Customer Reviews

Complete Motown Singles 7: 1967

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1967. I was 13 and my parents had given me a transistor radio for Christmas. I can remember taking that radio with me everywhere I went, listening intently for the local radio station (CHED) to play the Supremes "Love Is Here And Now You're Gone", which eventually became my favourite Supremes single of all time. Fortunately, the song had gone "Top Ten" so it was frequently played. Unfortunately, other than the Supremes and the Temptations, the station didn't play a lot of Motown, but my father had also given me an amazing old tube-type radio which picked up signals from stations south of the border. Especially at night, I could get my "fix" of Motown and more. I have purchased all of the "Complete Motown Singles" volumes (1 -6), and I have to say this is an amazing collection. Hip-O-Select has done a great job! The songs are wonderfully annotated in a beautiful bound "booklet" which is modeled after an old 78rpm record collector's book (my father had lots of these!). Each volume includes a faithfully recreated copy of a popular Motown 45rpm single from that year. The notes and trivia about every song in the collection make for some fascinating reading (until this collection, I had no idea that Motown had actually dabbled in County music!). One of the highlights for me was hearing the mono version of the Supremes "My World Is Empty Without You" (on Volume 5) for the first time on CD. Volume 7 represents (for me) the first year that I actually began to appreciate and pursue an interest in the Motown genre. After that, I realized I had a lot of "catching up" to do, as the company had already been in production for 8 years. This collection is a must-have for anyone who is a musical history buff, and volume 7 represents one of the peak years for Motown. If you are an avid Motown collector or just someone who wants to recall musical memories of 1967, then this volume is highly recommended.

As other reviews have stated, the music, packaging and concept of this set is flawless. But the track-by-track notation is starting to get really annoying starting with the 1965 volume. Wasn't there an American writer able to handle this? I say this because the writer CONSTANTLY is putting the songs into the perspective of the British "Northern Soul" movement. WHO CARES! To American readers/listeners, that means nothing. Even though I have a vague idea of what that means, I don't care. I want the songs put into the proper context of their impact on release on the public, the artists' careers, and Motown, not what some goon collectors thought 10 or 20 years later.

If this set was a British release, I'd understand it. But it is really annoying. There has to be something more substantial or interesting to a Four Tops B-side than it later "became a Northern Soul dance floor monster".

Think about it...as I type this review , this material is 40 years old. Still classic after all these years. 5 discs , 120 songs , 5 hours , 33 minutes and 24 seconds. Through volumes 1-7 we now have 962 selections on 37 discs topping 43 hours. Four more volumes to go. It will be disappointing when it comes to an end. But , we will have ALL the Motown singles from the heyday years of 1959-1972. I can only imagine what it was like. You can hear it in these discs. All the passion , all the excitement. They had to know they were making history. History that is as alive and vibrant today as it was 40 years ago. Bring on the rest of the series !!!

This entire series is amazing. I believe it will be completed at the publication of the 12th volume, and each volume has 5 or 6 discs. I am up to Volume 9, and I can't really say there has yet been a single weak song. And I have now discovered so many awesome Motown songs I had never even heard before! This truly is a treasure trove. Yes, some songs are better than others, but all the music from this amazing dozen-year Motown era is great. The British Invasion may have brought over the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and many others, but our American Motown is of equal or better historic significance. This music is just so consistently CLASSY it defies words. Elegance just pours out from each disc here, it is unprecedented and will never be equaled in the future.

I've been surprised to learn that there are styles of music other than soul on the Motown label. There is some very good country music as well. These discs also have a smattering of interviews and some other holiday-type nonsense which are very fun to hear and which puts the entire era in context.

The packaging for the entire series is the best I've ever seen. It is a little hard to hold the book open so you can pull out or put in the discs, but this is a minor struggle and it is well worth it. The discs are held tightly in place and are well protected, and the historical information about any particular song is readily accessible. The 45 disc which slots into the front cover is really an innovative and clever flourish, and it gives the volume's book a really nice upgrade.

Okay, here is the bummer, and it is a major one. If you are like me, you are going to want the entire series if you buy even a single volume. You will buy the first volume and you will immediately realize that it is a worthwhile investment to obtain the entire series. And who really wants to own only part of a series of anything? The cost of even one volume here is enough that you'll probably want the entire collection. Well, as I write this, in January of 2009, volume 6 is no longer available. Gone. Completely gone, except for some guy trying to sell copies for $2000 as an Amazon-affiliated seller. As good as this music is, I'm not going to spend $2000 on a single volume. Yes, I've searched eBay relentlessly for months, with no luck at all. Yes, I've searched the virtual catacombs of international online sellers, with no luck at all.

So, I'm already over a thousand bucks into this series and yet my collection is missing one of the best volumes (it covers 1966 when a lot of the talent was at their crescendos). I've twice emailed Hip-O Select Records, the publisher, and not heard a word back. I've called their customer service, and they were clueless and indifferent. The girl who answered the phone for them did not know a thing about the series. Basically what has happened, by proclaiming this as a "Limited Edition," is that they have created an inducement for various sellers to hoard the best volumes and then to gouge Motown fans later when the inventory held by legitimate sellers is gone. They then jack the price up into the stratosphere.

So, one can only hope that Hip-O Select does another run of these amazing Motown volumes. If you are a Motown fan, you will be astonished when you hear all the incredible treasures which this series contains.

Of this unique, amazingly ambitious multi-volume set, this is the third volume I've purchased, following Volume 2 (covering the 1962 singles) and Volume 4 (covering 1964). In 1962, Motown was The Little Independent Label That Could, trying to build upon its handful of big hits from the previous three years. In 1964, everything finally came together for the company and the "Motown Sound" came to maturity. By 1967, the feisty little label had become a commercial powerhouse, as the hit factory churned out one smash after another.

