nafalmat - 45worlds - All Comments

nafalmat - 45worlds - All Comments

« Member Page

Member	Item		Review/Comment
nafalmat 30th Jun 2017		Vinyl Album The Miracles - The Miracles From The Beginning	I've pondered about track B3 on this album for decades. I've never seen a definitive answer to what this track is. It's certainly not Smokey on lead, but the voice sounds a bit like Bobby Rogers. The words seem to start as 'We're gonna have a whole lot of fun, We're gonna dance until the break of dawn, etc'. Further in 'Rockin' and Rollin' and the words 'Mama done told me' seem to be sung. But this is definitely not the 'Mama Done Told Me' song from the original US single or US album 'From the Begining'. Whether this is the Miracles or another act, we'll never know. I wonder if Smokey could shed some light on it, if he would ever be asked. So where did EMI get this track?
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Smokey Robinson And The Miracles - Away We A Go-Go	On the mono mix, 'You don't have to say you love me' fades before the end. On the stereo mix the song ends properly. The backing rhythm on 'More more more of your love' was plagiarized by the Amen Corner on their version of 'Bend Me Shape Me'.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album The Marvelettes - Greatest Hits	The first pressings had an orange cover, that was turned to green within a few months. I wonder why.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Marvin Gaye - A Tribute To The Great Nat King Cole	One strange abberation on this album is the the track 'To the ends of the earth' which on the mono pressing ends properly, but on the stereo pressing fades before the actual ending.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album The Miracles - Greatest Hits From The Beginning	This album when releasesd in the UK contains one of the real mysteries about Motown. The UK version was released in 1966 and simply titled 'From the Beginning' as the Miracles hadn't had in UK hits at that time. It was whittled down to 14 tracks and made a single album in the UK. The mystery about the UK album is the track 'Mama done told me' which is a completely different recording and song to that on the US release. The track on the UK album had never been released in the States and does not appear to have been released ever again anywhere. I've never come across anybody who has ever been able to shed any light on this track. It certainly doesn't sound like Smokey singing lead, in fact it may not be the Miracles at all, although the lead voice could be Bobby Rogers. Most of the words are not clear as the recording is not exactly high fidelity, it is uptempo and sounds like a late 50s recording. It starts with the words 'We're gonna have a whole lot of fun, we're gonna dance until the break of dawn', and it is definitely a different song to the familiar 'Mama Done Told Me' on the US LP.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Marvin Gaye - How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You	This set would have been more appropriately titled 'Greatest Hits' than the already released Greatest Hits, as this set contains three Top 20 pop hits, one more than that on Greatest Hits.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Brenda Holloway - Every Little Bit Hurts	I think some of the producer credits mentioned earlier are wrong. According to 'Don't Forget The Motor City' all tracks apart from 'A Favor for a Girl' were produced by Davis & Gordon. 'Who's Loving You' doesn't even sound like a H-D production. The whole set is ballads apart from the gorgeous 'A favor for girl' which is mid to uptempo. For some reason this reminds me of Faron Young's 'Hello Walls', as the back ground singers singing repeatedly 'Hello, Hello", sound identical to those singing the same on this song.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Stevie At The Beach	Recorded at Motown's recently opened west coast studios while Stevie was out there making cameo appearances in two of th 'Beach' movies. The label shows one the earliest appearances of Frank Wilson as a composer, who of course later went on the become one of Motown's most prolific writers/producers a few years later and into the 1970s.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Marvin Gaye - When I'm Alone I Cry	Without a doubt, the most professional album Motown had issued up to that point in time. Quality material throughout, sensitvelly arranged and Marvin in superb vocal form. Although only two of the songs were Motown originals, both were superb compositions that could have easily developed into standards with more exposure.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Marvin Gaye - Marvin Gaye's Greatest Hits	It seems amazing that Motown 'pushed out' Greatest Hits albums so early in an artists career. When this was released, Marvin had only enjoyed two US Top 20 pop hits. 'Pride and Joy' and 'Your'e a wonderful one', yet they have the nerve to call it Greatest Hits. "Best of" might have been more appropriate.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album Little Stevie Wonder - Tribute To Uncle Ray	Early Motown covers were on the whole very amateurish to say the least. The cover of this album has always amused me because of the angle the photo of Stevie was taken at. The camera was nearer to Stevie's feet than the rest of his body, so his feet look disproprtionatley large, not help by the heavy brogue shoes, which seem completely unfashionable for a lad of 12, he is wearing. Very odd!
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album The Miracles - I'll Try Something New	As far as I'm aware this was only ever in mono, as Motown reissued it on their "Natural Resourses" label in 1978 and that was in mono too. It was part of a brief reissue of classic Motown albums on "Natural Resourses" another of which was the Supremes "Where did our love go" album. Although the sound quality was good on these reissues the covers were absolutely terrible, the same generic design was used for each one depicting a juke box. This brief reissue series preceded the massive album reissue series on the Motown label which began in 1980, this time they used the original album cover designs although they were of poorer print quality than the originals. In fact many were copied from existing original albums rather than using the original art work.
