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"Mary was our first big, big star," (Esther Gordy Edwards, Ms. Wells's personal manager at Motown and a sister of Berry Gordy)
This is album review number one hundred and thirty nine in the series of retro-reviews of both vinyl and CD albums from my collection.
The series is called Cream of The Crate and each review represents an album that I believe represents significant musical value, either because of its rarity, because it represents the best of a style or styles of a music or because there is something unique about the music, the group or the particular production.
The first fifty reviews were based on vinyl albums from my collection, with the following fifty on CD albums from my collection. Links to all these reviews can be found at the bottom of the page. Recently I have retro-reviewed a number of Motown Girl groups, where the lead singer had the support of backing singers, thus making up a group. This week I feature a Motown singer, who was a solo act.
This is a vinyl album and while it is a compilation it was bought out in the early 1960's by Motown to showcase the music of one of their star acts. The album is simply titled The Best Of and it is by Mary Wells. It was released on the Motown label with the code – M5-233V1. The album features what Motown saw as the best of Mary Wells recordings made up until 1964, when this album was released. The album has 12 tracks on it.
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The story of Mary Wells is a bitter/sweet story. She was born on May 13, 1943 in Detroit Michigan, and was in a family of three children, including herself and a mother, but she had an absentee father. Life wasn't easy for the families and they probably fell right into the category of a "poor black family. Compounding the misery that came from her circumstances, she contracted spinal meningitis at the age of two and struggled with partial blindness, deafness in one ear and temporary paralysis. In order to cope with the pain, she used to sing, mostly to herself, or in the local church choir.
At ten years of age she began singing in Detroit-area clubs and talent contests. When she was 17 (1960) she wrote a song she wanted to give to Jackie Wilson, a favorite singer of hers. Motown head Berry Gordy was holding open auditions at his studio and Mary showed up with the song, Bye Bye Baby", and performed it for him. Gordy not only bought the song but signed her to a recording contract, and instead of giving the song to Jackie Wilson, it became Mary's first single, in 1961. It landed in the top 50 on the R&B charts.
This began a tumultuous association with what was, the top studio for the local music, especially for female singers. Working with Smokey Robinson, she became the first Motown female artist to have a Top 40 pop single after the Mickey Stevenson-penned doo-wop song, I Don't Want to Take a Chance, hit No. 33 in June,1961. In 1962 she released The One Who Really Loves You, another Smokey Robinson penned track, and had better success with it reaching number 8 on the US charts and flushed with that success released to more top tracks, You Beat Me To the Punch- charting at number 9 and Two Lovers, charting even better at number 7.
Mary Wells circa 1962
But many around her thought she was getting stuck in a "sound-rut", and when her first two tracks in 1963 went in the wrong direction, it seemed to reflect that those fears might be realised. When the track Your Old Standby just scraped in at number 40, failing to gain acceptance by audiences. Smokey had then suffered the indignity of having the Mary Wells Project opened up to outside competition, leading to what was essentially a double A-side single, pairing Smokey’s What’s Easy For Two Is So Hard For One with Holland-Dozier-Holland’s sassy contribution, You Lost The Sweetest Boy. Neither side charted particularly well and to be honest it's probably because both songs cannibalised each other’s airplay, and so when we come to look at the careers of Mary Wells and Smokey, they were, by their standards, on a considerable cold streak.
Ideas abounded on how to revive Wells’ career. New material was recorded with Smokey and with Holland Dozier, Holland, venerable standards and old Jobete catalogue numbers [Jobete was a publishing entity set up to be used by Motown's writers] were then dusted off for reinterpretations. In fact an album of duets with Marvin Gaye was recorded throughout the spring of ’64, but none of this freshly-cut stuff passed muster with Quality Control as a potential hit single, and so all of it ended up back on the shelves. By the beginning of March 1964, Motown were considering trying to recoup some costs by releasing a cobbled-together LP made up of the various unreleased bits and pieces Mary had stockpiled, and Smokey was tasked with coming up with some more filler to bulk out the proposed album. And that’s how My Guy came into the world: a throwaway "End Of Side One" cut for a half-hearted album release.
