SONG OF THE DAY

“You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” by Blood, Sweat & Tears (Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1969). Writ­ten by Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Frank Wil­son and Berry Gordy.

MY TAKE

This is a song I’ve loved since child­hood. It’s really emo­tional, espe­cially the lead vocals (though I do get weepy from the amaz­ing brass section’s work in this song). The bridge has the lyrics that are my true emo­tional favorite: “I love you so much you see,/ You’re even in my dreams,/ I can hear you, I can hear you callin’ me…” David Clayton-Thomas, the band’s lead singer for this song, is prac­ti­cally scream­ing this out. It’s really vis­ceral and devoted but at the same time really bal­anced well by the sweep­ing orches­tra­tion behind it Man, I love bridges. Almost as good as sec­ond verses. And track #8’s. Read the facts below because it’s really fas­ci­nat­ing, the his­tory of this band was all news to me. I didn’t even know the song was a Motown cover until today. They never play the orig­i­nal on the Oldies sta­tion in Motown. I would know, I lis­tened to it end­lessly from 1989–2001, so I think I can say with some author­ity that it wasn’t on rota­tion in the Motor City.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” was released first as a sin­gle in 1967 by Brenda Hol­loway on the Tamla label.

- By 1967, Brenda Hol­loway had been record­ing for Motown Records since 1964 and had strug­gled with Berry Gordy over con­trol of her music, alleg­ing that Gordy had forced her to sing Mary Wells’ “left­over tracks” after the Motown singer left the label in 1964.

- Along with her sis­ter Patrice, using music pro­vided by Frank Wil­son and with addi­tional help from Gordy him­self, Hol­loway co-wrote “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy”.

- Iron­i­cally, Hol­loway recorded the song after a breakup with a for­mer boyfriend.

- Reac­tion to the song was stronger than Holloway’s pre­vi­ous offer­ings, ris­ing to #39 on the Bill­board Hot 100 and becom­ing Holloway’s third Top-40 pop single. The song also peaked at #39 on the Bill­board R&B sin­gles chart. Shortly after the release of the song, Hol­loway left Motown.

- After two more years singing back­ground for acts like Joe Cocker, Hol­loway retired to marry a preacher and have a family.

- The song was later a huge hit for jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1969.

- The song became one of the group’s biggest hits, reach­ing #2 on the Bill­board Hot 100 in the United States in April 1969 and #35 in the United King­dom in May of that year.

- The song was also cov­ered by fel­low Motown acts such as Edwin Starr and Blinky in 1969, The Temp­ta­tions in 1970, The Mir­a­cles, also in 1970, and Diana Ross in 1994 on a Berry Gordy trib­ute album. Lou Rawls also cov­ered the song. It also been cov­ered by Pop inter­na­tional super­star Glo­ria Este­fan, she included the song on her album Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me in 1994, which was a col­lec­tion of cov­ers who inspired her musi­cal career.

- Blood, Sweat & Tears (also known as “BS&T”) is an Amer­i­can music group, orig­i­nally formed in 1967 in New York City.

- Since its begin­nings in 1967, the band has gone through numer­ous iter­a­tions with vary­ing per­son­nel and has encom­passed a mul­ti­tude of musi­cal styles. Check out this list of all of the past mem­bers of the band, there are close to 180 musi­cians that have been a part of the many incar­na­tions of this band!

- What the band is most known for, from its start, is the fus­ing of rock, blues, pop music, horn arrange­ments and jazz impro­vi­sa­tion into a hybrid that came to be known as “jazz-rock”. Unlike “jazz fusion” bands, which tend toward vir­tu­os­tic dis­plays of instru­men­tal facil­ity and some exper­i­men­ta­tion with elec­tric instru­ments, the songs of Blood, Sweat & Tears merged the stylings of rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band, while also adding ele­ments of 20th Cen­tury Clas­si­cal and small combo jazz traditions.

–After they lost their first lead singer, Al Kooper, the band was con­sid­er­ing Stephen Stills and Laura Nyro before decid­ing upon David Clayton-Thomas, a Cana­dian singer, born in Sur­rey, Eng­land. Report­edly, folk singer Judy Collins had seen him per­form at a New York City club and was so taken and moved by his per­for­mance that she told her friends Bobby Colomby and Steve Katz about him (know­ing that they were look­ing for a new lead singer to front the band). With her prod­ding, they came to see him per­form and were so impressed with him that Clayton-Thomas was offered the role of lead singer in a re-constituted Blood Sweat & Tears.

- Blood, Sweat & Tears, the group’s self-titled sec­ond album, was pro­duced by James William Guer­cio and released in late 1968.

- The album was much more pop-oriented, fea­tur­ing decid­edly fewer com­po­si­tions from within the band.

- The record quickly hit the top of the charts, win­ning Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards over The Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road, among other nominees.

- The album spawned three major hit sin­gles: a cover of Berry Gordy and Brenda Holloway’s “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy”, Clayton-Thomas’ “Spin­ning Wheel”, and a ver­sion of Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die.” All three sin­gles reached #2 on Bill­board magazine’s Hot 100 survey.

- The com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal acclaim enjoyed by the band in 1969 cul­mi­nated in an appear­ance at the Wood­stock Fes­ti­val, in which the band enjoyed head­liner status.

- Arguably, as a result of Al Kooper’s depar­ture, Blood, Sweat & Tears had dif­fi­culty main­tain­ing its sta­tus as a coun­ter­cul­ture icon at a time when record com­pany exec­u­tives deemed this char­ac­ter­is­tic impor­tance as a tool to lure young consumers. This was com­pounded by a United States Depart­ment of State-sponsored tour of East­ern Europe in 1970. Any vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tion with the gov­ern­ment was highly unpop­u­lar at the time and the band was ridiculed for it. In ret­ro­spect, it is now known that the State Depart­ment sub­tly requested the tour in exchange for more ami­ca­bil­ity on the issuance of a visa to Clayton-Thomas.

- After return­ing to the U.S., the group released Blood, Sweat & Tears 3; which was another pop­u­lar success, spawning hit sin­gles with a cover of Car­ole King’s “Hi-De-Ho” and another Clayton-Thomas com­po­si­tion, “Lucre­tia MacEvil”. Album reviews some­times focused solely upon the band’s will­ing­ness to work with the U.S. State Depart­ment, with­out both­er­ing to dis­cuss the actual music. Compounding the image prob­lems of the band was a deci­sion to play at Cae­sars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip, widely seen at the time as a main­stream venue for acts that did not engage in rad­i­cal pol­i­tics. In 1970, the band pro­vided music for the sound­track of the film com­e­dy The Owl and the Pussy­cat, fur­ther dam­ag­ing the group’s under­ground reputation.

VIDEO OF THE DAY