I hope it's ok to mention this little gem here,although she was at another label when she recorded it,mary wells will always be a[motown]artist to me..just a shoutout to a sweet soul song from a sweet soul sister.
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I hope it's ok to mention this little gem here,although she was at another label when she recorded it,mary wells will always be a[motown]artist to me..just a shoutout to a sweet soul song from a sweet soul sister.
I'm not a fan of a lot of Mary's post Motown work, but "He's a Lover" is one of the ones I really like. Real smooth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1AcNRjLn2I
Good track,I hadn't heard this before. However I do agree with Mickey Stevenson's evaluation of 20th Century Fox's lack of knowledge. Motown producers knew Mary's skill set better than anyone. The vocal here is good, but could be better. They clearly didn't know how to record her or squeeze everything they could out of her for a masterful performance. Nice.
Never heard this before. Interesting how the lyrics refer to "My Guy".
For those not familiar with 'Dear Lover', you might want to check out her 20th Century
Fox album, right after she left Motown. I particularly liked her LP 'Love Songs to the Beetles, so bought the two-fer. Have really enjoyed both of them as well as some of her Jubilee material....i.e. Two Lovers History. I might be the only person out here who likes 'Love Songs to the Beetles....so be it.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....1oxh0s2I0L.jpg
I like that album too. It is the real Mary Wells, Beatle-Songs in the sophisticated sound of Mary Wells, her performance is unique, amazing and has her own individuality.Quote:
Originally Posted by lakeside
I'm not at home to check my records, but I think "He's A Lover" was written by Ron Miller who went on to be a Motown writer. Great song & great performance by Mary but I didn't like the production....too "super club" sounding to me. It needed more funk, more edginess. It was a 45 release & did make the HOT 100.
I think that was one of the main complaints I heard about the album...'too supper club'.Quote:
Originally Posted by motony
In spite of that, Mary did a great job and I've enjoyed the album...I mean, it IS Mary Wells!
"He's a Lover" was taken from Mary's debut 20th Century-Fox album and used as the B-side to "I'm Learnin'," written by Raynard Miner and Carl Smith [[who also wrote Fontella Bass' "Rescue Me"), which was not on that album. I never heard it played on the air, however, but DJs flipped it over and "He's a Lover" got a fair amount of airplay where I was living but didn't chart very high. I suspect this play-switch was because "Lover" had Mary's "signature" style, while "Learnin'" was vastly different. I liked both. Initially the picture sleeve had "Learnin" listed as the A-side but the next pressing showed the titles reversed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2UDLTHG3Jc
I like Mary's post Motown recordings but it's sad, you just imagine what Mary's career would've been had she decided to stay with Motown just as when they were getting RED HOT?
Mary's leaving Motown was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in the industry at the time. Mary got bad advice from all sides. Morty Kraft enticed her with a cool quarter-million-dollar contract offer and talk of movie roles which he had no intention of delivering. Husband Herman saw a cash register going ka-ching and talked her into the deal. They even got Robert Bateman to defect from Hitsville to produce some sides, assuming they could capture the sound and style, which they couldn't. The first few singles were good but not great, and the "supper club" arrangements were disappointing. Many have suggested that radio programmers felt that she was disloyal to Gordy and the label, which, in a sense, she was. Many, if not most, of these radio programmers were loyal to Gordy and consequently they didn't plug Mary's post-Motown sides. We can only imagine what masterpieces might have been recorded, had she stayed with the label as it really refined and defined its sound in 1965. Very, very sad. She was almost there. One more “My Guy” and she’d have been solidly on top, and then, boom, all gone.
