Quote Originally Posted by RanRan79 View Post
Motown may have intended the Supremes to have a main lead singer, but if that's the case then Motown would've passed on "Touch" and focused on a Jean led single. Whatever the reason behind "Touch" being a single, something happened from the producer's standpoint of why two leads became a duet. That's what I'm really interested in. What was the rationale from a production standpoint? Was the song always meant to be a duet but Frank wanted each girl to sing a separate lead so that he could get the best parts of both? Did Frank cut "Touch" with the intention of having only one girl lead it and then after hearing the playback decide that he wanted to go in a different direction and thus have another girl do the lead? And then if after all of that, did he suddenly figure neither girl had the clear cut better version but if he took the best of both parts he could create a perfect song?

I am really hoping someone, somewhere, picked Frank Wilson's brain on his work with the Supremes.
i think mary was pushing to establish a larger role for herself within the Supremes post-Diana. she was taking on more of the spokeperson role in interviews, more of the onstage dialog. a large featured solo spot. Then into 71, I think she was pushing for more lead material on lps. of course i'm just speculating here. but i would assume it was coming from mary and not motown.

So frank i think looked at a song like Touch and figured she could do a fine job with it. and i think she did. As they were assembling the lp, i'm assuming they consider both the M and the J solo lead versions of Touch and maybe Frank thought "hmmm perhaps this song is strong enough to be a single." Then since the idea of a full mary lead on a single was pretty remote, they decided to do the duet version.

As much as i love the Frank work, he did do Everybody's Got the Right. which IMO was a poor follow up to Ladder. so i don't think it's that far of a stretch to think he thought Touch would be a superstar. Especially after the Temps just had a huge hit with Just My Imagination which was released in Jan 71