Levi Stubbs Baby I Need Your Love Baby I Need Your Love Although You Are Never Here

Motown M 1062 (A), July 1964

b/due west Call On Me

(Written by Brian The netherlands, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)

Stateside SS 336 (A), September 1964

b/w Phone call On Me

(Released in the Great britain under license through EMI/Stateside Records)

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The belated arrival of the 4 Tops here on Motown Junkies feels somehow similar the completion of a collection, and in more ways than one. All the players are now in place for a Gilt Age: we've met all of the big protagonists of the drama that's beginning to unfold equally we sail on into the summer of 1964, and they've nearly all had hit records. But at that place's more than to it than that – the Tops bring a missing ingredient, something warm and fresh that Motown hadn't quite mastered until now.

The 4 Tops and the Temptations, the two great Sixties Motown male vocal groups, seem to accept existed in a permanent country of yin/yang. I don't know anything about the relationship betwixt the two groups across what'south on the albums – were they friends? Rivals? Did they respect each other, did they have annihilation much to exercise with each other? Did they fifty-fifty listen to each other's records? Can you profess to exist a fan of 1 without admiring the other?

I've seen them referred to equally the Beatles and Stones of Motown, the Ali and Foreman, with nobody quite sure who'due south supposed to exist who in that analogy, and yet that seems also simple when both groups then often readily and skilfully occupied what had previously been considered the other's supposed turf, and when they so easily swapped right back once more. A listener in 1970 might say the Tops were sweet and the Tempts were hot and loud, but a listener in 1966 might make the exact opposite observation. What of a listener in 1964?

The debate could rumble on forever. The Tempts were 5 Southerners who'd relocated to the North, the Tops were four Detroit natives. The Tops had their sound sweetened by the Andantes, giving them a unique song blend unmatched anywhere else in the Motown stable, and yet information technology'southward hard to deny that, say, Standing In The Shadows Of Honey sounds rather tougher than, say, My Girl, or that Levi Stubbs is pound for pound a rougher and harder singer than David Ruffin. The Tempts went downwardly an aggressive, politicised, funk-influenced "psychedelic soul" path at the turn of the decade; the Tops covered the Left Banke and It's All In The Game as they moved into more than radio-friendly balladeering territory. The Tempts came back to their soft sound with But My Imagination, at the exact same time the Tops started to cut some harder numbers. The two groups' various albums of duets with the Supremes are endless food for debate. Who was best? They both were, obviously.

THE STORY OF THE Four TOPS

"The Four Tops"… a name from a bygone age. Contemporaries of the Drifters, the Platters, Phil Phillips, mayhap, non Love or Hendrix or Sam and Dave. It sounds like something a group of apprentice doo-wop wannabes might have chosen themselves equally they got together to sing at a local party circa 1954. Which is, of course, exactly what they were.

When Levi Stubbs, Lawrence Payton, Duke Fakir and Obie Benson got upwards to sing at that party, they called themselves the "Four Aims" – because we're aiming for the superlative!, they later told an unimpressed Roquel Davis, who gave them a new name that stuck for 43 years. Peradventure, if things had shaken out a little differently, the newly-christened Four Tops might take striking those heights right there in the Fifties, the nation'due south newest teenage doo-wop awareness.

In 1956, after the boys had served a long apprenticeship, honing their craft and their harmonies through two years of increasingly well-received alive shows and sock hops, Davis – past now their mentor and manager – got them a bargain with no less a ability than Chess Records. Congratulations, lads – it's been a difficult slog getting here, merely you've finally reached the big fourth dimension. But the unmarried, the wholly excellent Could Information technology Be You lot – Levi Stubbs sounding way older than his xviii years, with more of a hint of both Elvis and Ray in his delivery – somehow failed to find an audience, and died an ignominious commercial decease. Leonard Chess, not known for his patience, kicked the Tops to the kerb.

That setback was the start of a well-nigh-decade of thankless toil for the group. They were already as tight and professional a male person song quartet every bit you were going to observe, and then live bookings weren't difficult to come by – but taking that elusive next step, turning that success into a tape deal and some existent money, was always only out of reach. Instead, they spent the best part of 8 years playing live shows, occasionally finding their manner into a studio at the behest of some impressed A&R man (Lone Summer, 1960; Pennies From Heaven, 1962) in between endless engagements the length and latitude of the country. If it's Tuesday, this must be Landover. But they were left waiting in vain for the call that would alter everything.

