Teenbeat XVIIII - Mary Wells

Today entry is around a double cd  by artist whose career that lasted many years only really flourished briefly and often is ignored when it comes to Motown's contribution to the evolution of Soul Music.
You see the people we associate more with Motown, like Diana Ross& the Supremes, the Temptations and the Four Tops were only really successful after Mary Wells left the label but during the first years it was her, the Miracles and Marvin Gaye who were the bit hitters chart wise. Indeed the Supremes were dubbed the 'no hit supremes' while the Beatles hung out with Mary and even shared billing on tour.
Motown was like a giant music factory working all hours recording and refining 'product' for the quality control meetings where the decision to release or just can the recordings were made so like many Motown artists, Mary had a lot of material, really fine material that commercially Motown had no use for regardless of its quality.

This set issued in 2012 is in some respects the replacement for 1993's ultra rare Looking Back double, part of a ground breaking set of releases exploring work by less well known artists or those whose careers spun more at 45 RPM from the master tapes so had few if any lps.
While I have a number of those cds and the periods 'Anthologies' of more popular artists, hers is one I didn't get at that given we're looking at around over £100 when you see a copy, I'm not likely fill that gap.
This set has 25 unreleased tracks, a good number of new stereo mixes of tracks previously issued including duets with Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson plus work with the Four Tops and Supremes (the Diana Ross & the Supremes group styling came in in 1967 after these were recorded).
Mary took advice, sadly very misguidedly to leave Motown in 1964 from what was admittedly a poor contract but the process took it's toil on her poor health that went back to her disadvantaged childhood and lack the nurturing environment and the pool of talented writers was to cost her commercial career dear.
Meanwhile one does need the Hits and there has been a number of compilations issued over the years.

 This one dating back to 1986 remains my favourite even if the art isn't top draw and isn't hard to find used Taking in 1960's Bye Bye Baby, Two Lovers, Your Ol' Standby and You Beat Me To The Punch  as well as My Guy, a big UK hit in early 1964 although it has nothing from the Together album of duets recorded with Marvin Gaye who was rather disowning of it.

Although there is a more recent identical coupling of these two original studio albums which are very well recorded by Motown standards, this 1986 2 on 1 set is a favourite for the songs (the albums are surprisingly solid with little 'filler' making the case for her most versatile voice taking in such songs as Two Lovers, Laughing Boy, Whisper You Love Me and My Baby Just Cares for Me.

Teenbeat VII -Stevie Wonder reissues

As several of you know I do love Motown and a few years back Audio Fidelity issued this speciality Gold cd of the classic Talking Book album by Stevie Wonder plus a few others.
To recap a number of his albums were first issues in the halycon days of cd by Motown under BMG in Europe, then reissued in 1992 by Polygram and finally remastered in 2000 thru Universal.
Unfortunately most of these year 2000 titles are shrill, bright and very loud sounding you could tell even with the stores stereo system playing them but the 'classic' 1972-1976 albums in the 1992 series really could be better so I'm replacing them with these specialty gold remasters done by Kevin Gray using more modern devices to convert the sounds from the analogue tapes to digital.
Talking Book is the the home to "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" hit 45.

1972's Music Of My Mind was the disc that bought Stevie's use of the Arp synthesizer to our attention way back then featuring the hit single Superwoman.
My 1992 version sounds poor.

1973's Innervisions is in my opinion one soul album you just got to own featuring "Living For The City", "Higher Ground" and "He's Misstra Know-It-All" covering such topics as false religion, racial discrimination and mans relationship with his spiritual side.

Let it not be said Stevie took the white mans dollar and failed to address issues affecting African-Americans cos on this as with several albums he does bemoaning the failure of the political system on "You Haven't Done Nothin'" and "It Ain't No Use". All Stevie did was avoid the excesses of political sloganizing that ultimately dates his contemporaries  lyrics
I feel this is the most improved disc of the set.

