Remaining 70's Supremes Unreleased

So I got to thinking, as we know there are several songs posted on youtube that have not been released digitally. Many of those songs were test songs with Jean Terrell before she began recording with Mary and Cindy, one song Traveling Light has no background vocals and I'll Wait A Lifetime and Soft Days are clearly demos and not finished product. Could this be the reason these songs have not surfaced on any cd's? With that in mind, we have been told there is enough material left to fill up 2 cd's. If many of those youtube songs were to never be included for example, could it be there are still several songs that we do not know exist?

I think when it comes to the Supremes, there's always something that we didn't know existed, especially with the 60s groupings because they were prolific recorders. The unreleased Stevie cuts are thought by some to be owned by Stevie and for whatever reason he won't release them [[I question this) and supposedly that's why we don't have them officially released. Test songs with Jean and the like probably hasn't been released for the same reason so many other 70s Supremes cuts haven't made it out. The Diana Supremes are a popular act and we've gotten countless compilations and expanded editions of unreleased material. The 70s Supremes are a bit different. There were only so many unreleased cuts to fit on the disk devoted to them in the 2000 box set, as well as the 70s Anthology and the Scherrie years set. And the Promises Kept sessions were the unreleased portion of This Is the Story. I figure the only other appropriate times to see more 70s unreleased is if Motown gives me what I want and do the 70s albums expanded, or if they actually do a 70s lost and found. Perhaps a third disk to the Let the Music Play lost and found devoted to the 70s Supremes could've been a possibility, though I'm sure the cost of the set would have increased.

keep in mind when they did This Is the Story cd set, they really only did the actual albums. I'm presuming that it was a sort of test - it was a gorgeous deluxe package and previous Sup expanded editions had sold well. But we were venturing into the 70s catalog and those were not the groups biggest selling singles or lps. So I guess that Andy, George, Harry and the others had to do some internal selling in order to get the green light for this project. and it was delayed a few times, if memory serves me right.

I would assume Andy and team's biggest priority was simply to get the albums all released digitally. Right On, Touch, FJ and NWBLS all got released but Jimmy hadn't. and those earlier ones had been out of print a while. So given the number of tracks on all of the albums, they knew that the set would require more than 2 cds. The idea of 4 or more cds probably wasn't ever on the table because it would be too expensive and big of a package. So that makes the set 3 cds.

So if the lps take up 2.5 of the 3 - what to include for the remainder? well the decision to include Love train, BW and may his light, were relatively easy since they were on other lps. then they grabbed more of the "Promises kept" since that also falls [[sort of) into an lp. My understanding is there are a lot of early unreleased jean tracks. there have been several posts on here [[some not too long ago) listing some of these out. I think the fans have identified 20+. plus there are probably many alt tracks with different mixes or vocal takes. So there's probably close to 2 or more cd's worth of unreleased Jean material. if they only had room for 8 - 10, then the promises kept tracks fit nicely. otherwise if they did the unreleased tracks for Right On but not the other albums, it wouldn't be balanced.

with the Scherrie payne set, it's my understanding that there simply isn't the volume of unreleased tracks during those years as there are from the Jean years. So for that set, it made more sense to position as "the final studio sessions" and sort of grab as much of everything. so you have more unreleased and alt versions. but there are still some Scherrie things - George mentioned once an unreleased version of it's All been Said, the Let yourself go set mentions another version or 2 of Dance Fever, and there are still additional versions of IGLMHDTW [[for instance the version used on Bandstand and Soul Train is still unreleased).

There's definitely still ample material to do a 70 Sups Lost and Found. it could easily fill 2 cd's.

I was hoping there would be some earlier 70-71 Live performances with Jean. Something a bit different from the not so great song line up on Live in Japan. I actually prefer the Motorcity live recordings with Jean Scherrie and Lynda over the Live in Japan CD

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Originally Posted by gman

I was hoping there would be some earlier 70-71 Live performances with Jean. Something a bit different from the not so great song line up on Live in Japan. I actually prefer the Motorcity live recordings with Jean Scherrie and Lynda over the Live in Japan CD

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I would love some of the live performances. Jean's "He Aint Heavy" was a showstopper and it would be great to have a non bootleg audio of her doing it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gman

I was hoping there would be some earlier 70-71 Live performances with Jean. Something a bit different from the not so great song line up on Live in Japan. I actually prefer the Motorcity live recordings with Jean Scherrie and Lynda over the Live in Japan CD

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Me too gman. This line up of former ladies was a real treat for the ears, and quite possibly the strongest line up vocally of any Supremes/Flos line ups.

given Jean's ability to really sing the same song a million different ways, it would be wonderful to hear other takes on the hits. different vocal versions