girl who fights for what she wants. Mercy.

I'm getting chills reading your list of missed opportunities because I every song on your list are songs I got excited about when I first heard them.

I remember hearing hearing "[[Treat Me Nice) John Henry" and "Are You Sure Love Is The Name Of This Game" on that 25th Anniversary collection and literally sitting there with my jaw dropping ever lower and my eyebrows arching ever higher. Those songs were just way too good. I kept thinking about some of the dreck that came out on some of The Supremes latter albums and wondered why all of this good stuff was kept in the can. You nailed it when you said there was a huge ton of missed opportunities on that album.

O.K. I can understand "Ooowee Baby", "Send Me No Flowers" not getting an album slot as there was just so much good stuff coming out in landslides in that mid-60's period. I have absolutely no qualms about what came out on the "Where Did Our Love Go" and "More Hits" album [[although both of those songs would have sounded right at home on the "Where" album.)

But how do you miss the excitement of "John Henry" and "Are You Sure"? I've personally thought for years that some of those albums could have been much stronger if they had put some of those vaulted tracks on them. And I realize it's pointless to harp on something that happened some 50-odd years ago- but when you read that other people are having the same thoughts, it's kind of nice to see you aren't the only one with those thoughts and feelings!

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

hmmm - my picks for missed tracks left in the vaults?

Blue Room - this is one of my fav R&H tracks. their vocals are so smooth and they sound amazing singing in unison in their lower registers. I'm guessing the performance is too group heavy and Berry probably wanted tracks that spotlighted D a bit more

Stormy - soooooo much better than some of the other covers they put out at the end. Cream of Crop would have been better with this vs Blowin In The Wind

The Look Of Love - although I'm guessing it wasn't completed since no background vocals. but I love this song and Diana's vocals are great

A Little Breeze - again, given some of the junk issued on Reflections it's hard to understand why this was left behind.

Just a little misunderstanding

I saw him standing there - now I completely agree this is NOT an amazing rendition of this song. but I think it's better than some of what WAS on Bit of Liverpool

The Boy from Ipanema - I love their group rendition of this. might have fit into the Symphony set? it's a bit different style and tone from the others. but would have carried the MOR feeling and added some variety

Tears left over - love this Jean track

Mother Dear [[3rd version) - I would have gone with this over some of the older tracks on Sing HDH

After All - I think this is a better song than I Want A Guy. frankly most of the tracks recorded by March '61 would have been better than IWAG. Boy That Got Away. or lead with a ballad like Never Again

I feel like I'm home! Reading these comments that sound as if they had been taken right out of my head. I always felt the Reflections album was a bit weak. It's odd because there are good songs on it, but somehow, it just doesn't all come together as a unified whole. Then we started hearing these amazing songs like the re-recorded version of "Mother Dear" and "Little Breeze", "Am I Asking Too Much," and "The Beginning Of The End Of Love" and my eyes start rolling around in the back of my head.

I keep thinking, am I missing something here? Am I fooling myself that these songs sound better than some of the stuff that came out? Am I like those people who think they have good taste and just don't realize they have awful taste? I kept playing those Never-Before-Released songs and all the other vaulted songs and year after year, they sounded better and better to me. At last, I have other people here who let me know I had not lost my mind.

[[And seriously. How did that re-record of "Mother Dear" NOT get onto an album of any kind? Even "Cream Of The Crop" would have benefitted from that song's inclusion.)

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

"Come On Boy" is definitely one of my favs from the pre-hits period. I don't think the song would've ever hit but it definitely should've been an album track. Perfect to my ears from the vocals to the music. Definitely showcases the Supremes' true appeal.

You bring up something I've come to appreciate over the years- there are songs that are perfect or very close to being perfect, and yet maybe they aren't really songs that would have been hits. Still, you love those songs and appreciate them maybe even more than the radio hits. I think you're right about "Com On Boy." It may never have been a radio hit had it been released, but it would have made a darn fine album track. Motown was often very good at not filling albums with useless "filler" [[at least up until '67.) You could get songs that were just fun to listen to. They didn't have to be hit-bound songs, just good songs that added up to good albums to play front start-to-finish.

[sup_fan]

I agree that starting with Reflections, there seems to be a bit of schizophrenia with their album lineups. And given how in-tune Berry was to the musical landscape it's amazing that releases like Pet Sounds and Sgt Pepper didn't influence him more. Frankly I've always felt Berry was more of a business man vs an artist. at the end of the day, he was interested in making money, not artistic history. And given the increased price that an lp goes for, you'd think he'd be all over pushing those things

As for those Smokey tunes [[treat me nice john henry, Are you sure love) are terrible - on a par with Composer. I just don't care for his songs as much as I find the lyric too corny. One of the few DRATS Smokey songs I like is Till Johnny Comes.

