THE DETROIT SPINNERS – "Working My Way Back To You"

As featured, as it ‘appens boys and girls, on the X Factor just last Saturday.

Right about the long-service medal and the greatly superior “Ghetto Child”, Tom, and pretty much right about it being impossible to dislike. Although seeing this at number one is a bit like seeing Hull City near the top of the league – you don’t begrudge it its status by any means, but it’s some way higher than you’d expect to see it.

The medley with “Forgive Me Girl”, yes, that works well too, although you kind of suspect that the idea of merging two songs over the same disco beat gave somebody the idea that, hey, it might work if we take a load of songs by, say, Abba or the Beatles and stick them onto a disco beat – thus creating a phenomenon that was to blight the charts soon afterwards. Still, the principle is that you can’t necessarily blame a trendsetting record for what happened afterwards. “Forgive Me Girl” incidentally was written by Michael Zager and is a perfectly good song, even if, I’m sorry, the Michael Zager Band’s earlier “Let’s All Chant” epitomised what I loathed most about disco.

For our North American chums – you’d know this band as the Spinners, but their UK record company added “Detroit” to their name to avoid confusion with a woolly-jumpered Liverpool folk band called the Spinners that was hugely popular in this country, albeit in very different circles. The same happened to UK bands who found themselves renamed in the US as LONDON Suede and The ENGLISH Beat.

I generally have two thoughts when I hear this one; “Hm, this isn’t as interesting as The Four Seasons version” followed by “And ‘Forgive Me Girl’ isn’t as good a song as ‘Working My Way’, either” Even though its still quite a jolly thing, the combination of these two thoughts always make this an underwhelming thing to listen to.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard their #4 repeating of the medly formula later in 1980, ‘Cupid – I’ve Loved You For a Long Time’

Going back a bit further ‘It’s a Shame’ would also have been a much better chart-topper from their earliest British incarnation as The Motown Spinners.

I’m surprised to see that this was almost as big a hit in the US where it stalled at 2 (Cupid got to no.4 in both countries). Their third medley of 1980, which tanked here, featured The Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More. Pur-lease.

Neither Philippe Wynne (Ghetto Child, Rubberband Man) or Bobby Smith (Could It Be I’m Falling In Love, I’ll Be Around) seems to be behind the halfhearted performance on WMWBTY. It could be Smith, but I’d rather think not – no flicker of a “burning love inside” to my ears.

As a song, it’s grand. As a cover it’s limp and seems almost totally redundant once you’ve heard the Four Seasons version. Still, I have to agree it’s hard to begrudge such a lovely vocal group a spell at the top. I just wish it had been one of their Thom Bell productions that made it.

“I Will Survive”?

The X Factor versh Erithian mentions at #2 was interesting in that the performers – a grinny boyband troupe – managed to leech much more out of the song than even the Spinners did but it was still really pretty enjoyable, and from the judges’ comments kept them in the show. So there’s obviously something primally ‘good’ about the melody which stops even the most distracted version from being rubbish, to my ears at least.

I’m never quite sure what to make of these late-career hits by soul acts who paid their dues with much better records (and The Spinners went back a very long way to the early 60s), on the one hand this a little by-the-numbers but it’s still a classy record by a band who clearly know how to deliver the goods and I like it more than the Four Seasons just because I prefer the sound of their harmonies. Because it’s them I’d be inclined to give it a high 7 – but it’s no ‘It’s A Shame’.

Re late-career soul hits – nor, indeed, as good as the other chart-topping one coming up in 1981…

I’ve absolutely no memory of this being no 1, despite obviously recognising it sufficiently well to sing along to it were I to want to. Which in truth is unlikely. Certainly wouldn’t have placed it as 1980 if asked to guess. Pop music was important to me by this stage and I was quite obsessive about finding out what was no 1 every Tuesday, so I’m not sure how this passed me by while Fern Kinney stuck in my mind. It must have been on TOTP….

