The Angry Version
I love hearing behind-the-scenes stories of famous songs and I heard a good one today. I was twiddling the knob on my internet radio when I found myself listening to a programme being syndicated by the American network . It was a phone-in show coming live from Detroit and was all about the power of the unions in the car manufacturing industry.
No hold on, I'm getting to the good part...just give me a minute.
You see, just when my beating heart could take no more, they wound up the discussion and announced that the next section of the programme would feature an interview with Martha Reeves, the famed Motown singer. It turns out she's now a local politician in Detroit but nobody really wanted to hear about that. Instead she was asked about her music career and about her 1964 version of .
Go on, take a moment to hum it to yourself and then I'll continue.
Right...now when Dancing in the Streets was offered to Martha and the Vandellas, fellow performer (and the song's co-writer) Marvin Gaye suggested it should be sung as a slow love ballad. But Martha had just returned from a trip to Rio and said her head was full of thoughts of street carnivals. So she went into the studio and gave it laldy in that kind of upbeat style...happy, joyous, carefree.
Alas the studio engineer forgot to press a few buttons and that version wasn't recorded. Apparently Martha was furious and so, in the next take, she couldn't disguise the anger in her voice.
And that was the version that was used...the one we've all heard played on the radio a thousand times.
But next time you do hear it...listen for the anger.
