1965- Supremes sessions 1

.....At Motown, The Supremes were sort of the queens of covers. In the assembly line business model of the label's early days there were people whose specialty was songwriting, others who produced, others who performed, etc., and so every artist at some time drew on material written by someone else, even when the result would be considered an entirely in-house product to the audience. The difference with The Supremes is that they released not only a record number of themed albums, but what must have been a record number of themes: Broadway, country, The Beatles, Sam Cooke, more Broadway and also continuously recording Holland-Dozier-Holland originals. Don Waller's "The Motown Story" (Scribner's, 1985) lists six albums in 1965 alone. The last one was for Christmas.

.....Unlike many Motown recordings, the instrumentals were recorded in L. A., rather than in the basement in Detroit. According to the liner notes for the remastered edition (1999) of LP MERRY CHRISTMAS, "Band tracks recorded in Los Angeles, CA, August, 1965. Vocals recorded in Detroit, MI, September, 1965." On the original jackets (located last year on Discogs), the mono edition credited Harvey Fuqua alone as the producer. The stereo edition credited Harvey Fuqua and Davis & Gordon. That would be Hal Davis and Marc Gordon, their full names given in arrangement credits and elsewhere. The dates of completion (presumably the final vocal takes or any last minute overdubbed instrumental work) were found on the excellent Don't Forget The Motor City website and are the ones I used as the basis for the following chronology of the sessions.

.....There is one song for which I have not been able to find a producer's credit for the original source tapes nor a date for the vocal take. It was first released on CD MERRY CHRISTMAS Motown/Universal 012 153 355-2 (US) 10/12/99, the remaster of the 1965 album. All songs in this post can be found on it, unless otherwise noted.

• 01:59 "NÖEL" (Traditional) This song was previously recorded and released by The Miracles, as were most of the first few Christmas songs The Supremes attempted. Their version used only the first of nine verses plus the chorus. The Supremes add the second verse.

.....From CD THE NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED MASTERS Motown/MCA MCD09075MD (Japan/US) 07/87

• 02:11 "THE CHRISTMAS SONG" (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells) This song was also on the 1963 Miracles album. Recorded 08/26/65.

.....From CD A MOTOWN CHRISTMAS VOLUME 2 Motown/Universal 440 016 364-2 (US) 11/06/01

• 02:55 "OH HOLY NIGHT" (Adolphe C. Adam) Florence Ballard sings lead here, one of four songs recorded 09/09/65. Again, this song was previously recorded by the Miracles, but it was the last of those to be shelved. Three others made it onto the Supremes' album.

.....From LP MERRY CHRISTMAS Motown MT(mono) or MS(stereo) 638 (US) 11/01/65

• 02:40 "RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER" (Johnny Marks) Recorded 09/09/65, the most famous version must be the Gene Autry single. Although this is the first version released by a Motown act, it would be eclipsed by the single from The Temptations a few years later. The Supremes' version rarely shows up on Motown compilations, appearing once on a UK-only LP in 1973 and again on a Flintstones tie-in in 1996.
• 02:40 "SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN" (Haven Gillespie, J. Fred Coots) Recorded 09/09/65 and previously recorded by The Miracles. After this version was included on the 1968 label compilation it became overshadowed in 1970 when it was covered again as a Jackson 5 A-side. It didn't return to domestic compilations until the Flintstones tie-in mentioned above.
• 02:50 "MY FAVORITE THINGS" (Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein II) Recorded 09/09/65. Aside from a line about "silver white winters" and another about "packages tied up with strings" there's really nothing in this song to suggest Christmas, but the tenuous connections to the season must have been justification enough to include it. It originates in the stage musical "The Sound Of Music" which had been adapted into a movie released in the spring of 1965. The stage play was wildly successful but the movie would become a commercial juggernaut, breaking box office records and yielding a soundtrack album that became the best selling album of the 1960's, dwarfing even the Beatles. However, once The Supremes placed this song in a Christmas context, the MOR world followed suit. Barbara Streisand included it on her LP A CHRISTMAS ALBUM Columbia CS9557 (US) 10/67 and it was soon accepted as a holiday standard.
• 03:52 "WHITE CHRISTMAS" (Irving Berlin) Recorded 09/14/65 and the second selection also covered by The Miracles to make the cut. This was the lead track, in fact. It is a paradox of Christmas music that the most ubiquitous songs are the most rerecorded. The whole point of recording a song is so that you don't have to perform it repeatedly; you can simply play back the recording. Of all the songs on LP MERRY CHRISTMAS, this and "SILVER BELLS" resurface on the most compilations.
• 02:09 "JOY TO THE WORLD" (Traditional, arranged and adapted by Hal Davis, Marc Gordon and Harvey Fuqua) Recorded 09/14/65 and along with "MY FAVORITE THINGS" it ranks closely after "WHITE CHRISTMAS" and "SILVER BELLS" as the most frequently reissued tracks Motown's Christmas collections. The song itself has had a convoluted history, briefly summarized by Ian Bradley in "The Penguin Book of Carols" (Penguin 1999). From its origins as an interpretation of Psalm 98 by Isaac Watts in 1719 it underwent nearly continuous revision, lyrical and musical, until as late as 1955. The music most likely began as a tune called "COMFORT" arranged or possibly composed in 1833 by Thomas Hawkes, who intended it to be the musical accompaniment for the poems/prayers of Charles Wesley. Later publishers attributed the music to the then dead (and not collecting royalties) Handel, incorporating bits from Handel's "Messiah" oratario to make the claim convincing. One such publisher was Lowell Mason, who renamed the song "ANTIOCH" in 1836. Like most performers, The Supremes sing only the first, second and fourth verses, skipping the darker third verse about "sin's curse".
• 02:25 "LITTLE BRIGHT STAR" (Allan Capps, Mary Dean) Recorded 09/14/65. This was the same songwriting team responsible for the hit Cher song "HALF BREED" in the early 1970's. At about this time producers Davis & Gordon also worked on the Chris Clark recording of the Capps/Dean song "SOFT TOUCH". Clark was briefly on Motown's V.I.P. label, then Motown, then Weed, none of which released the song. I tried finding an earlier recording, or even a date for filing the song, but I couldn't find much about either writer prior to this except that Capps had also worked for Hanna-Barbera in 1965. Unless someone can leave a comment with evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume this is the first appearance of an original Christmas song.

.....That's as good a place as any to wrap up this post. The second half of the sessions will be covered tomorrow.