This wildly uneven little sequence of no 1’s does illustrate both how little they constitute a canon (even of massively popular trends) and how completely they miss what was going on in the lower echelons of and outside the charts – Human League’s Travelogue would come out the next month, which was much much more interesting. This really could have no 1 at any point in the years before and after with equally little relevance.

This is the only example I can think of where the American group was the one that had to change its name. I mean, who on earth were the American versions of Suede and The Beat?

Come to think of it, I think The Liverpool Spinners sounds quite good.

The (Liverpool) Spinners had been around for donkey’s years as a Liverpool institution as venerable in its way as Ye Cracke, and although they were never actually ‘cool’ they performed a valuable service, preserving a great deal of working-class maritime culture – not just the culture of the docks and of the street but also of the great westward immigration. I went to their club at the Gregson’s Well pub (actually one of a pair of identically-named pubs, one Walker’s, one Higson’s, facing each other across the road) a couple of times in the interests of research for the student paper, you understand. It was always enjoyable with an enthusiastic and appreciative audience.)

And they were a multicultural ensemble long before Two-Tone!

I can’t find much to say about this one. Dated for its time, but almost quaintly so. A thoroughly likeable wedding disco standard, whose chorus always makes me want to jab my right thumb back over my shoulder like a camp hitch-hiker (see also the quintuple horn stab in “YMCA” – it doesn’t take much). The medley works well, and the joins would have been invisible to many.

Like “Together We Are Beautiful” before it, this has its roots in the Wally Disco end of the spectrum, suggesting something of a schism in the genre’s dying days. Your Auntie Maureen would have shuffled politely to it in Cinderella Rockafellas, while digesting her chicken-in-a-basket (and good for her). There will be several more examples of this to come before the year is through.

Yes, I’d have preferred “It’s A Shame” to have reached the top (always one of my favourite Motown hits), or any of the sublime tunes that the Spinners cut with Thom Bell for Atlantic – “Mighty Love”, “I’ll Be Around”, “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”, “Ghetto Child”, “Rubberband Man” – but them’s the breaks. In a sense, I’d compare their Michael Zager medley period to the run of 1970s hits from The Drifters: a bit past their peak, somewhat lacking in finesse, rather too heavy on the boom-thwack, but not without a certain velvet dickie-bowed charm.

OK, I had more to say than I thought.

(I had that Michael Zager in my toy shop, you know! He bought a moulded plastic castle, and I filled in the chitties to get it shipped. An honour.)

Re #9, the one even more successful medley-merging I can think of (unless someone tells me they were always one song) is Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody.

Mary’s Boy Child / Oh My Lord probably works just as well for those who were the right age at the time…

I don’t begrudge them a number one but this song is almost as hideous as those hateful medleys that started to dominate the charts later in the year.

Bland, handclapping disco for mum and dad to enjoy.

All this talk of music that’s for “mum and dad” seems to be slightly snobby and naive in a middle class student way. As a young teenager at this time things like this and especially Fern Kinney were bought by the average working class (usually female) teenager who I grew up with. The kind of girls who bought records and loved out-and-out pop music but thats where their interest ended and in this way similar to a large proportion of young people in general ie not the small proportion of people like us who obsess about pop and come on sites like this).
This was 1980 when the average “mum and dad” (notwithstanding the odd dance to chart stuff like this at a wedding disco)would have still been listening to Tom Jones or Englebert Humperdink and whatever else was on Radio Two – the stuff the acts used to do in the local pub/working mans club back then or maybe a bit of Sinatra or that type of easy listening if we’re getting a bit more classy.ie stuff that even the stereotypical council estate teenage girl I mentioned above would have viewed as old-fashioned and “for your mum and dad”.

Not sure on back-projection, Tom. By 1980 Radio 2 certainly weren’t playing Tom/Engelbert, they were playing this single, Dr Hook, Fern Kinney and other smooth disco-flavoured pop. Anybody with the Hamilton’s Hot Shots comp on Warwick from ’76 will know that daytime Radio 2 even made room for the Detroit Spinners’ UK flop Games People Play.

