Free The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard by Peter Benjaminson Page B

“You Don’t Hold Me in Your Arms the Way You Did,” but someone 44
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    goofed. On the master record, the background singing and music, which sounded like “bah-bah-bah,” was much louder than the lead tune the Supremes were singing. Motown would release it anyway, on the Supremes’
    Reflections album, under the title “Bah-Bah-Bah.”
    When a superb combination was found, however, the gears stopped revolving a while. So, when the Supremes were finally assigned to the songwriting team of Lamont Dozier and the brothers Eddie and Brian Holland, known within the company and eventually throughout music world as “Holland-Dozier-Holland” (H-D-H), the gears stopped, and real time began.
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    “ B oom- B oom-
    B oom- B oom, B oom-
    B oom- B oom- B oom,
    B a-by, Ba -by”
    The song was different, simple, and had
    good timing.
    —Flo Ballard, on “Where Did
    Our Love Go?”
    Eddie Holland was best known for his lyrics, his younger brother Brian for his engineering and production skills, and Lamont Dozier for his melodies.
    The Supremes’ first single with H-D-H, “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes,” climbed into the Top 40, peaking at #23 on the Billboard charts in the fall of 1963. Heavy on saxes and tambourines, rhythm, and melody, it was a harbinger of hits to come. The flip side of this record,
    “Standing at the Crossroads of Love,” was reworked three years later and became “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” which, as recorded by the Four 45
    46
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    T he L ost S upreme
    Tops, reached #6 on the Pop charts. Apparently not recognizing either tune’s potential, H-D-H next foisted the bland “Run, Run, Run” on the Supremes and watched the song nearly fall off a cliff (it barely clung to the #100 mark).
    In the spring of 1964, however, H-D-H wrote “Where Did Our Love Go?” When they brought it to Gordy, he suggested it for the Marvelettes, but they turned it down. It was then offered to the Supremes. Their unanimous reaction: forget it. Flo remembered, “We said, ‘Huh, we don’t like this record.
    It don’t sound like nothing to us.’ We wanted something like ‘Please Mr. Postman,’” which they were well aware had reached #1 almost instantly in 1961.
    “Where Did Our Love Go?” was the best and earliest example of what came to be called the Motown Sound, a sound that stemmed from Gordy’s ancestral roots in Africa and Georgia and his life in mechanized Detroit. The beat was all-important; all else was built upon it. This heavy beat was a natural connection between the African past and the mechanized present.
    Motown itself called the Motown Sound “a stylized reflection of African-American tradition,” and that’s what it was: African American tradition updated by the incessant pounding of the punch press and buffed to a shiny gloss by contact with an urban society.
    But more than that, it sold records. “Rhythm is basic,” Gordy said. “If you get that, that’s what people want.” He invited local kids to drop by and evaluate early Motown songs. He learned that they wanted something to dance to, so the beat came first and the lyrics second. Gordy listened to what they said. Characteristically, once convinced that a strong, accentuated beat would be accepted, he took no half measures. He added rhythmic hand clapping, a repetitive chorus, and jangling tambourines to the pounding drums, giving Motown’s records a unique drive. This heavy but happy beat not only made Motown’s records good to dance to, it also forced the company’s music into the ear, making Motown’s music highly contagious and instantly recogniza-ble. You could literally hear hits coming. Millions of people would soon anticipate “Where Did Our Love Go?” the moment they heard, “Boom-boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom, Ba-by Ba-by.” Rolling Stone wrote that 47
    B oom- B oom. . . B a-by, B a-by c
    “the sound mixes with your bloodstream and heartbeat even before you begin