SONG OF THE DAY

“This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)” by The Isley Broth­ers (This Old Heart Of Mine [sin­gle], Tamla/ Motown Records, 1966). Writ­ten by Holland–Dozier–Holland, and Sylvia Moy.

MY TAKE

This song was fea­tured on my July 2010 playlist!

This song was play­ing in the back­ground of an episode of sea­son 4 of HBO’s The Wire, and I was all like “WAIT! PAUSE IT! I KNOW THAT SONG!” I haven’t heard the song in a decade, had no idea it was the Isley Broth­ers, but of course knew all of the words by heart after all of those years.

BRIEF BIO (a la wikipedia)

- “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)” was a suc­cess­ful hit sin­gle for The Isley Broth­ers in 1966, dur­ing their brief tenure on Motown’s Tamla label.

- Writ­ten by Motown’s main song­writ­ing team Holland-Dozier-Holland alongside Sylvia Moy, “This Old Heart of Mine”, pro­duced by Brian Hol­land and Lam­ont Dozier, was orig­i­nally intended for The Supremes (who later recorded their own ver­sion for their Supremes A’ Go-Go album).

- Fea­tur­ing Ronald Isley on lead vocal, “This Old Heart of Mine” peaked at #12 on the Bill­board Hot 100.

- The sin­gle was the group’s only major hit while on Motown, and then in 1969 the Isleys left Motown to restart their own T-Neck label.

- Tammi Ter­rell recorded and released the song as a part of her Irre­sistible album released in Jan­u­ary, 1969.

- In 1976, Rod Stew­art released a remake of this song that met with some success.

- Twenty-four years after the orig­i­nal record­ing, Ronald Isley and Rod Stew­art released a Top 10 duet ver­sion of the song in 1989 that reached #10 on the US Bill­board Hot 100 chart and spent five weeks at #1 on the US adult con­tem­po­rary chart.

- The Dutch girl group Luv’ recorded a dance cover ver­sion of “This Old Heart of Mine” in 1992.

Per­son­nel

• Lead vocals by Ronald Isley
• Back­ground vocals by O’Kelly Isley, Jr. and Rudolph Isley
• Addi­tional back­ground vocals by The Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Mar­lene Bar­row and Lou­vain Demps
• Writ­ten by Holland-Dozier-Holland and Sylvia Moy
• Pro­duced by Brian Hol­land and Lam­ont Dozier
• Instru­men­ta­tion by The Funk Brothers

VIDEO OF THE DAY