Quote Originally Posted by jim aka jtigre99 View Post
Wondering why they did release I Guess I'll Miss The Man other than the fact that Motown was backing the Broadway show Pippin. It only hit #85, yet the Jackson 5 released Corner of The Sky and it hit #18. Was it just a better song or was there more push behind the Jacksons by this time? When Mary wrote Supreme Faith, she says she met with Smokey after Jean left and told him she wanted to sing lead now since she could not rely on any besides herself staying. She says he agreed and would talk to Motown execs who said they wanted her to find a third girl who could assume lead and Mary could do part of the lead. Smokey allegedly told her he was going to record them when she found the third girl. I wonder if he was just blowing smoke. By the time they were recording with this new grouping, they recorded a number of songs with a variety of producers. Thinking of hit singles, they were expanding and changing their sound with Nathan Jones, Floy Joy and Automatically Sunshine which all hit the top 40. I wonder if those songs would have done better if they were seen on television like they were with Ladder, Everybody and Stoned Love. Yes, I agree songs like Touch, Bad Weather and I Guess I'll Miss The Man were not the sound the general public was used to hearing from the Supremes and that Jimmy Webb did not have any song that sounded like a hit-the only song I really like on that was I Keep It Hid. I wonder if there was any reason why other producers at Motown did not want to produce the Supremes, there are a number of interesting speculations.
It was 1972, the Jackson 5 was more popular than the Supremes. By 1973, both groups would start to struggle [[though the J5 still had top 40s and one more top 10 hit before they left, which you couldn't say about most Motown acts, plus the J5 still had youth on their side whereas the Supremes, now pushing 30 save for Cindy who was 33 in 1972, didn't).