Something Old, Something New
AN ILLUMINATING DAY AT THE OFFICE
It seems most likely that August 5, 1961 was when the inspiration struck Smokey Robinson for one of his most engaging and romantic songs, “I’ll Try Something New.” On that date, he and his father were among the 23,000 souls inside Detroit’s Tiger Stadium, watching their hometown Tigers battle the Cleveland Indians on a hot, humid Saturday.
Years later, the Motown poet recalled that the Tigers were 7-0 by the sixth inning, much to the chagrin of his father. But Robinson’s team couldn’t maintain the strength of their lead, and by the end of the match, theirs was a slender 7-6 margin of victory. Still, it was the Tigers’ third consecutive win of the summer, and an exciting game.
“He and his dad were staunch competitors when it came to baseball,” Claudette Robinson told me recently. “His dad loved the Indians and Smokey loved the Tigers. So whenever the teams played in Detroit, off the two of them would go to the Tiger Stadium.”
Their third Tamla album
For most of us, that 7-6 outcome is but a footnote to the story of “I’ll Try Something New.” According to Robinson’s autobiography, he felt “a little melody fluttering in my heart” at one point during the game, and then more. “Words came to mind. Quickly I grabbed a pencil and, on the popcorn box, scribbled lyrics that seemed to fall from heaven.”
The temperature was lower when Robinson and his fellow Miracles got around to cutting “I’ll Try Something New” early the following year at Chicago’s Universal Recording (Windy City winters can be brutal). “I think we all loved the song,” said Claudette, “the melody, the harmony and the way it all seemed to come together when we recorded it. We really loved it when the strings were added.”
Those strings – a glistening part of the record’s magic, like the harp solo – were put on tape in Universal’s large “A” room, where arranger Riley Hampton called upon his customary players for this session with the out-of-towners. Some of the musicians may even have been present when the Miracles waxed “Way Over There” in the same studio, two winters before. Then, Berry Gordy had travelled from Detroit with the Miracles to cut a new version of “Way Over There” – specifically, with strings. “I wanted that big New York sound,” he wrote in To Be Loved, “and, in my mind, there was no way I could get that in our little Hitsville studio, which produced a thin, somewhat distorted sound with a heavy bottom.”
Not that Claudette minded going back to Chicago: she had lots of friends there, including Eugene Record and his wife Jacki, and Jerry and Annette Butler. “I’m still friends with Jacki,” she explained, “as I met her when she was about 12. Her mother and father owned a dance school and, after meeting me, [they] would allow her to sit backstage with me during the shows.”
Smokey, Claudette, Ronnie, Pete and Bobby
Claudette added that working at Universal rather than Hitsville was no problem. “Recording was basically the same, as we had each other. Most of the songs were written by Smokey and some of the other members [of the group] as well, so we were usually familiar with the harmony and lyrics, as we would work them out on the road. So when we went into the studio, we were quite familiar with the song.”
Still, “I’ll Try Something New” was different, at least according to Berry Gordy. Into his office one day came Smokey, “and he wanted me to hear a new song. I thought it was just one of the greatest new, clever songs I’d ever known,” he told the makers of Hitsville: The Making Of Motown. “And this was the day I knew that…I had a little genius on my hands.”
In the documentary, Gordy recited couplets from the song: “I will build you a castle with a tower so high, it reaches the moon,” for one. “Give you lovin’ as warm as mama’s oven, and if that don’t do, I’ll try something new,” for another.
“I was just blown away,” he continued. “I had this wonderful feeling, but also this scary feeling that I was, like, thrown. Here’s a guy that’s writing a song that I could not think of. And I was a songwriter, I was a teacher, and from that day forward, I started slipping from my post, because he started coming up with major hits.”
HOT ON THE CHARTS
But even a song exalted by the boss was no slam-dunk in terms of sales. When released on April 9, 1962 as a pictured-sleeved Tamla single, “I’ll Try Something New” started strongly enough, with radio action in northern California right away. Even San Francisco powerhouse KYA, which had played a key role in breaking “Please Mr. Postman,” was on the case, as were stations in Philadelphia, Baltimore and – of course – Chicago.
Moreover, Motown was hot on the national charts that spring. Another Smokey delight, Mary Wells’ “The One Who Really Loves You” was striding towards the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, as was the Marvelettes’ “Playboy.” Shrewdly, Gordy had brought Barney Ales onto the company’s payroll the previous summer, and was now seeing positive results.