The call finally came in 1963. The boys, coming off the back of a tour backing Billy Eckstine, arrived in New York Metropolis for a supper order slot and ended up chatting backstage to one of the producers of The Tonight Evidence, recently taken over past Johnny Carson and looking for new acts to characteristic. The Tops were thus somehow able to parlay a adept testify in front end of a few dozen diners into a live advent on national television within the space of a few days, at which signal Berry Gordy decided he had to have them for Motown.

Unlike any of their Motown contemporaries, the Four Tops were now seasoned veterans of the showbiz excursion, having impeccable stage credentials – almost ten years' worth of shows in every possible kind of venue, including the sorts of places Berry Gordy wanted his acts to vest. They'd never gotten themselves in problem, always carried themselves with dignity, kept their noses clean – and they were a tightly-knit unit, each of the original members remaining in the line-up for the residual of their lives. There'd be no trouble from these guys. And they sounded amazing.

Just a couple of months before I wrote this piece, Duke Fakir – the only surviving member from the original line-upwards – gave the secret of the Tops' remarkable longevity and stability in an interview with the Holbrook Sun: "We learned at an early age that if we stuck together we could be as adept as whatever other grouping. We had arguments and dealt with diverse tensions over the years, but we however e'er kept our pact to stay together. We had seen well-nigh every group pull apart, usually because pb singers would exit. We e'er kept our vow to stay together. Levi would become offers to practice things on his ain, but he wouldn't accept them." Compare and contrast the Temptations, who – even with the Tops having a seven-yr head offset – accept managed to characteristic 23 different full members in the aforementioned fourth dimension.

But Gordy ran into the same trouble every other characterization had run into when signing the Four Tops: they sounded good together, just they had no audio of their own, and no management. He had them cutting a version of Marvin Gaye's Get My Easily On Some Lovin' from the That Stubborn Kinda Fellow LP (Youtube sadly doesn't have the Tops' version available for your listening pleasure), just decided that though it sounded good, it still wasn't the sound he was looking for. Similar the Supremes over in the girls' camp, Motown wanted to keep them on the books, simply wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

A&R director Mickey Stevenson eventually decided that since they'd done a lot of jazz gigs, and since they'd previously recorded for Riverside, then Gordy should assign them to his floundering Workshop Jazz Records subsidiary, and accept them cut an LP of low-cal-listening "jazz" numbers – show tunes, sometime standards, Stein and Van Stock pseudo-standards. Fifty-fifty that plan didn't work out; having spent most of the autumn of 1963 in recording sessions with Stevenson at the Greystone Ballroom cut tracks for the proposed album, they then had to sentry as Workshop Jazz Records was shut down due to commercial irrelevance earlier the LP could hit the shops, meaning the luckless Tops were notwithstanding once again almost dorsum to foursquare one. (Well-nigh of the material, with one exception, somewhen surfaced on CD equally Breaking Through in 1999.)

Information technology was around this time that Brian Holland, long a fan of the group from their early days performing at local parties and functions, took the opportunity to utilize them as backing singers on a few records he was producing. Brian brought the Tops to see his production and songwriting partner Lamont Dozier, who turned out to be a big boyhood Tops fan too ("they were the superlative of the heap as far as vocal groups become", Dozier subsequently said), and both agreed the group had a unlike sound to the company'due south usual male session singers, the Honey-Tones. Whether by design or happy accident, Holland and Dozier also rapidly noticed how beautifully the Four Tops' voices blended with those of the Andantes, the female backing vocalists of option at Hitsville, creating a wonderful sound that simply hadn't been heard before, something between a heavenly gospel choir and a chanted mantra; sensuous, heavily secular, and yet somehow seeming to verge on the religious. They had to have that sound.

Doubtless they'd have liked to cut a Four Tops record correct away, but the Tops were even so assigned to Mickey Stevenson, and HDH had no permission – or funding – to pull them away. So it came to pass that the Tops were put to use on a variety of experiments, sketches and other ephemera The netherlands and Dozier were working on, matters reaching a head with the duo's i and but Motown single as performers – the spectacularly daffy What Goes Up, Must Come Downwards – which is really merely a workout for the Tops and Andantes to provide a lovely harmony bed behind Lamont Dozier performing a bizarre character skit.

Unlike some of their labelmates, the Tops were no unconversant teens – they were all in their late twenties past this point, and moreover they were used to waiting information technology out. Then there was no rebellion, no aroused demand Motown release the Breaking Through sessions; they went forth with the plan, continuing to rack upwards live appearances in between Hitsville sessions. And then we come to May 1964, when finally, finally, the 4 Tops caught their break.

