The Supremes
Where Did Our Love Go
You say: “Impossible to listen to without getting up to dance.” Charles Etterlin, mojo4music.com
Only their second album but already it feels like a hits collection as Brian Holland’s productions click. The title track’s footstomps marched to the trio’s first US Number 1 pop hit, Baby Love and Come See About Me were also US pop Number 1s, and the album featured 1963’s When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, a confident romp of blaring horns with which Holland-Dozier-Holland shoved the group closer to the big hits. As one of their earliest LPs, the ‘filler’ often revealed the blood, sweat and tears invested in their development, here in the shape of two Smokey Robinson written and produced efforts – A Breath Taking Guy’s lilt; Long Gone Lover’s bounce.
The marriage between Ross and the most distinctive and stylish producers of the era was hugely successful, fraught with post-production strife and, as a consequence, brief. But there is little doubt that Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers her. Architects of the Chic sound, they updated Ross with a pop-soul-dance LP of variety and personality. Pop (My Old Piano; Have Fun Again), dance (Upside Down) and exuberance (I’m Coming Out) dominated conversation, but Tenderness, grounded by Edwards’ nimble-fingered bass work, the quiet thought of Friend To Friend and Give Up’s energy, with Rodgers’ fleeting guitar solo, all work. 2003’s Deluxe edition had Motown’s mix, the mixes Chic submitted, plus a CD of
You say: “Bought this on the recommendation of Geoff Brown in MOJO 319. No regrets: just superb.” Steve Temple via e-mail
First, the confusion. In the US, this album was titled In the UK, using the same sleeve, it was retitled the London office having decided to open the album with the Deke Richards-written/produced new title track, a recent UK Number 1. The rest of the album had been produced and (mostly) co-written by Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson. If Holland-Dozier-Holland were the songwriters who unlocked Ross’s pop potential within The Supremes, Ashford & Simpson found the key as a solo artist, as heard on the US title track, Remember Me, I’ll Settle For You and Did You Read The Morning Paper? The only non-A&S song is a gentle reinterpretation of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Reach Out I’ll Be There, arranged by Paul Riser. Elsewhere, there’s a muscly I’m A Winner, and a brave run at Didn’t You Know (You’d Have To Cry Sometime), brave because Gladys Knight had earlier given its definitive performance.