I like the majority of Mary's tunes :-)
Also like the version by Tutti Hill - His a lover
https://youtu.be/dxuQIcLqwHc
I think a lot of the problem with Mary's post-Motown recordings is that while she had good songs, they weren't good enough or strong enough production-wise to set them apart from everything else happening on the radio. Listening to old radio scopes from the 60's, the amount of records that were fighting for listeners' attention is almost staggering. Anybody could put out a good record, but to really make it, you had to be better than good. That's why Motown has all those alternate versions in the vaults of the same songs; why you find songs were recalled and re-recorded and remixed until everyone went nuts. Motown didn't want "good" songs, they wanted FRICKIN' AWESOME classics. Mary's work at 20th and Atco was good...and everyone seemed to think that was enough.
It's very hard to pinpoint, but listening to many of Mary's post-Motown records, I hear things that were good, but then I realized had they been done at Motown, they would have been tweaked and tweaked and glossed and buffed until everyone concerned felt that record would have a shot at the Top 10 at the very least. "Use Your Head" is pretty damn catchy, but there are parts where, to me, it sounds as if Mary's vocal was just a bit rushed. Or the producer maybe felt, O.K., that's a good take, where at Motown, there would probably have been at least 3 other vocal takes until they felt they had THE perfect take. Oddly, the live version she performed on an episode of Shindig! sounded a lot hotter than the record.
The same thing for songs like "Ain't It The Truth", which again, is a fantastic record but just seems to have something lacking in the mixing. Even Mary's dullest records at Motown were mixed to sound hot, while at 20th Century and Atco, to me, there was always something missing in the mixing of those records. Then, when Mary had a knockout, like "Love Letters", it was kept in the can! But even then, there is something in the writing of they lyrics of that song that lacks the laser-beam precision of Motown's songwriting.
It seems at 20th Century, everyone was so concerned with doing imitation Motown knockoffs without fully grasping what it was that was making those Motown originals so special. The producers got the elements kind of right, but it's like a painter copying Rembrandt's brush stroke technique without fully grasping the motivations behind using those techniques. You end up with a nice copy, but none of the originality or fire of the original.
Attachment 14745
I LOVE almost ALL Mary's recordings with 20th Century Fox AND ATCO. The songs were mostly very, very good quality in terms of their writing. The only songs I didn't like that she recorded for 20th Century Fox were The Beatles' remakes. Saying that her material at 20th was inferior BECAUSE "Motown producers knew Mary's skill better than anyone." Her producers at 20th Century Fox were ALL ex-Motowners, and she recorded in Detroit [[using several sometime Motown musicians on some cuts). Robert Bateman and Andre Williams were her producers there. The writers, producers and arrangers for her ATCO recordings were Carl Davis and his Chicago crew, who produced Jackie Wilson's great 1965-74 recordings, as well as ex-Motowners, Barrett Strong and Sonny Sanders. The problems were not weak material, but mainly in the mixing at 20th Century, and in their marketing, and the fact that distributors wanted to keep loyal to Motown.
I do agree that she made a mistake by leaving Motown. But she couldn't have known that 20th Century Fox would never intend to allow her to appear in films, and that they would not know how to market her. Her EX-husband, Herman Griffin gave her bad advice, because he wanted to become her manager again. He was NOT married to her by that time, and she was determined to leave Motown because she thought she was not being treated right by Berry, because she was making a tremendous amount of money for Motown, and not seeing most of it.
"Me Without You" was a fantastic song. When I heard it, I thought it was a Motown cut. "Ain't It The Truth", "He's A Lover", "Everlovin' Boy", "Why Don't You Let Yourself Go", "Use Your Head", "I'm Sorry", "we're Just Two of a Kind", and "He's Good Enough For Me" were all really good.
At ATCO, "Dear Lover" and "Such A Sweet Thing" and "Keep Me In Suspense" were excellent recordings, sounding like Carl Davis' greatest Okeh cuts. They just didn't get the sales because distributors didn't want to push them because they wanted to keep a good relation with Motown.
I can imagine all of them recorded at Motown. several of them would have been big hits. So would several of the recordings she made at Motown that were left in the can [["Honey Boy", "When I'm Gone", "Whisper You Love Me Boy", and others).
