Saturday, November 26, 2011

Well, do you love me, now that I can dance




The story goes:  Berry Gordy
was so anxious to record this
extremely strange song, right 
away, that he grabbed the first
group he ran into in the hall,
and said, Like, OK, now, you do
it. Mashed potatoes recur, in a
constant refrain having to do
with whether one likes it like
this; and I had always prized
Mr Porter for being silly. But
billions of this thing are in
print; I mean billions, rush-
ing down to the sea as we speak,
videos of it streaming all over.

I was motoring down our little
Constitution Highway, only yes-
terday - the part musing past
Somerset Plantation, whence you
can see fuh absolutely evah -
I couldn't get this crotchety, 
nagging lyric to go away. It 
started shaping the tongue, de-
forming the lips, invading the 
ear, can you stand it. It then
came over me, the whole thing
is involuntary; it flies under
the radar of criticism, avoid-
ing cognition, itself, hence
its ridiculous persistence. I
could see why he'd be so impa-
tient to get it out there, as
its writer. There wasn't any
time to book The Temptations;
and so The Contours got it -
as you must have heard.











Berry Gordy, Jr.
Music and Lyric
Do you love me?
Motown, 1962©






2 comments:

  1. oh lord, now you've gone and done it.

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  2. What an outrageous fabrication. It was a .38, not a .45. And I was not brandishing it, concealing it subtly, to make a point ..

    Benjamin Siegel to Mickey Cohen, Los Angeles, the good old days

    :)

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