This was her crowning glory at Motown, and little did anyone realise, it would also be her last 7" release for the label. Ironically right in her most successful year, Wells was having problems with Motown over her original recording contract, which she had signed at the age of 17. She was also reportedly angry that the money made from My Guy was being used to promote the Supremes, who had found success with "Where Did Our Love Go". Though Gordy reportedly tried to renegotiate with Wells, the singer still asked to be freed from her contract with Motown.
A pending lawsuit kept Wells away from the studio for several months, as she and Gordy went back and forth over the contract details, Wells fighting to gain larger royalties from earnings she had made during her tenure with Motown. Finally, she invoked a clause that allowed her to leave the label, telling the court that her original contract was invalid since she had signed while still a minor. Wells won her lawsuit and was awarded a settlement, leaving Motown officially in early 1965, whereupon she accepted a lucrative ($200,000) contract with 20th Century Fox Records.
Part of the terms of the agreement of her release was that she could not receive any royalties from her past works with the label, including use of her likeness to promote herself. It was this clause that would forever haunt her as she received no royalties for subsequent sales of her music, including the incredibly popular My Guy. Mary had released ten singles from that first release in 1960, through to My Guy. Having left Motown for 20th Century Fox and then Atlantic records, she released a total of eight singles between 1964 (post My Guy) and 1981, of which only one, the 1966 Dear Lover, would chart in the Top 10.
Her album releases are indeed very thin in regard to Motown, with this album - Greatest Hits being her first release in 1964, and the other being Mary Wells Sings My Guy, also released in 1964. Of course, because of the clause in her release contract, she never received one dollar from these album sales. In later years, wracked with guilt, Berry Gordy Junior would make a payment to her out of his own pocket.
"Wells’ love life alone could fuel a daytime soap opera. She married Cecil Womack in 1966 and had three children with him and divorced him in 1977 to live with his brother Curtis. (They had a daughter named Sugar.) She also had dated Jackie Wilson, Otis Williams of the Temptations and Wilson Pickett. Wells never abandoned songwriting or performing until she could no longer sing. Always tenacious in her career, she suffered setbacks due to lack of promotion from her post-Motown record companies and bad personal decisions". [ Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown's First Superstar by Marianne Moro)
As well as suffering from TB, she was a very heavy smoker, in the early 1990's she was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. Treatments for the disease ravaged her voice, forcing her to quit her music career. In 1991, Wells brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Motown for royalties she felt she had not received upon leaving Motown Records in 1964 and for loss of royalties for not promoting her songs as the company should have. Motown eventually settled the lawsuit by giving her a six-figure sum. However, for her the end was near and sadly she passed away in 1992 from cancer, barely fifty years of age.
Track Listing:
Side 1
1. The One Who Really Loves You
2. You Beat Me To The Punch
3. Two Lovers
4. Your Old Stand By
5. What's Easy For Two Is So Hard For One
6. My Guy
Side 2
1. Laughing Boy
2. What Love Has Joined Together
3. Oh Little Boy (What Did You Do To Me)
4. Old Love (Let's Try It Again)
5. You Lost The Sweetest Boy
6. Bye Bye Baby
I'm kicking off with track number 1 - The One That Really Loves You. It was Mary's first top 10 hit, reaching number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and, number 2 on the Billboard R&B chart. and deservedly so. It has a fantastic rhythm and pulse about it, and her voice just sounds like it was made for this track, showing a soft tonality but at the same time real power. It featured the backing vocals of "The Love Tones", who consisted of Stan Bracely, Carl Jones and Joe Miles. the musical backing is sweetly superb and so it should be as it's the Hitsville Funk Brothers, who were largely responsible for what became known as the Motown Sound,and the resultant track really has a "fake" calypso beat, but it works well.
It's no wonder that the buying public took to this great track, and it certainly seemed to indicate that Mary Wells could deliver, and would deliver for a long time. This is one fun-ky track!