Another exhausting road trip
Yet even the Sicilian’s savvy salesmanship couldn’t spin “I’ll Try Something New” all the way to the top. This most wondrous of the Miracles’ early sides proved to be only a modest success, peaking at No. 39 on the pop charts and outside the Top 10 of the R&B rankings.
Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there.
In 1968, Motown producer Frank Wilson cut tracks in Los Angeles on a slew of Smokey tunes – including “I’ll Try Something New” – for Barbara McNair, who added her vocals in Detroit. The song must have stayed with Wilson, for he returned to it later that year when overseeing Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations with Deke Richards. “I played Frank some ideas I had,” recalled Richards in liner notes for the ninth volume of The Complete Motown Singles. “ ‘I’ll Try Something New’ was just one of the songs. I mean, we didn’t necessarily go after it as a single.” But Quality Control queen Billie Jean Brown thought otherwise, and the duet was picked as the groups’ follow-up to “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.” It spent five weeks in the Top 30.
DEE AND DINO DELIVER ‘SOMETHING NEW’
Frank Wilson had one more shot with “I’ll Try Something New” while producing Britain’s Kiki Dee in Detroit in 1969. The result didn’t make the singer’s sole Motown album, Great Expectations, but was inserted into a subsequent U.K. compilation of her work, Love Makes The World Go Round.
Around the same time in the late ’60s, “I’ll Try Something New” apparently appealed to Dino Valenti, one of the original members of San Francisco rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service and the writer (as Chet Powers) of the Youngbloods’ anthemic “Get Together.” Valenti cut Robinson’s diamond during solo sessions later released as Get Together (The Lost Recordings: Pre-1970).
A ‘New’ reissue, 1978
This most gorgeous song was to have two more curtain calls, both in the same year. Smokey himself decided to re-record “I’ll Try Something New” for his 1982 Tamla album, Yes It’s You Lady, and took the tune down in tempo (nor was there a harp this time). Imaginatively, he recruited two compadres from the 1962 Universal date: the Miracles’ centre-of-gravity guitarist, Marv Tarplin, and on background vocals, Claudette Robinson. “The original was a simple adolescent promise to do anything for his sweetheart,” wrote critic Geoffrey Himes in the Washington Post. “The remake – with its hints of regret and desperation – sounds more like an effort to save a faltering marriage.”
George Tobin, the producer (with Mike Piccirillo) of Yes It’s You Lady, told me in 1991, “Smokey was just incredible to work with. He’s such a natural, he just goes in and sings. He’s like a black Perry Como – you want to make sure he’s awake when he sings.”
The other 1982 edition of “I’ll Try Something New” was committed to tape by the “Boogie Oogie Oogie” hitmakers, A Taste Of Honey. This was part of the duo’s Ladies Of The Eighties album, and it displayed some of the same featherweight, Oriental flavour of their second major hit, “Sukiyaki,” as well as fidelity to the style of Smokey’s 1962 vocal. According to the liner notes of a 2011 reissue of Ladies Of The Eighties, it was Tobin who first suggested the song to the pair. Then, coincidentally, producer Al McKay did the same. “The melody always reminded me of the Orient,” McKay told liners writer Christian John Wikane, “and with A Taste Of Honey coming off a hit with ‘Sukiyaki,’ it just fit.” When released as a single, it charted no higher than the Miracles’ original, but attracted Robinson’s attention: A Taste Of Honey was booked to appear at the All-Star Music Festival at the Indianapolis Sports Center on June 30, 1982, where he was the headline act.
In the event, A Taste of Honey’s Janice Marie Johnson and Hazel Payne were obliged to cancel their festival appearance through illness, removing any prospect of an “I’ll Try Something New” on-stage duet with its songwriter. Still, there was another act singing Smokey at the shindig: Sister Sledge, whose remake of Robinson’s “My Guy” had just come off the charts. Naturally, they performed it that night, and the Indianapolis crowd gave them lovin’ as warm as mama’s oven…
Music notes: this week’s WGB playlist features various versions of “I’ll Try Something New,” obviously. Absent is Barbara McNair, whose take was part of her 2003 U.K. compilation, The Ultimate Motown Collection, curated by Paul Nixon and released on CD in 2003 – but not (yet) available on streaming services. The Miracles’ original can be found on various albums, physical and digital, including the soundtrack to Hitsville: The Making Of Motown. The last playlist track is a stereo mix of their recording, unreleased until 2002, when it appeared on Ooo Baby Baby: The Anthology.