In 1976 he issued a double lp plus 4 track 7" EP entitled Songs In The Key of Life" where talks about everything he feels is important in the lyrics. This album included the smash hit tribute to jazz performer Duke Ellington, Sir Duke, I Wish and As although isn't She Lovely was a "radio hit" and a hit when recorded by England's David Parton in the UK and Europe
The original cd split the bonus tracks across the two cds but in 2000 the reissue that otherwise was very poor not helped by playing a Dolby A tape without it sounding very bright and compressed at least put the EP tracks at the end of disc 2.
For this 2011 Audio Fidelity release they kept to that disc running order with much improved sound.
Here's my brief series comments:
Having done a comparison with my older cd I'd say the major improvements are in the timbre of percussion smoother with more snap revealing greater fine detail and vocals.
Innervision is probably the next best thing to the rare and very expensive Mobile Fidelity cd issue from the early 90's that accidentally did use the master tape.
To summarize it builds on the original adding more subtitles within the limits of having to use a copy tape because Stevie does not give any record company any master tapes including Motown and for that reason is to be preferred although I am sure with the actual masters the results would be more noticeable.

I also picked up the 1985 mastered Love Songs 20 Classic Hits cd on Motown which offers a selection of his 60's output in much better sound than the 1998 Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits Vol:2 re-issues although it misses out Fingertips Pt2, Work Out Stevie Work Out and Travellin' Man

Motown Anthologies

As part of my building a music collection, I've sometimes you have to choose between buying whole individual albums and buying recordings that only hits such as compilations either because of economics (albums may be very expensive if out of print) or many of their hit recordings were not on the albums.
For many Motown artists from the 60's, albums were a secondary consideration to the 45's typically containing a couple of hits, their reverse sides and then 8 cover versions so in many ways the compilation if chosen with care makes more sense.

This is a trade advertisement for one of a series released around 1973 and 1974, a 33 track retrospective by Marvin Gaye starting with his hit 45 Stubborn Kind of Fellow from 1963 to his then last studio album Let's Get It On featuring his duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell and Diana Ross. Like the ad, my copy is the UK edition.

I also have the Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder and Junior Walker and the All Stars volumes although I don't own the Diana Ross & the Supremes (have both UK volumes of "Greatest Hits" instead), Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and Temptations volumes also issued at the time.

 Junior Walker's Anthology is desert island material for me being very distinctive borrowing a lot from jazz.

That one wasn't out for long as Stevie Wonder didn't care much for it issuing Looking Back on November 30th 1977 instead although I feel it's the best selection of his pre Talking book output.It wasn't issued in the UK but imported especially for that market in its three lp plus booklet form.

Also in the series is the Temptations one covering from The Way You Do The Things You Do to 1972's All Directions album.

My copy is the US edition. I also own the 1973 1990 album in a UK pressing STMA 8006

This was issued in late 1973 but not officially part of the Anthology series although in many respects being a double album with all the Four Tops hits up to 1972 on it it almost certainly should be.
Apart from find good stereo recordings, each set has a full colour insert with background capsule, essay and exclusive pictures.

I have the two UK single lps of Diana Ross and the Supremes Greatest Hits as issued in 1968 and 1970 that have most of the tracks featured in the 1974 Anthology set as well as the 1974 'new' Supremes Greatest Hits covering the Ross less recordings from 1970 thru 1973 such as Up The Ladder  To Roof, Nathan Jones, Floy Joy and Bad Weather.

Souled out! [Pre-blog]

A few years back in the early days of the compact disc, a series of discs was issued but seemed to disappear rapidly off the market that was most desirable
That series Big Hits and Hard To Find Classics on Motown  records, did what the title suggested for once giving us a few big hits by artists poorly represented on cd and adding shed load of recordings that having appeared once on 45, only made the very hard to find compilation albums like Motown Memories or Big Hits retrospectives series all gone in todays cd world.

On July 17th the British arm of Motown put out a re-issue -  well almost a full  re-issue as Eddie Hollands Jamie couldn't be found from the original volume 2 - of the original three cds that made it possible for me and a few few others to expand our Motown on cd collections following on from the re-issue of the UK Motown Chartbusters sets and the Hitsville USA box sets.
As a number of these tracks were from albums friends had or were played on the radio I'm delighted to hear them anew minus any scratches and other wear.