BRENDA HOLLOWAY: EVERY LITTLE BIT HURTS (1964)
1) I've Been Good To You; 2)
Sad Song; 3) Every Little Bit Hurts; 4) Too Proud To Cry; 5) Who's Loving You;
6) Land Of A Thousand Boys; 7) Suddenly; 8) Embraceable You; 9) Unchained
Melody; 10) A Favor For A Girl (With A Love Sick Heart); 11) (You Can) Depend
On Me; 12) Can I.
As much as this «torch ballad» style is
generally not my cup of musical tea at all, I cannot deny that ʽEvery Little
Bit Hurtsʼ is a great song, and that even with all these other versions around,
nobody has done it more justice than its original performance. This Motown
recording from 1964 was actually her second recorded version — the original was
produced two years earlier for Del-Fi Records — but apparently the people at
Motown, having just signed their first West Coast artist, knew what they were
doing, and made Brenda re-do the tune with higher production values and,
naturally, with a stronger promotion agenda.
Her own gift is in understanding that the song
works primarily as an «aria», and depends crucially on mood interchange — the
way it bounces back and forth from tragic weeping to determined screaming, breaking
down, picking up, breaking down again, with unbelievably authentic dynamic
tension: the bridge section, with its punchy, almost threatening "come
back to me, darling you'll see..." beginning and then smoothly, fluently
morphing into pleading — "I can give you all the things that you wanted
before" still starting out determined and proud, but descending into
submission and pleading tenderness by the time it's over. No wonder that Steve
Winwood and a host of other performers were so enthralled: this is one hell of
a vocal delivery, a three-minute spectacle of emotional bliss the likes of
which are pretty dang hard to find in the rest of Motown's catalog — certainly
not off the top of my head.
The downside of this, however, becomes obvious
as we listen to the rest of Brenda's debut LP for the label — and realize that,
in a more-than-stupid attempt to capitalize on the brilliance of the title
track, Motown made her record eleven more
songs that all sound the same. Okay, ten: ʽA Favor For A Girl (With A Love
Sick Heart)ʼ is taken at a sprightlier tempo and groomed to sound a little more
sly, sexy, and seductive, much in line with the leading brand of Smokey
Robinson and The Miracles' style (although, ironically, although Smokey did
contribute some songs for this album, ʽA Favor For A Girlʼ is credited to
producer Clarence Paul instead).
Everything else, though, shares the same tempo,
the same tragic-love mood, and even more or less the same basic chord
progression as ʽEvery Little Bit Hurtsʼ. Everything! Ten completely
interchangeable songs that all try to be ʽEvery Little Bit Hurtsʼ — and all
fail, because none of these writers, intentionally striving to write something
exactly like Ed Cobb's masterpiece, arrive at matching the original's perfect
flow. The only good thing about them all is that Ms. Holloway honestly tries
her best to make them come alive — and she did have one of Motown's best female
voices: deeper and more «mature» than the average chirp of their teenage
starlets (not that Brenda wasn't in her teens herself, but she sounded far more
grown-up than anybody), capable of all sorts of modulation, combining «clean»
tenderness with «raspy» excitement or irony within the same verse or chorus
like a perfect natural.
The songs, alas, have about as much interesting
going on about them here as does your average Celine Dion record — the only
difference being that the generic Motown sound is always preferable to the
generic Celine Dion Columbia sound — but that is not really Brenda's fault: in
1964, she was nobody's top priority, and Motown's resident songwriters simply
fed her with scraps and leftovers (besides, just how many great LPs did Motown artists record anyway in
1964, when the LP was a strictly hardcore-fan-oriented artefact?).
Basically, it all boils down to this: if you
really happen to madly fall in love with the voice and the personality behind
the voice, do track this album down (as far as I know, it was never issued on
CD by itself, but all the songs have been included on the 2-CD Motown Anthology). If you value the
song much more than the voice, though, and especially if you think the Spencer
Davis Group with Stevie Winwood is better or something like that, you will be
perfectly fine just owning the track on any reasonable sampler of Motown's
greatness. As the future would show, there would be much more (well, not much,
but maybe a little more — as much as the powers-that-be would mercifully
allocate) to Brenda Holloway than ʽEvery Little Bit Hurtsʼ, but if you were to
judge the artist on the strength of this one album, «fluke» and «one-hit
wonder» would be the most appropriate associations.
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