Originally Posted by
juicefree20
Dianesfan,
I absolutely loved Flo & always had a great deal of empathy for her. At heart, I'm for the underdog & always want to see them succeed against tremendous odds.
For my part, I was just a little too young to have been caught up in their drama. I was 7 when Flo left the group & at the age of 7, I was worried more about playing Cowboys & Indians & looking up my teacher's skirt, than I was about what was happening with a group of women whom I didn't really know. To be perfectly honest about it, at that point I was more concerned about James Brown or family friend Roddie Joy having a hit than I was about The Supremes.
As a young boy growing up in Brooklyn, The Supremes were a girl group & simply didn't resonate with me in that manner. I liked them because they were cute, they had flair & they were BAD! But I never got caught up in the glamour & glitz & actually hated that kind of pomp & circumstance because I couldn't relate to it. While I could admire their for their beautiful gowns, I never thought in terms of my wearing their gowns. They represented something totally different to me than they did & do to their most rabid of fans. To me as a kid during their heyday, they were girls that a little fella could dream about hugging & I was proud of what they accomplished because back then, they had reached a level of fame & success that precious few of those whom looked like me did. Then again, there were equally gorgeous ladies to feel that way about back then so I never fixated on them.
While I loved Motown & just about all of their stars [[The Four Tops, Temptations & Marvin were my favorites), simply put, they weren't my end-all & be-all. I loved the music coming out of Atlantic, Brunswick & Stax just as much as I loved Motown. I also loved the music coming out of 100 other small labels whom could barely keep their doors open.
If the music touched me, it touched me & whether in was recorded by the huge star, or by a few of the smaller satellites, I loved it all the same. Which is why for as much as I may love the stars whom have gotten their acclaim, it's the lesser-known artists like Alicia Myers, The Fuzz, The Younghearts or Tomorrow's Promise whom resonate within me the most.
So yes, I wanted to love Flo's CD. After hearing & reading so many glowing words for decades, I was all set & more than waiting to have my socks knocked off. I kinda liked It Doesn't Matter How I Say It, but truthfully, it sounded like the tempo was moving just a little too fast for her to really dig into it & beyond that, it was clearly an attempt to give her the Motown sound & honestly, not a very good attempt at that. I only like it because it was Flo & only because it was about the best of the bunch, which is a crime.
I could go track-by-track & state illustrate where & why they go astray but I never wanted to do that, so it's a CD that I never offered a review of. In this case, I'd have been writing about an artist whom has long been one of my favorites, purely on the strength of how I believed her to her been, her beauty & also because I've always believed that justifiably or not, she got a raw deal.
And Im perfectly aware that by merely suggesting that the music & production served her badly & that this isn't the best CD since the Second Coming, that some will regard my words as heresy & somehow twist that into me "hating" on her. If so, so be it. I'm not going to make an idiot of myself by trying to suggest that this material is up to par with that which she recorded with Motown, or any other of 50 labels whom damn well could've done a better job in producing Flo. From where I sit, Helen Keller could've come up with better production than this in braille & if anyone believes that this music failed because DJs were payed not to play it, then I have several of the finest in N.Y. bridges & some swamp land near Gateway that I'm more than willing to sell to anyone who buys into that particular theory.
Understand, this is not to be misconstrued as a slam of Florence's voice, but rather upon the production values [[or lack thereof) & absolute lack of direction, which undermined any hope for success. Listen to her vocals on Buttered Popcorn & you hear a voice there. You hear a voice that you can tell is holding back, but given a chance, you can tell that this is a woman whom can BLOW!
The best way that I can describe it is that it sounds to me as though they were trying so hard to copy her success with The Supremes, that in the process Florence Ballard got lost in their quest to arrange for her & have her phrase as though she were Diana Ross. If you don't think so, just take a listen to a song like Goin' Out Of My Head & listen to how they have her phrasing. Even worse listen to the backing vocals, especially at the fade. The backing vocals are stiff & stilted & they have a metronic quality to them, much akin to the sound that wind-up soldier make as the spring winds down. Sadly, they have Flo sounding too restrained & too well-mannered. This is a song of angst, the protagonist has his loved one at wit's end, which is something that is a very highly emotional-charged situation.
But you don't hear any of that pain, nor do you hear that emotion. For the way they arranged this song, she could've been singing about reading the Sunday paper & it would've had the same impact. There's just a total disconnect between the subject matter & the performance.
None of this was on Flo, it's on the producer/arranger. And no, this is not pitting one against the other, but is simply an analysis as to, conspiracy theories aside, what really went into these decisions, as well as what went wrong & how perhaps, with a few tweks here & there, history as we know it could've been so much different.
Which after the passing of more than 40 years, I guess the point is moot.
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