This was never a cool club record, either, it was immediate wedding party fodder with an eye cocked towards folks who might remember the song from the first time around. So, maybe “mum and dad” is an imprecise way of putting it – “young mums and shopgirls” sound any better? Thought not. But I’m sure you get the gist.

No 30 actually on second thoughts you’re completely right about Radio 2 they werent playing much Tom Jones by then it was more Dr Hook, Kenny Rogers, bit of Abba maybe etc and yes “young mums and shopgirls” is a better decription of who I meant. But surely “mums and dads” when used on “Popular” (and not just about this number 1) is used in a context that applies to the “square” parents of late70s/early80s teenagers who would tend to be at least in their early 30s. And isnt it accepted in the music business that the vast majority of “pop” singles buyers (as opposed to more speciaised musical forms) are teenagers as opposed to those in their late 20s or early 30s.

But you’ve (no31) just summed up what I was saying myself in my previous post by saying “BUYING records” (and I presume we’re talking about singles here).I doubt anyone was buying Tom Jones etc singles by that time (that’s obvious from those kind of singers absence from the chart).Just because they had the odd Boney M album for parties etc are you saying they were really on it big style on the Boney M tip?

Or put simply to say that “parents” rather than their teenage offspring (who were after all all obviously only into “happening” music-press sanctioned music)were wholly responsible for putting stuff like this at No1 is extremely dubious.

I remember some of the stuff played at youth club discos back then especially if the girls brought their own records in it sometimes got as dodgy as the Dooleys, the Nolans and Brown Sauce(don’t ask).

Nothing wrong with Brown Sauce.

Oh yes my mother and her Boney M affair. It started when she went to Kelly’s radio (our old chain of electrical and record shops at that time) and asked for “The record by those nice black people” which started her Boney M collection. She had previously asked for “I lost my heart to a deep sea diver” and “sister sludge” so she was always on to a winner. (see one, feel one, touch one)

On to the very knowledgeable Wichita lineman’s point above, Ben Findon wrote Billy Ocean’s hits with a Mr Leslie Charles who now has long grey dreadlocks and calls himself Billy Ocean. “Shop girl” you may be, and just think you could have been called “Rhinestone Cowboy” .

Well, when SCowell berated some X-Factor finalist for doing a Billy Ocean song, as he wasn’t ‘current’ enough..

(!)

and (!) again…

..some mention was made afterwards about him being ‘a landlord now’…

I thought it was probably true as my acquaintance said it more in a “do you remember Billy Ocean?” way than in a “how about this my friend’s landlord…” way

No one really expected the Detroit Spinners to get to number one in 1980; their last major hit, “The Rubberband Man,” had been in 1976, their divine original lead singer Phillipe Wynne had long since defected to Funkadelic, and by the time Atlantic hooked them up with Michael “Let’s All Chant” Zager as producer they were one sidestep away from the cabaret circuit.

In truth 1972-6 was their golden era; although not at the centre of the Philly Sound, Thom Bell did bequest them some of his finest songs and productions – “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love?,” “Ghetto Child” – and the group performed them with elegant passion. There was something of a shudder that they had been “reduced” to going Eurodisco. Yet this became their biggest British hit and also reached #2 in the States, presumably courtesy of a young crowd who knew or cared little about their previous work.

The Four Seasons cover – and yes, this was the fourth Four Seasons cover version to get to number one in Britain while never having been a hit for the group themselves – is despatched with Teutonic efficiency; lead singer John Edwards gamely gives it his best effort over a hugely unsubtle drum machine thud, and the song is strong enough to withstand the assault. However, the segue into Zager’s own song, the notably less impressive “Forgive Me Girl,” is contrived and brief, and the original song soon comes back into focus. It was clearly danceable enough to satisfy its buyers, but it is disco as studium writ large, and after another similar effort, coupling Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” with the anonymous “I’ve Loved You For A Long Time,” which promptly went top five, the Detroit Spinners did indeed make their delayed descent into nightclub revivalism. To cite their first Motown hit from a decade earlier, it’s a shame.

Good fun from the Detroit Spinners here. 7/10 imho.