THAT LUCKY Interruption IN Full

It'due south not mentioned much now, but Infant I Need Your Loving was non written peculiarly for the Iv Tops. Or, rather, it was meant to take the Iv Tops on it, but the creative person credit would be Holland-Dozier, a potential follow-upwards to What Goes Up, Must Come Down, Brian and Lamont mayhap planning to utilise the The netherlands-Dozier name as an outlet for their ideas, or a generic "brand proper name" for unassigned internal demos (see too Pb Me And Guide Me from A Cellarful of Motown Volume iv) – a program which could never really have been viable once the Motown hitting machine got cranked up to total speed and HDH were set to working on an almost 24-hour production line of new material.

The complete indifference with which What Goes Upwardly, Must Come up Down had been received by everyone – DJs, the public, Motown staffers, everyone – meant that Gordy wasn't enormously keen on his hottest up-and-coming songwriting/product team wasting any more than fourth dimension, money and creative juices on pointless vanity projects. As a result, when Brian, Lamont and the Andantes – and possibly the Tops themselves, too, though nobody seems to know for sure – convened in Apr to record a largely instrumental backing rail for a new "song" – equally nonetheless without a title, but conceived past Brian as a love song for his lilliputian-mentioned first married woman, Sharon – that mainly consisted of a series of Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh harmonies over a surprisingly tough rhythm bed of horns, strings, guitars and piano, all coming together for a beautiful, soaring choral refrain of Baby, I demand your loving! / Got to have all your loving, nobody at Motown took much find.

Holland and Dozier originally appear to take intended to record it themselves, but then instead put it forrad as a possible Motown début for Johnny Nash, who was allegedly shut to joining the company at the time. When Nash decided to stay where he was in Chicago, the half-finished track went back on the shelf. Simply then fate intervened; Drupe Gordy, declining to issue the already-recorded Breaking Through LP on one of the main Motown labels, instead tasked the The netherlands-Dozier-Holland team, who were currently on a hot streak, with "doing something on the Iv Tops". Brian Kingdom of the netherlands, giddy with excitement at finally getting the green calorie-free to cutting an actual 4 Tops single, knew just what that "something" would be; he got together with Lamont and his brother Eddie, and they picked up the rails, finished some proper lyrics, started bouncing some ideas around, and got more and more than excited. Brian hurried down to the Twenty Grand, where the Tops were watching – what else? – a evidence past the Temptations, to unveil the plan. The Four Tops were in the studio past 3am recording their new vocals over the rails.

AND At present, AN Actual REVIEW

It would accept been a crime had this song been left unused, but I doubtfulness that could e'er accept happened; surely HDH must have known, just equally with Where Did Our Dearest Become, that they'd stumbled beyond a groovy tune. (And it is a great melody, certainly the best they'd withal come up upward with, arguably the all-time they'd e'er come upwards with.) Every bit with so many of HDH'southward top tunes, there'southward more than than one killer hook you could plausibly phone call the song's all-time moment – is it the opening ooh-ooh-ooh riff, the astonishing call-and-response interplay between seven different people in the verses, Levi's semi-barked interjections, or that operatic bound up the calibration in the chorus? – and they're all so deceptively simple that you tin can whistle them in the shower. This one could never have been kept nether wraps for long.

The song is then strong as to be bulletproof, even Tom Clay's wavering stentorian karaoke rendition in 1971 not plenty to ruin information technology, but the vocals – and their brilliant system – accept everything to a whole new level here. The half-dozen bankroll singers – Obie, Duke and Lawrence joined past Marlene, Jackie and Louvain – form a bond so beautiful and all-enveloping that you could listen all twenty-four hours, simply all six don't e'er appear together at one time, instead each taking different parts (the Tops the opening riff and the at-home, subdued offset verse, the Andantes the high notes and reverb in the chorus, all six at the start of the 2nd verse in hypnotic fashion, building to an incredibly complex exchange of vocal lines in the last verse with mantra-like chanting, whispers, soft cooing, harmonising and all sorts of other things going on under Levi's pb)… and and then dovetailing them all together, quite seamlessly, to provide something nosotros've non heard before on a Motown tape – traditional in its inspiration, sure, but beautifully executed, and equally fresh and new in its way as Where Did Our Love Get.

