Love and Desire

Here is one of my favourite female sung northern tracks. Patrice's sister Brenda is probably better known but this 1966, Capitol release is as good as anything Brenda recorded, well everything apart from Think It Over (Before You Break My Heart) of course and Every Little Bit Hurts.

Patrice Holloway - Love and Desire

The Definitive Version? You Decide

On yesterday's post I mentioned Every Little Bit Hurts and, how good Ms Holloway's version of the Ed Cobb song, the man also responsible for penning Tainted Love, was.

Swiss Adam in the comments section mentioned a version of the song by The Clash that if the truth be known I have always been rather ambivalent towards.

Last night I decided to play all three versions of the song and have to admit that there is not much in it between The Small Faces version  and Brenda Holloway's, although the Motown version still just shades it,  in my opinion. The big surprise is that the version by Stummer et al has it's merits too, however fails to pack the emotional punch of the other two and is probably why it remained unreleased until CBS were looking for extra product to make the Clash On Broadway boxset more appealing ("turning rebellion into money", indeed.)

So here are the three versions of the song that I posses. I know that these are not the only recorded versions of this song that exist. I think that their is a version by The Jam out there but I remain to be convinced that this is a song which would gain anything being covered by Weller and Co..

You decide

Brenda Holloway - Every Little Bit Hurts

The Small Faces - Every Little Bit Hurts

The Clash - Every Little Bit Hurts

An Extremely Underrated Voice.

Another sunny day up here.

Time for some up tempo northern soul, from a woman I reckon is one of the most underrated artists who recorded on the Motown label, Brenda Holloway. She started recording for the label in 1964. Her first single was the absolutely amazing Every Little Bit Hurts. If you are only familiar with the Small Faces version I suggest you seek out the Holloway one, it will blow you away.

Holloway didn't receive the commercial success of some of her colleagues and friends on the label did, however she was a familiar face on the TV, appearing on shows such as Shindig. In 1965 she was asked to bee the supporting act for the Beatles on their US tour and was the opening act when the Beatles played Shea Stadium. She is best known in northern circles for Think It Over (Before You Break My Heart) a.k.a Reconsider, which amazingly was never released back in 1966 and was unearthed some considerable time later by Peter Lowrie.

She retired from performing in 1969, however in 1992 she came out of retirement and started recording and performing again after the death of her friend Mary Wells and is still performing to this day, I think that she has been over here in the last couple of years performing at one of Togetherness gatherings.

Here she is with a classic northern soul track, written by Ashford and Simpson and released in 1967. The track is so upbeat until you listen to the lyrics. An absolute belter and that is a fact.

Brenda Holloway - Starting The Hurt All Over Again