I liked "The Doctor" as not too bad, and I liked "Two Lovers' History" a little bit. But, I thought Mary's material dropped off quite a bit at Jubilee, from how good it was at 2oth Century Fox and ATCO.
When I read Peter Benjaminson book on Mary Wells, I had to fully respect her reasoning for leaving Motown. That book really put things into perspective for me as to just how much money she was putting into Motown, which in turn was going toward other artists' careers and promotion. I get the fact that it was just the mechanics of how the company worked, but from Mary's point of view, I could see where she felt she was being short-changed.Quote:
Originally Posted by robb_k
I also see that she seemed to have really put a lot of thought into her move. It wasn't a last-minute decision or even one based fully on an emotional response. She seemed to have really tried to calculate what her best move, financially would have been. Yes, it turned out to be a bad move in the long run, but I have to wonder if I wouldn't have made the same decision were I in those circumstances. Motown was popular, but I don't think it had yet become the juggernaut it would be shortly after Mary's departure. So she may have felt Motown was holding her back, especially after the particularly deceitful promises she was given to entice her to join 20th.
Robb, with regard to Mary Wells' post-Motown recordings, I agree with every word you said from her 20th Century Fox recordings up through and including her Atco and Jubilee material. Also, can't forget her early-'80s Epic releases. "Gigolo" and "These Arms" should have put her back on top -- especially the 12" versions. When they first came out, I couldn't stop playing them. They were that powerful.Quote:
Originally Posted by robb_k
Well, I read everywhere, that Berry paied the DJs didn´t play her records. I don´t know if it´s true. I think songs like "Honey boy", "When I´m gone" or "Prove it" are real indicators for a Mary Wells, who stay with Motown after 1964. But for me the questions is, had she a guarentee to become the superstar of Motown ? There were the discovering of The Supremes....maybe Mary would be a victim like Martha and The Vandellas, The Marvelettes and The Velvelettes !
Smokey loved writing for mary,and had she stayed i think he would've continued writing hits for her.
I would have loved to have had Smokey produce “Don’t Mess With Bill” on Mary Wells!Quote:
Originally Posted by arr&bee
Looking at the label she joined after leaving Motown, I doubt it. 20th Century Fox was just formed, I think, when Mary joined. Had Mary stayed with Motown until the '70s and joined 20th Century at the time, maybe things would be different but I guess fate played different cards for her.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fullfillingnessfirstfinale
We also have to remember had she NOT listened to Herman Griffin, she probably would've stayed. I think she probably would've renegotiate a better contract with Motown had she not been offered film roles that didn't come to much. It was the movie role offer that got her to take the offer. And while her post-Motown recordings were good, they just lack the fire that Mary had when she had Smokey behind her.
For me-dear lover..he's a lover-are mary's best[post]motown recordings.
I guess Mary Wells, in spite of her great early success, will always be relegated to the "what might have been" discussions.
I do like her 20th Century Fox and Atco material, but like RobbK, I don't consider the "Love Songs to the Beatles" to be on the level of the other Fox recordings. To me, they all have the same identical arrangement and most of the songs are not really suited to Mary's voice.
I think the "Two Sides" album to be excellent and more consistent than her debut album on 20th Fox. But even "Two Sides," though it contains a lot of great material, just seems to be missing something. What it is, I can't really say. The song selection is good, one of the songs "Dear Lover" sounds like it might have been recorded at Motown and is catchy, and certainly Mary's voice never sounded better. There's just something kind of flat about the project. It should have been better but for some reason, it isn't.
I think Mary's Jubilee album, while sounding like it might have been recorded quickly and produced on a shoestring, actually contains material that is closer to her, at least to the more mature her, at the time she recorded it. I think she benefited from having a sparser production, and some of the material was grittier than what she'd recorded before. The expanded version of the "Servin' Up Some Soul" album with the unreleased "Come Together" album is well worth having.
I too like her "Gigolo" and the album that it came from though overall the album is somewhat uneven although that track and "These Arms" really shine.
