Set to reissue over two dozen Motown albums from the 1960s and 1970s monthly through 2024 and into next year, Elemental Music’s Motown Sound Collection is now in full swing, with three selections available July 12; a mono edition of Together by Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells, I Hear a Symphony by the Supremes on green vinyl, and the groundbreaking Cloud Nine by the Temptations. Context and considerations follow below.
The first in a series of albums to feature Marvin Gaye with a woman vocalist as duet partner, Together, Gaye’s fifth album to that point, was his only team-up with Mary Wells (LPs with Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell, and Diana Ross would follow), whose relationship with Motown ended shortly after this album’s release.
Wells and Gaye were both scoring hits on the singles charts at the time, so combining them on record was a promising strategy that brought success through the duo’s clear chemistry. Culled from the album, “Once Upon a Time” b/w “What’s the Matter With You, Baby” was a double A-side hit, with each song making the pop top 20 and the R&B top five. Together was also Gaye’s first full-length to make the pop album chart as he had three LPs released in 1964. When I’m Alone I Cry and Hello Broadway are the others; Together is the best of the bunch.
Although its contents are essentially polite pop-R&B elevated by the vocal talents of the pair and the instrumental input of the Funk Brothers (and an absence of strings), Together stands apart from Gaye’s albums to that point, which largely followed an adult pop avenue merging into the Middle of the Road and partly influenced by success of Nat King Cole. Rather than an executive decision, it was Gaye who pursued the MOR path. It’s hard to argue with success however, as his duo with Wells helped to steer him toward the youth market. In short, Together is the place to begin for non-completist Gaye collectors.
But Together is not really a breakaway from Gaye’s mainstream tendencies, as six of the record’s ten tracks are pop standards and two are jazz sources, the Freddie Green-Donald Wolf composition “Until I Met You” (recorded as “Corner Pocket” by Count Basie) and the Duke Ellington-Lee Gaines number “Just Squeeze Me (Don’t Tease Me).” Two of the pop standards, “The Late, Late Show” and “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons” were previously recorded by Nat Cole; notably, the latter was also a pop and R&B hit for Sam Cooke in 1957.
Cooke is an good reference point for the pleasant accessibility of Together overall, though it’s important to emphasize how the tunes skew contemporary as they build on the talents of Wells (whose “My Guy” was a concurrent chart smash) and her rapport with Gaye. Opening with “Once Upon a Time,” the songs flow nicely throughout as “What’s the Matter With You, Baby” is the penultimate track on side two. If not a mind-blower, Together is still a solid, fun set.
By 1966, the Supremes were riding a sustained wave of commercial accomplishments that positioned them as Motown’s prime crossover act, a duality that was a natural fit for the group as they strove to perfect their brand of smooth, unabashedly feminine soul. Directly following the live set The Supremes at the Copa, the ambitious I Hear a Symphony continues to push the crossover impulse into the (undeniably conservative) realms of adult pop that had proved elusive to Gaye.
That I Hear a Symphony succeeded at the time and holds up as an album now is directly related to how the Supremes’ already sophisto approach withstood additional mainstreaming sans compromise as Ross excels as lead vocalist throughout. With the title as tip off, there’s beaucoup string action across the album, including two featuring the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, but curiously not much in the hit title track, placed third on the side one and shining bright as part of the album’s sequence.
And while it’s easy to rank “I Hear a Symphony,” “My World Is Empty Without You” (the album’s other hit single), “Any Girl in Love (Knows What I’m Going Through),” and the gorgeous finale “He’s All I Got,” all Holland-Dozier-Holland compositions, as the album’s best moments (along with Eddie Holland and James Dean’s co-write “Everything is Good About You”), it’s not quite that simple.
For one thing, there’s a likeable version of “Yesterday” extending the Supremes’ fruitful interpretational relationship with the Fab Four’s catalog, a take of “Unchained Melody” that was obviously inspired by the bold orchestral swoop of The Righteous Brothers recent hit, and an excellent (and thematically fitting) cover of the Bach-Christian Petzold-inspired “A Lover’s Concerto,” which The Toys recorded to chart success the previous year.
The combined grand sweep of opener “Stranger Than Paradise,” “With a Song in My Heart,” and “Without a Song,” all show tunes, plus a version of “Wonderful, Wonderful,” a hit for Johnny Mathis from ten years prior, solidifies the album’s general direction, which is for the good, as the rest of the material complements it rather than establishing a series of stylistic departures. That is, I Hear a Symphony was clearly crafted as an album, and as such, it stands up well.
While I Hear a Symphony ultimately coheres as a full-length record, the Temptations’ Cloud Nine is the tale of two distinct but not conflicting album sides. It’s also the story of a fresh addition to the Temptations lineup, as Dennis Edwards, formerly a vocalist for The Contours, was brought in to replace David Ruffin; Edwards debuted in the role on Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations, which hit stores in November 1968.
It’s often a troubling sign when a successful act undergoes a lineup change. Occasionally, a refreshed group gets better for the shakeup, but more often, replacement members predict a lessening of artistic (if not necessarily commercial) fortunes. This is not the case with Cloud Nine, and it’s important to acknowledge that Ruffin, although the addition that solidified the “Classic Five” lineup of the Temptations, was not an original Temptation.
It’s appropriate that with Cloud Nine, the group broke in the new lineup by moving away from the “classic” Temptations sound as established by the “Classic Five,” making inroads into psychedelic soul with Norman Whitfield as producer and Sly & the Family Stone as the guide. It’s enlightening to consider Cloud Nine, released in February 1969, together with the performance by Sly & the Family Stone in Questlove’s documentary Summer of Soul from later that same year (and for that matter, the footage of Ruffin solo from the same film).
The story is that Whitfield was initially resistant to adopting the psych-soul sound, but thankfully his doubts evaporated, as Cloud Nine’s opening title cut engages with the style wholeheartedly, loaded with wah-wah guitar flourishes, hard driving rhythms and a lack of strings. As a single, “Cloud Nine” was a sizable hit and landed Motown its first Grammy award, which is doubly impressive given the lyrical ambiguity (are the lyrics referencing drug use?).
But after a fine take of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine (expanding on the Gladys Knight & the Pips version) comes Cloud Nine’s standout, the wildly ambitious nine and a half minute album version of “Runaway Child, Running Wild” that closes side one. As it establishes a funky footing that would carry over deep into the next decade and throws an extended spotlight onto Motown’s instrumental excellence in the process, the signature Temptations vocal thrust doesn’t suffer (the same is true in “Cloud Nine”).
Opening with a version of “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing” (a hit for Lou Rawls) and following that with the Goffin-King number “Hey Girl,” side two effectively reverts back to the core Temptations sound; five more Whitfield-Barrett Strong compositions follow. Some may consider this to be stylistic backsliding, but it seems obvious that Motown just wanted to strike while the iron was hot in regards to the burgeoning psych-soul style. Side two delivered a lively pleaser to those holdouts for the classic sound as the Temptations continued to evolve.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells, Together
B+
The Supremes, I Hear a Symphony
A-
The Temptations, Cloud Nine
A
