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Sammy Ward - Sister Lee

Uploaded by: IanLevine
Video Description:
The late Sammy Ward, with his trademark cowboy hat, was one of Tamla/Motown's earliest recording artists. The man was a great bluesy singer who should have done much better. Smokey wrote "You Really Got a Hold on Me" for Sammy, but Berry Gordy insisted that Smokey do it on the Miracles. At Motorcity, twenty six years later, we later recorded Ward on the song and someone posted on the internet that "the rendition is one of Levine's best efforts as a record producer". Sammy Ward was the Bobby Bland of Motown. He was all business and no fluff. Listen to the way he tore into "What Makes You Love Him" (again, two different versions recorded) and "That Child Is Really Wild", a rather funny take on a crude girlfriend. His only chart success (and that was R &B only) was "Who's The Fool". Co-founder of Motown, Raynoma Gordy Singleton, (known as Miss Ray), renamed him Singin' Sammy Ward, and in the early days, Motown treated the blues just as importantly as the burgeoning Motown sound, particularly grooming Sammy Ward, Mable John, Sherri Taylor, Amos Milburn, and Hattie Littles, and it's notable that, by the mid sixties, all five of these notable artists had left the company. Sammy released seven singles in all for Motown, five singles on the Tamla label, and then a further single on Soul, plus a duet on Motown with Sherri Taylor. He also dueted with Mable, but those tapes didn't surface till years later. After leaving Motown, he signed to Don Davis' Groovesville company, and released the monster Northern Soul classic "Sister Lee" on the Groove City label in 1967. He was credited as Sam Ward, rather than Sammy Ward for that record. Sammy didn't get to sing again till 1989 when I found him, and Raynoma herself came in and supervised the vocal sessions like in the ol
d days. I feel that we only really captured him well on this one song, "If At First You Don't Succeed". We cut seven tracks with him, six solo, and one duet with Sherri Taylor once again. He was almost impossible to record, as he couldn't stick to any melody at all, and merely improvised in a bluesy voice, which made it hard to capture a vocal that would appeal to Motown fans. On the remakes of "Try It Baby", "Crazy Bout My Baby", and "Part Time Love", he seemed unable to grasp any melody at all, but with Raynoma's help, we nailed it on one particular song in my opinion, "If At First You Don't Succeed", which is also here on YouTube for all to see. Sammy was quite lucky that he got to come to England to appear at a Northern Soul allnighter in Morecambe, where they wanted to see him sing "Sister Lee", and here is his performance of that classic, captured for all posterity, and newly edited together for the first time, even though it's fifteen years since he passed away.

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