Track Listing

1. I Just Can't Let Him Down
2. On The Other Side Of Town
3. Maybe I Dried My Tears For The Last Time
4. Because I Love Him
5. When I Need You
6. Reachin' For Something I Can't Have
7. When You're Young And In Love - James Dean, The Marvelettes, William Weatherspoon
8. Our Lips Just Seem To Rhyme Every Time
9. Caught You Puttin' The Game On Love
10. I Have Someone (Who Loves Me Too)
11. I Need Someone
12. Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead - Clarence Paul, Ivy Joe Hunter, The Marvelettes
13. Please Mr Postman - Brian Holland, The Marvelettes, Robert Bateman
14. Sugar's Never Been As Sweet As You
15. The Boy From Crosstown - Norman Whitfield, The Marvelettes
16. Your Cheating Ways
17. Too Hurt To Cry, Too Much In Love To Say Goodbye
18. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18183 in Music
• Released on: 2000-02-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds
• Running time: 49 minutes

Customer Reviews

Yet another surprise from the Motown vaults
This little gem includes 6 previously unreleased tracks (worth hearing as opposed to the dirge which oft hit the vaults directly) and charts the shift in style in the 'corporation sound' of the late sixties. A mixture of familiar tracks from the girls with some refreshing numbers veering on the northern soul rather than the girl group, inlcuding their 'wall of sound' foray as the Darnelles. Was there no end to the girls talents? A cheery and varied disc which seldom leaves the vicinity of my cd player.

Essential Marvelettes
According to the spine of this CD and the disc itself, the title of this album is The Best Of The Marvelettes, whereas the front and back cover and insert booklet call it The Essential Collection - The Marvelettes.

Either way it is an 18-track retrospective which duplicates little from other Marvelettes collections (it inevitably recycles three of their best known pieces - When You're Young And In Love, Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead and Please Mr Postman - in their mono single mixes).

The opening track is a rip-roaring romp, I Just Can't Let Him Down, a Smokey Robinson production from 1964 featuring Gladys Horton. It sounds like a hit single of the time but is previously unreleased, one of six recordings making their debut here, all of which provoke the cry: why?, as there is no sense of barrel-scraping whatsoever. I would like to know why they were left in the can and who the lead singers are. Most date from 1964-1965 but Sugar's Never Been As Sweet As You is a William Weatherspoon/Jimmy Dean production from 1969, around the time of the In Full Bloom sessons.

Five of the other tracks come from out of print albums which are welcome since Motown has not yet favoured the Marvelettes with any re-releases in their excellent 2 Classic Albums 1 CD series. All the other rarities make a fascinating listen. Your Cheating Ways was tucked away on the B-side of Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead, while The Boy From Crosstown is another song that sounds like a classic hit, but seems to have been buried on a Motown compilation from 1966. Norman Whitfield had also produced the same song the year before with the Velvelettes but it was never released in their lifetime. Similarly, Finders Keepers Losers Weepers is a lost Holland-Dozier-Holland classic from 1964, which may not have been released at the time, though it did come out over here on the other side of a Kim Weston single as an anniversary edition in 1980.

Perhaps most interestingly of all another Holland-Dozier-Holland song, Too Hurt To Cry, Too Much In Love To Say Goodbye came out as a single under the pseudonym of the Darnells on the Gordy label in 1963. It is very much a pastiche of the Spector sound of the time, the arrangement sounding exactly like a copy of the Crystals.

The Marvelettes deserve to be as well remembered as Martha and the Vandellas and the Four Tops.

Not essential at all
It should really be called The Uncollected and a few which have been.
The only way you even know some of these songs is if you buy this album.
The Essential...should include Twistin' Postman,Beechwood 45789,Playboy,Too many fish in the sea for starters.
This last named was to my mind their finest hour-it was beautifully copied note for note by Nella Dodds on the Wand label as A Girl's Life.
Which happens to be the title of the CD of her complete works