Found out...!!
Found out...!!
Really?
Spill the beans!!
"Found out" as in "Rumbled"....
Yep...Mike has it right
Snakepit, given your inside knowledge, is it true the Isleys dedicated their "Who's That Lady" to the same cook?
oh well thanks for your participation. your booby prizes await you.
Berry wrote in his autobiography, "To Be Loved," that the song "Try It Baby" was written about Diana Ross [pages 207-208]:
"[Diana] was my inspiration for a song I'd written, "Try It Baby." As usual, my idea for this song had come from real life. I imagined a girl like her with a guy like me who was building and guiding her career. I envisioned this guy investing all his time and effort in this girl, while at the same time falling in love with her. What if she got so big, so popular, so caught up in fame and fortune that she no longer had time for him? ... I never told Diana she was the inspiration for that song. I found myself falling for her more and more, but I stayed cool, incredibly cool."
Another long shot, coming up on the outside lane, might be Fuqua's cohort, Johnny Bristol. Together they, right off the bat, supplied David Ruffin optmism for a successful solo, Temptation-less, career, providing him with a Top 10 song, MY WHOLE WORLD ENDED, ....
Then Johnny on his own as producer, gave Diana Ross her last Supremes hit , a #1, with SOMEDAY, which featured Johnny's voice more pronounced on the record than any by any actual Supremes .... perhaps making Norman think ..."who does he fancy himself, singing along with Diana like that, some kinda superstar!!?" And soon enough Johnny, getting too big for his Motown britches ,would be off to other labels and releasing songs entirely of his own ..
I don't believe Norman ever once inserted his voice into any of the acts' recordings he had produced [?]...
No..just produced an album featuring a photograph of himself which dwarfed the group .
oh dear, NORMAN!!
He haw!
The in-house revered giants, THE Temptations reduced to a thought in the master mind of Norman Whitfield. Must have caused chatter at the water cooler.
You suppose Norman submitted it to the art group as almost a poignant joke, and when it was run by Berry Gordy , he shook his head, then chuckled and said, "what the heck , let's run with it ."
Is this one of Motown's most outrageous yet rather hilarious moments?
Last edited by Boogiedown; 02-10-2022 at 12:41 AM.
I think Berry knew Norman was earning money for Motown [[ i.e. himself) so was quite happy to go with it.
Who has an ego big enough to call their own composition "Masterpiece"?
You have mentioned Barrett Strong , Sotosound, I apologize for glancing over it. Barrett is still with us . Does he have a facebook account or something of that nature?
Surely someone amonsgst us has access to him. It would be most interesting to learn his recounting of the situation. It'd be a shame to just let the 'truth' evaporate into mythology , when/if there's a way to document it from the source like that.
Once those sources are gone ....that's the dead end of it ...
Oh I know there are some who could care less, that's fine [whatever] ... nonetheless maybe others like me, would find the backstory noteworthy. It was a song of moderate success for the group, and an idea they put their name behind, and so its just one more piece of the entirety of their story.
Last edited by Boogiedown; 02-10-2022 at 03:04 PM.
Hi Boogiedown
Noticed in your post that you say " could care less".
In the UK we say"couldn't care less".
Seems both will do...basically signalling indifference.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/word...ldnt-care-less
^ take your pick from either as to my interest in that post
Ha ha fair enough
My personal take is that "It's Summer" failed because it wasn't of the same standard as previous hits. It attempted to give a melody to the spoken verse of the original version but that melody wasn't strong enough to sell singles irrespective of who sang it, and the overall production lacked the charm of the original.
"Superstar" was a step back towards success.
Guess we'll never know , eh Tom. It'll be one of those Motown insider facts that'll just finally wash away into the abyss....
Well Norman certainly saw high value in the song's message .....he recorded it again for The Undisputed Truth , and it was released unsuccessfully in the UK ,
Who were the Truth mad at !!!?
... sounding a bit [pre] Bohannon
Last edited by Boogiedown; 02-14-2022 at 02:50 PM.
Indeed Boogie. Damn that Motown abyss!
If the song did in fact come from Barrett Strong, I guess we’d have to ask, who was Barrett's original intended "Superstar"!??
And yes, Norman must have thought the song worthy of remakes by both The Undisputed Truth and David Ruffin! And quite different takes on it too…
Do you think there exists a version of David’s Me N Rock N Roll album without the fake audience???
I remember reading an article in a magazine that said Superstar was an open letter to Sly Stone.
I've always assumed it was written about David Ruffin.
You'd think the meaning of the song would have been cleared up by now.
Last edited by Cosmic Truth; 03-11-2022 at 08:07 AM.
snakepit you had me dyin laughin on that . I'm just readin this . In Norman Whitfield case & lesser degree H D H, just cause you the GREATEST musically does not transfer to BUSINESS. Thats where Berry Gordy shined because look at his family...they had that business sense & you can't trust others more then family. But I think Normans "Superstar" was a combo of many.
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