In every entertainment field, there's performers who somehow just never live up to their potential. Mary's career was like that. Such huge success early on, and then years trying to recapture the public's interest. It had to have been sad for Mary to have all those years to question her decision about leaving Motown but in her personal as well as her professional life, she seemed to make so many bad choices.
Still, you can't argue with the early Mary Wells and how much she added to Motown's luster. For that she deserves to always be remembered.
Mary and Smokey sort of matured together, musically. “My Guy” was quite a departure from her earlier Hitsville sides, and showed much more sophistication, adding a larger, more mature audience, evidenced by the intro, using “Canadian Sunset” as a template. [[They tried this again at Atco, opening “Dear Lover,” with a riff from “Hello, Young Lovers.” Jackie Ross’ “Selfish One” was originally concocted with Mary in mind, and that, too, used a pop standard — “Tenderly” — as the intro.)
When Mary defected to 20th Century-Fox, I suppose the plan was to appeal to that more mature audience with those “supper club” arrangements. “Never Never Leave Me” was very much in that vein, and the final number on the album was the old chestnut, “Time After Time,” and was most definitely aimed at the adult demographic, and possibly was the direction in which they hoped to steer her. The plan obviously didn’t work.
Had she and Smokey continued to be paired at Hitsville, I believe they could have amalgamated both the “Sound of Young America” with this “adult” style. “My Guy” demonstrated that. She was right on the cusp of becoming Motown’s first crossover superstar — a mantle taken up a couple of years later by Diana. Mary got ahead first but then didn’t make it to the finish line. As the old saying goes, "That's showbiz."
^ Mary Wells Sings My Guy and Greatest Hits were released just one month apart. My Guy was full of "chestnuts" for the adult demographic and Greatest Hits was for her younger base. I wonder if Motown had released the album My Guy at the peak of the single's popularity, would it have performed better on the charts? Then if Greatest Hits had been released a couple of months or more later, it still would have been a hit album, appealing to her core base.
I would have loved for her to stay at Motown, paired with Smokey. "When I'm Gone"would have been a great follow-up and he was at his creative peak in 1964-1967. Also, it looks like HDH were being primed for Mary's superstardom, too, with "Whisper You Love Me, Boy" and "Honey Boy". What would have happened with the Supremes?
Sadly, Mary's "When I'm Gone" exists basically as a demo, or possibly a run-through. Had she stayed in Hitsville's stable I'm sure the track would have gotten the pre-release treatment which Brenda's version got. Brenda was the obvious "successor" to Mary, but her voice, though technically much superior to Mary's, was less unique. Still, "When I'm Gone" did mighty well for her. Like the other gals at Hitsville, she eventually had to take a back seat to Diane. I still fantasize about what Mary's release version of "When I'm Gone" might have sounded like. It would have killed it, and put her up where she belonged. [[So many what-if's and if-only's.)
^ Following the epic success of "My Guy", I think "When I'm Gone" would have been a much bigger hit than it was with Brenda.[[Brenda's version was popular in LA but peaked at #26 on Billboard). It's sophisticated lyrics and sound would also have appealed [[I think) to the adult demographic. [[Oh those what-ifs!)
Mary could also never really explain how she got George Scheck as a manager. The only other artist he managed was Connie Francis. She told me 20th & Atlantic were offering the same money BUT Morty Craft threw in "verbally" that 20th could put her in the movies.Why she listened to Herman when she didn't listen to others who tried to get her to stay at Motown.As well as I knew Mary she never said anything bad about anyone at Motown & many years later Bobby Rogers told me that everyone at the company loved Mary , they were all shocked . Too bad I never met Herman to get his story.
Legend has it that-whisper you love me would've been the follow up to-my guy.