Except to a die-hard Motown fan, I would hesitate to recommend the 1962 or 1964 volumes, because both include lots of big misses among the gems. But I can unequivocally recommend the 1967 volume to anybody who cares about Motown, or `Sixties music in general. The hits speak for themselves: "Love Is Here and Now You're Gone," "Jimmy Mack," "Bernadette," "All I Need" "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "7 Rooms of Gloom," "I Was Made to Love Her," "More Love," "You're My Everything," "Reflections" "Your Precious Love," "(Loneliness Made Me Realize) It's You That I Need," "I Second That Emotion," "Honey Chile," "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You" and the Gladys Knight and the Pips version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."

But those 1967 B-sides: wow! The past master of the B-side, Smokey Robinson, created a couple of memorable ones for The Miracles that year: the subdued "Swept for You Baby" and the lush "You Must Be Love." But he also created the kitschy-but-clever "Come Spy With Me," evoking for me a cultural moment when cinematic spies (both serious and campy) were all the rage. There's also Gladys Knight and the Pip's gentle and touching "It's Time to Go Now"; Gaye's splendid composition "If This World Were Mine"; Edwin Starr's version of Norman Whitfield's "Gonna Keep On Tryin' Till I Win Your Love"; Junior Walker's "Sweet Soul" (in which the sax master hits some impressive high notes); and The Temptation's gorgeous doo-wop tribute, the Robinson-penned "Don't Send Me Away" (with, for once, Otis Williams on lead). The best B-side of all, perhaps, is Martha Reeves & the Vandellas' "Show Me the Way" (flip side to "Honey Chile"), which is very nearly as good as her earlier hard-driving hits. (Martha's Sixties work, as opposed to the dated-sounding Supremes, seems to get better and better with age.)

This box is just full of goodies: the big, beautiful and very blonde Chris Clark ("Head to Toe"), Jimmy Ruffin ("Gonna Give Her All the Love I've Got"), the lovely Brenda Holloway (her original version of "You've Made Me So Very Happy"), the Isley Brothers (an uptempo version of "That's the Way Love Is"), The Spinners ("For All We Know" -- not The Carpenters' tune), The Contours (the memorably titled "It's So Hard Being a Loser"), The Marvelettes ("My Baby Must Be a Magician"), and on and on. Even the label's MOR artists, distinctly out of place among the soul performers, do very well: the songs by veteran Billy Eckstine and supper-club singer Barbara McNair are never less than pleasant, and one recording -- McNair's haunting take on The Supremes' "My World Is Empty Without You" -- is much more than that.

The artist who dominates this volume, however, is Marvin Gaye. In the previous year, he had sung at the Copacabana nightclub in New York for a live album the company chose not to release. The experience seemed to liberate him, however, for both as a duet partner (with the wonderful Tammi Terrell) and as a solo singer, he was terrific in 1967. The final disc ends with a triple triumph for Gaye: the minor hit "You," inaugurating his "tortured lover" phase; the exuberant gospel number "At Last (I Found a Love)" and (later replacing it as the B-side) the jazzy "Change What You Can," which seems to have been inspired by the words of St. Francis.

Finally, the liner notes by Bill Dahl and Keith Hughes -- despite the occasional bewildering inaccuracy -- are tremendously informative and offer some real surprises. For example, we discover that "Jimmy Mack" was actually a tribute, by Lamont Dozier, to the writer of the classic "He's So Fine," Ronnie Mack, who died young. We learn, to our astonishment, that Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell were not in the studio together when they recorded their first hit, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" (Gaye dubbed his part over Tammi's solo performance). But it didn't matter because, according to Johnny Bristol, one of the song's producers, "Marvin could feel Tammi." And there's the occasional amusing anecdote: the songwriters Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier all had friends named Bernadette, each of whom thought The Four Tops' classic was written about her.

It should be noted that there is nothing in this box even remotely resembling the revolutionary 1967 work of Jimi Hendrix (Are You Experienced), Pink Floyd (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn), The Velvet Underground (The Velvet Underground and Nico) or The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper). No surprise there: Motown always owed as much to the traditions of Broadway, Tin Pan Alley and The Brill Building as to those of contemporary rock and R&B. For example, at least ninety-five percent of the songs in Volume 7 are about romantic love, when most rock artists were moving on to other themes. But Motown's songwriting and producing craftsmanship -- and musicianship -- remain peerless after all these years.

I can't imagine anyone of any age possessing the slightest feeling for soul music who would listen to these five disks with anything less than awe at the depth and range of talent on display. The music of this era never ceases to astound.

Berry Gordy, Jr. and Motown were incredibly busy in the sixties. The enormous task of spinning so many plates at one time would be impossible today. From recruiting talent (singers, songwriters, musicians) to recording to all the legal paperwork involved in running a not-so-small business must have weighed heavy. Despite all of this, 1967 was another banner year for recorded output at Motown.

Besides the hits (Jimmy Mack, I Was Made To Love Her, Bernadette, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, I Wish It Would Rain) there are surprising number of non-hits here. All songs pass the strict Motown quality control, however. I was interested in the rare b-sides by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations and Four Tops but found Jr. Walker & The Allstars to be equally interesting.

Through these boxed sets you can see how Motown succeeded: Release covers of other Motown artists to perpetuate the brand, change with the times, promote new artists, update older artists and offer a wide variety of music styles.

This set is a must have.

I just noticed that my booklet is missing pages 17-32. So much for quality control.

[DW]