Supremes...promises kept

[daviddh]

I was revisiting the unreleased Promises Kept thru the Supremes box set.
I was particularly impressed with My Poor Baby, and Tears Left Over , in which I felt both had potential as possible singles.
Other gems,
I'll Let Him Know I Love Him
All I Need,
And I Thought You Loved Me.
Also think , Can't Get You Out Of My Mind was a strong effort.
With some other unreleased tracks, I think this could have been a good album and helped the group .the songs seem more contemporary.
Maybe add Bad Weather and Life Beats .
Any thoughts on this set

[reese]

I enjoy quite a few tracks under that designation, such as WALK WITH ME, TALK WITH ME, I'LL LET HIM KNOW, ALL I NEED, I AIN'T GOT THE LOVE OF THE ONE I LOVE, and CAN'T GET YOU OUT OF MY MIND.

[lakeside]

Tears Left Over is one of my favorites. I generally like most of that set and think with some tweaks and polishing, it could have been a solid album.

[sup_fan]

Tears Left Over is probably the strongest of all of the tracks. it has such high energy, great vocals. Frank Wilson produced it and it makes me think maybe he would have been looking to get the girls into a little more funkier sound after the hugely operatic/rock of NW and the lushness of the Touch lp. I don't know if he would have gone as far with the girls as Keep On Truckin' with Eddie but could have been very interesting

Oh My Poor Baby and I'll Let Him Know I Love Him were by Pam Sawyer and Gloria Jones. Pam had been working a lot with Frank and so i think it would have been great for her to produce a full lp on the girls.

other strong tracks are It's Too Late, Can't Get You Out Of My Mind, Never Can Say Goodbye, I Ain't That Easy to Lose, And I Thought You Loved Me

as for the rest, mostly just filler and only so-so IMO. But that gets you 8 solid tracks. I think you could go back and pluck a few of the canned tracks from earlier projects and they wouldn't have sounded dated.

maybe Life Beats, Steppin' On A Dream, Mind Body and Soul and If You Let Me Baby.

[RanRan79]

I think if "Tears Left Over", "Take Your Love Back" and "I'll Let Him Know" were polished up and prepared for singles, you anchor the album with these and throw in any number of the other cuts to support them and the Supremes have a solid album. But Motown thought 18 Supremes and Four Tops duet albums were what the public was waiting for, so...

[sup_fan]

I think if "Tears Left Over", "Take Your Love Back" and "I'll Let Him Know" were polished up and prepared for singles, you anchor the album with these and throw in any number of the other cuts to support them and the Supremes have a solid album. But Motown thought 18 Supremes and Four Tops duet albums were what the public was waiting for, so...

i think you could have gotten a decent enough album. better than what we got with the DRATS like Sunshine and Reflections. But the Promises Kept material is patchy at best. Right On hung together simply because of the outstanding material and performances. but then we got NW and Touch which not only contained great music but were also quite cohesive. I think PK would have been too all over the place and given the dismal sales of the Frank albums, this would have been a poor selling. i don't think it would have come close to the sales or chart performance of the Floy Joy album which did rather well, comparatively.

as for the duets, ugh lol I agree they were lackluster and a poor strategic decision. it's clear enough as to why they did Mag 7. IMO the reason we got Return was because Mag 7 was one of the highest EVER charting sup albums in the UK!!! hard to believe! so we can blame our British fans lol

and my guess is Dynamite was released simply to have something new in the record stores for christmas. Touch was released back in the summer and the PK album was canned. you could argue that they could have canned Dynamite and gone with PK

[daviddh]

There were two other songs I remember hearing
Remote control
That's how much you made me love you
Both were pretty good

[daviddh]

Yep.i would have canned the duets and went with PK. Just my opinion.
Out of the duets I like about five songs.
I think all three albums should have been trimmed to one....I did like Function at the Junction.

[Spreadinglove21]

If Promises Kept had been released I think it would not have done well and added to the glut of Supremes related product thanks to all those 4 Tops duet albums.

That being said, here are my 11 selections for the album if released:

Tears Left Over
Walk with Me, Talk With Me
Oh My Poor Baby
I'll Let Him Know That I Love Him
I don't want to own You
And I thought You loved me
Still Water Love [[though the track needed completion)
It's Too Late
I Ain't That Easy To Lose
Day Will Come
Life Beats

[sup_fan]

it's possibly they might have done something similar to what they did with the FJ single. it was recorded and released months prior to the album. once it was a hit, then it seems they continued with the full album.

IMO Tears Left Over is the strongest of all of these tracks. and produced by good old Frank Wilson. so had they released it and it did well, maybe he would have remained at the helm

again i think Pam Sawyer was an untapped talent. Oh My Poor Baby is another very strong track. so maybe on this lp it would have been more hard driving than Touch. more soulful and funkier. and maybe Pam would co-produce