The Supremes still hadn't blown up when Mary left. I believe Gordy's attention focused on the Supremes ONLY after Mary, his established star left, and he felt he needed a new star. The Supremes benefited from Mary's departure. Interesting to consider that the Supremes' .. and Brenda Holloway's career path would have been different had Mary stayed. There likely would not have been "When I'm Gone" for Brenda.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fullfillingnessfirstfinale
You're right about the Supremes thing happening only after Mary left. The whole thing with the Supremes that most seem to forget is that the record that jump started their career was something of a fluke. Nobody, but NOBODY knew that the public would react to "Where Did Our Love Go" the way they did. Yeah, Motown knew they were in deep trouble with the industry having lost Mary, and they took a gamble with the Supremes- and won beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Even in Chicago, Chess knew about Mary's departure from Motown and they tried to benefit by promoting Jackie Ross as a Mary Wells-soundalike. It worked. For about the length of one record. They never could get another hit as bit as "Selfish One" on Jackie. Ross recalls the events in the liner notes to one of her CD collections. As for the Supremes, everyone likes to say it was because of this or that, because of the money Motown used to build the group, but I'll always believe the public has to actually like what they're hearing to buy it. No amount of promotion or money can ever make anyone a star if the product is lousy or unlikable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank
“Selfish One” hit it big in the summer of 1964 but it was recorded by Jackie Ross. Fontella Bass’s smash was “Rescue Me” in the fall of 1965. Neither artist sounded like Mary Wells but “Selfish One” borrowed some ideas from “My Guy."
Mary linked up with Bobby Womack in 1974 having had three 45's on Reprise.
Mary had issued in total [none Motown] fifty tracks on a mixture of five different labels, one northern soul classic on 20th Century 45 "Use Your Head" , It was also on her 20th Century Album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1rBVIxo--4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NV2l1C7J3k
Oh God. A couple of beers and this is what I do! I don't know why, but I always think of those two interchangeably! My mistake.Quote:
Originally Posted by mowest
No, Jackie Ross didn't sound exactly like Mary Wells, but the producers were going for that sound, so they had Jackie sing it in a soft Mary Wells style. They hoped to take advantage of the void left by Mary's leaving Motown. It was interesting to read Jackie's recollections of "Selfish One" and how her career went at Chess Records. It was actually Fontella Bass that more or less ended her career at Chess.
In an irony nobody could have manufactured, Jackie, the singer Chess wanted to sound like Mary Wells, ended up questioning her record company boss about her royalties- much like Mary did at Motown. That didn't go down very well with Chess Records and since Jackie wasn't selling many records at this point, Chess decided to promote Fontella as the "next big thing" at Chess, pretty much killing Jackie's career there.
Might have been true but the follow up to My Guy had already been selected: Whisper You Love Me Boy by HDH. So not sure if BG would have let Smokey continue to have a lock on her.Quote:
Originally Posted by arr&bee
For a long time, the “2 Sides” album was unavailable in its entirety on CD. It appears now there’s two editions of it, one a Japanese issue and one a domestic CD, it looks like on a label called DBK or something like that. Has anyone bought either of these, can they let me know if either is a bootleg or how the sound is? I think it was Ichiban who issued a CD on her Atco period and even though it included some previously unreleased tracks, it didn’t include the whole album, even though it seemed like there was ample room for it. I really do like that album and would love to find it in its complete form, even if it didn’t include the extra tracks from that period.
I can only imagine how big[dear lover]would've been had mary recorded it for motown...it might still be selling...mary wells forever!!
I have both the DBK and Ichiban releases. I'm not an audiophile but I had no problems with the sound on either. The DBK release is legitimate, I believe [I usually try not to buy bootlegs].Quote:
Originally Posted by kenneth
Thanks Reese!Quote:
Originally Posted by reese
I'm not too familiar with all of Mary's post-Motown recordings, this one included. It's pretty nice though.
I love "Dear Lover" though!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9zDHiUsJU
I need to get my hands on that 20th Century Fox two-fer. :cool:
FYI, the earrings Mary has on in the pix above in the green sweater, I sent those to her. I about fell over when the LP came out, LOL.