Reflections is such as great opportunity for speculation. if HDH had stayed, what might have they done with the girls to continue to evolve their sound? the song list on the lp makes a bit more sense to me now after reading a description of In and Out Of Love as Sunshine Pop, which was the CA sound of the Beach Boys, 5th Dimension, Momma's and Papas. And the psychedelic sounds they were doing was influenced by San Fran. So the overall approach here was a California thing - Motown meets the west coast. Still a better lineup might have been

Reflections
I'm Gonna Make it
I Can't make it alone
In and out of love
can't shake it loose
ode to billie joe

forever came today
It's going all the way
am I asking too much
misery makes it heart
a little breeze
bah bah bah

[RanRan79]

You bring up something I've come to appreciate over the years- there are songs that are perfect or very close to being perfect, and yet maybe they aren't really songs that would have been hits. Still, you love those songs and appreciate them maybe even more than the radio hits. I think you're right about "Com On Boy." It may never have been a radio hit had it been released, but it would have made a darn fine album track. Motown was often very good at not filling albums with useless "filler" [[at least up until '67.) You could get songs that were just fun to listen to. They didn't have to be hit-bound songs, just good songs that added up to good albums to play front start-to-finish.

Sometimes the conversations around here get annoying because it seems like people offer their opinions about any given song and base it on whether or not the song should've been a hit. Now obviously we all have our opinions about missed hits, but I can only speak for myself when I say that when it comes to what I like, I couldn't care less whether the song had hit potential or not, if we're talking about likes and dislikes. No, to my ears "Come On Boy" doesn't have a sound that could compete with what was hitting big in 1963. It doesn't even have a sound that could compete with what was hitting big at Motown in 1963. But that doesn't make it any less of a gorgeous song. Diana had found a good key for her voice, losing much of that nasal girlish sound and replacing it with a more mature and sexy sound, which of course she would go on to continue to develop and mesmerize the world with her gift. Sometimes Flo could overpower Mary in the harmony and every now and then Flo might be a little pitchy too, but "Come On Boy" shines a spotlight on just how beautiful their blend together really is. I also love the sound of the band. The track was recorded at the Graystone Ballroom and it has a ballroom sound to it, IMO. Definitely one of my all time favorite Supremes songs.

I believe "Mr. Blues" was recorded at the Graystone also, and it's another one of my favs. Spotlights the three girls' ability to harmonize together. They should have done more of this during the Flo years all the way through.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Sometimes the conversations around here get annoying because it seems like people offer their opinions about any given song and base it on whether or not the song should've been a hit. Now obviously we all have our opinions about missed hits, but I can only speak for myself when I say that when it comes to what I like, I couldn't care less whether the song had hit potential or not, if we're talking about likes and dislikes. No, to my ears "Come On Boy" doesn't have a sound that could compete with what was hitting big in 1963. It doesn't even have a sound that could compete with what was hitting big at Motown in 1963. But that doesn't make it any less of a gorgeous song. Diana had found a good key for her voice, losing much of that nasal girlish sound and replacing it with a more mature and sexy sound, which of course she would go on to continue to develop and mesmerize the world with her gift. Sometimes Flo could overpower Mary in the harmony and every now and then Flo might be a little pitchy too, but "Come On Boy" shines a spotlight on just how beautiful their blend together really is. I also love the sound of the band. The track was recorded at the Graystone Ballroom and it has a ballroom sound to it, IMO. Definitely one of my all time favorite Supremes songs.

I believe "Mr. Blues" was recorded at the Graystone also, and it's another one of my favs. Spotlights the three girls' ability to harmonize together. They should have done more of this during the Flo years all the way through.

Always a pleasure reading your views, RanRan79 and I you make me realize, as you said, it has nothing to do with a song having "hit potential." If it's a song you like, then it's a song you like and go ahead and enjoy it.

I also didn't realize "Come On Boy" had been recorded at Graystone. Maybe that is partly the reason it has such an ethereal, almost otherworldly sound to it. Whatever the reason, it certainly is a gorgeous song.

[aarondillon2011@gmail.com]

I listen to this song as much as I listen to the hits. I think it should have been on Where Did Our Love Go?

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I listen to this song as much as I listen to the hits. I think it should have been on Where Did Our Love Go?

I like that idea. That album has a sort of "cozy" feeling to it, [[even with the upbeat tunes) and "Come On Boy" would have fit right in.