nafalmat 4th Apr 2017		Vinyl Album The Miracles - Hi We're The Miracles	Remastered in 1964 with R4RM (RCA) matrix, by then Motown were using RCA almost exclusively for their album pressings. The remastered version had the yellow globes label. The RCA pressing seemed to have a slightly more feeble sound to the Columbia pressing.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album R. Dean Taylor - Indiana Wants Me	Yet again, EMI come up with a very poor cover design compared with the US issue. This time it looks like something a ten year might have come up with given the required title and photo to use.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Smokey Robinson And The Miracles - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles	I think EMI reached an all time low with the cover design on this album. It looks like they gave a photo of Smokey to a four year old and asked them to splash some colors on it. Once again, Motown in the States had the better idea and simply used a much better previously used cover and just changed the title to 'Tears of a Clown'.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Kiki Dee - Great Expectations	The US version had a far more attractive cover. Once again, EMI must have spent a full five minutes coming up with the UK release design.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Diana Ross And The Supremes - Farewell	At least EMI didn't edit this down to a single album for UK release, but they did charge double for it which made it quite a expensive purchase in 1970.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - Motown Memories Vol. 3	A bit of a disappointment when compared with Volumes 1 & 2 for two reasons. Less tracks this time and that awful 'stereo' processing applied to the mono only recordings. That was done a lot in the 70s when old mono recordings were reissued and was always a disaster. Thankfully it was dropped by the end of the decade. EMI, once again, create a rather unattractive cover design.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - My Cherie Amour	Why did EMI not use the US cover design for this album which was a bit more appropriate for the title song than this boring photo.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Diana Ross And The Supremes With The Temptations - The Original Sound Track From T.C.B.	Amazingly, EMI issued this album in the UK with its full US gatefold sleeve format and didn't charge anymore for it! The first time they had done this with a Motown album. In the early 70's, when gatefold sleeves became a bit more common on Motown albums, EMI released them on a new album series prefixed STMA and charged more for them than the STML series.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Martha Reeves And The Vandellas - Dancing In The Street	Talk about a rip-off by EMI. They get a big hit with the reissued 'Dancing In The Street' and then with no new material available from the US, they hurriedly put together a selection of previously issued singles and album tracks and have the nerve to charge full price for it. I couldn't believe it when I first saw this album in the local record shop in April 1969. I eagerly picked it up, but on looking at the track listing, found I already had every track in my collection. It's not even that good a collection as one or two of the tracks are among the Vandellas less worthwhile. This should have definitely been released on a budget label either Regal Starline or MFP which were EMI's cheap labels at that time.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - Motown Memories	This was a true treasure for the average UK Motown fan when it was released in early 1968. In those days the market for oldies was not like it is today and many of these tracks were not available on any record at that time. Wonderful compilation from a music point of view. However, as for the cover, it would seem that EMI must have employed some of the worst graphic artists (if that's what they were called at that time) in the country as the front cover is abysmal.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Diana Ross And The Supremes - Greatest Hits	I suppose EMI didn't consider it worth releasing the double LP format that was issued in the US with the lovely three individual portraits of the girls as extras making it a lavish and attractive release there. In the UK we get 6 tracks less and just a bog standard release for such a monumental album. Even in this basic format it was still a UK #1 album.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album Marvin Gaye And Kim Weston - Take Two	I wonder why Motown in the US didn't use the delightful photo of Gay and Weston on the US version of the album. The US version looks very dull in comparison with the two empty chairs.
nafalmat 14th Dec 2015		Vinyl Album The Miracles - I Like It Like That	UK compilation featuring a photo taken in the UK. This presumably was put together as there had been no new Miracles studio album in the US since 'Doin' Mickey's Monkey' in late '63. Except for 'The Miracles Greatest Hits From The Beginning' double album which was issued in the US in the fall of '64. Presumably EMI didn't want to issue that as pop double albums in the UK in 1965 were unusual to say the least, and the title would have been misleading in the UK as The Miracles had not had any UK chart entries at the time this album was released. So EMI took selected tracks from 'Doin' Mickey's Monkey' and added some later single sides and put it out with the initial batch of UK Tamla Motown lable albums in March '65.