Mary Wells - post My Guy at motown

[robb_k]

There was an urgent need to get Mary a hit, and the feeling was the only way to do so was to create that Motown feeling. "Dear Lover" accomplished what many of her other post-Motown songs didn't.

Had Mary been at Motown, my thought was Mary would have already had a ton of possible hits at her disposal by Motown's in-house writers already. I don't recall any other time when someone outside of Motown ever approached the company with a song for one of their hit artists, so as great a song as "Dear Lover" is, would the writers have said, "Hey, let's take this to Motown to have Mary Wells record it" knowing Motown was pretty exclusive about publishing and ownership of their songs?

Many people forget that Barrett Strong was working in Chicago with Carl Davis at Okeh, Constellation, and ATCO Records, on songwriting and assisting in production. It was he and ex-Motowner, Sonny Sanders, who helped add Motownish elements into The Chicago Sound, especially used with Mary Wells and The Artistics' early, Okeh material [[such as the super-Motownish "This Heart of Mine", "So Much Love in My Heart", "I'll Come Running", and "Loveland". Strong wrote several of Mary's ATCO songs, and was involved in the production of "Dear Lover".

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Many people forget that Barrett Strong was working in Chicago with Carl Davis at Okeh, Constellation, and ATCO Records, on songwriting and assisting in production. It was he and ex-Motowner, Sonny Sanders, who helped add Motownish elements into The Chicago Sound, especially used with Mary Wells and The Artistics' early, Okeh material [[such as the super-Motownish "This Heart of Mine", "So Much Love in My Heart", "I'll Come Running", and "Loveland". Strong wrote several of Mary's ATCO songs, and was involved in the production of "Dear Lover".

Strong and Davis did excellent work with their productions. It always fascinates me that the appeal of what Motown was doing was so strong, even Chicago was trying to fit into that Detroit vibe. Seems for a hot minute, there was a great Chicago Sound, but it couldn't get enough traction to hit as big or as consistently on the charts as Motown. Then I realize it all goes back to how far sighted Berry was in developing the careers and images of his artists as opposed to just getting hits.