Levi, too, is on the form of his life, every inch the star frontman here. Those Breaking Through sessions all sound good, Stubbs in his comfort zone showing off his fine, rich tone, only they're non actually the Levi nosotros've since come to know. Just Baby I Need Your Loving was never intended for him to sing the lead, and consequently it'due south pitched quite some way exterior his natural range, leading him to do what would become his trademark delivery, a sort of sing-shout-bark capable of conveying more sheer passion than whatever other Motown vocalist while still somehow coming across as sweet and harmonious, simply considering he'due south such a fucking astonishing vocalist.

I've no hesitation at all in declaring Levi Stubbs to be the best atomic number 82 singer Motown would e'er sign. But heed to him hither, and tell me anyone else could do the things he does on this tape. I could quote any part of information technology, but the exceptional section at the ane and a one-half infinitesimal marker is perhaps my favourite bit of any Motown single so far, Levi out-Brenda Hollowaying Brenda Holloway by shifting effortlessly from raw-throated hurting and anguish (that WHOA! verging on a James Brownish scream) to the softest, warmest, most heartfelt quiet asides (you tin can almost hear the tears on his face), all without missing a shell:

EMPTY NIGHTS
ECHO YOUR NA-AME
WHOA! SOMETIMES I WONDER
Volition I E'er BE THE Aforementioned?
Oh yeah…

When yous see me smiling, you know
Thi-i-i-i-ings have gotten worse
Whatever smile you might see
Has a-a-all been apposite
DARLIN', I can't go on without you
This EMP-ti-ness won't let me live without you lot
Thise LONE-li-ness inside me, darling
Makes me feel half alive…

There aren't many Motown singles y'all wish were twice as long, only I always notice part of myself wishing that this ane was, simply considering I want to hear more of it. That's the wrong reaction, though. The real brilliance of the whole matter is that it's structured to exist a ii:45 pop song, non a rambling End of Side One ballsy – information technology'due south built for the radio, and it's all congenital around that phenomenal chorus. The energy starts upwards right from the beginning of the record, with a crashing drum fill and the Tops' blending with first the horns then the strings to provide that opening riff, but then it all becomes very sparse, chugging forth with handclaps, tinkling piano, subdued rhythm guitar and the Tops chanting like a Polynesian mantra in the groundwork while Levi takes the get-go poesy head-on.

But it's all building and edifice to that chorus, picking up steam, getting louder and fuller and faster, Levi stoking things upwards shovelling in more than and more coal, and and so it'due south upon us, that chorus, proficient God that chorus, exploding out of the song with the biggest sound we've ever heard on a Motown sngle, the Tops anchoring it to the ground, reverberating with bass, the Andantes' incredible soprano "bounciness" soaring up to the clouds, and Levi calling on all this sonic splendour as his allies to persuade u.s. just how much he means what he says – information technology'due south all almost making sure we know Levi doesn't but need your loving, he needs it more urgently and and more sincerely than any human being has e'er needed anyone's loving since the world began.

Everything about this is correct on the money. Levi's narrator wants to win back the love of his life, so he sets nigh doing information technology not just through his words (which he means from the bottom of his heart), not just through the pain and pleading in his phonation (which would melt anyone else's heart), simply by putting together the grandest gesture imaginable, a massive production full of massive performances, all with one thing in heed, all working towards the same goal: it'south not I want you dorsum, it's non even I need you dorsum, information technology's Without you, I'm nothing, and I'll do anything to put things right. If this doesn't work, nothing ever volition.

Every bit we move into Motown's mid-Sixties Golden Age proper, we're going to be encountering a lot of my favourite records, and so the top marks are going to get-go clustering effectually these next few years, coming with increasing frequency. I hope you all won't get bored if there are rather more than 10s, awarded rather more than freely, between now and 1968. There'll only be fifty in total, and once they're gone, they're gone, then I'm painfully enlightened of the consequences of using them all up too fast or giving them out too cheaply. This, though, was an admittedly nailed-on option, the first time on Motown Junkies we've come across a record that on its very first play, correct out of the box, made me recall it might be the best record that's ever been made.

It is wonderful, near unspeakably so. Of all the 10s and so far, information technology's both the most exhilarating and the most inspiring. It's too possibly the best.

MOTOWN JUNKIES VERDICT

(I've had MY say, at present information technology'south your plough. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment, or click the thumbs at the lesser in that location. Dissent is encouraged!)

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Yous're reading Motown Junkies, an attempt to review every Motown A- and B-side always released. Click on the "previous" and "next" buttons below to get dorsum and forth through the catalogue, or visit the Master Alphabetize for a full list of reviews and then far.

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Source: https://motownjunkies.co.uk/2011/12/10/441/

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