"Opportunity Knock" is a good song, but to me it is a direct reflection of the city sound. With it's breezy background vocals and melancholy chording it's more the work of Terry Johnson and Pete Moore. The intro sounds like Smokey's contribution to the song, but I think he more or less was support here. To me "I'll Pay Double" with it's eerie,Transylvania/Dracula,cold and dark night ambience is the example. Smokey never made a song that implicated in a straight forward way that it was a "Made In Detroit" record. He had a different concept when he interpreted the city's sound that hinted at it as opposed to eyeing it directly.
I think the only artists he was able to produce in that fashion was Mary Wells and The Temptations because he was their chief songwriter and producer. It's not that he didn't have the chance, he was vice president and Berry's best friend so he could do damn near whatever. When Chuck Jackson came to the company he wouldn't let anybody touch him for nearly a year. Who had sway like that at Motown Records?, don't worry I'll wait......
As fans of his genius we tend to forget he was an artist and had to tour and promote,so he wasn't always home to create and compete. Everyone else was studio bound and had the time to accomplish what they felt they could.
As for Norman Whitfield's repetitive nature, I really can't find an issue with what he did. The sixties was the era of the single[[ history has unfortunately repeated itself) and folks weren't really buying albums unless it had all the hits on it. An album with one hit single wouldn't really do anything, but if it had a few hits and a few radio favorites that would warrant the purchase. In addition to that it was a slick way to get paid multiple times on familiar songs and bring more value to the publishing company. As the album era began to emerge it made more sense to create a wide range of songs because the public wanted to buy that at the time. Music fans wanted nine songs once a year as opposed to one song every few months. So Norman just dealt with the market accordingly like every other producer.
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