Brenda Holloway: Every Little Bit Hurts - 1964

This was Brenda Holloway's debut album for Motown (she only released two) and it is hugely orchestrated, with strings literally all over the place - big balladry is the name of the game here. 

I've Been Good To You, unsurprisingly a ballad, was originally released by Smokey and The Miracles back in 1961. Brenda's version is arguably the definitive version of the song. It has a nice, robust percussion sound to it. Sad Song begins with some slow, big Otis Redding-style brass and it continues to back Brenda's equally big vocal. Her voice is astonishingly strong for one so young. 

On Every Little Bit Hurts, young Brenda achieved one of her biggest hits with this astonishingly mature performance for an eighteen year-old. Beautifully orchestrated, Brenda's voice is beautifully sensual. The rendition has become a timeless, much-covered classic. Brenda got so much feeling into her delivery, she subsequently said, because producer Hal Davis had made her so angry, bickering over who should sing the song. She sang with tears in her eyes.

Too Proud To Cry doesn't break the mould anytime soon, but I have to say that the foreboding, mournful string backing is excellent. Brenda is singing gospelly blues with strings. The stereo sound that is now available on this album if you source it via Brenda Holloway: the Ultimate Collection is superb, I must point out. This song exemplifies it perfectly. 

Who's Loving You was also covered by The Temptations, with David Ruffin on the lead, and The Jackson 5 with young Michael out front. Brenda's rendition is a powerful, confident one with a warm, bassy sound to it. 

Brenda - who also played the violin, incidentally - wrote the smoochy, late-night Land Of A Thousand Boys herself - a most talented young lady. You get the feeling, over time, however, that Motown never really did right by her, despite her many releases.

Suddenly is beautifully and cleverly orchestrated, string-wise, and once again the vocal is most impressive. Then it is covers time - firstly a smoky, late-night rendition of the crooning standard Embraceable You that features some quirky violin interjections and then we get Unchained Melody given the big voice Brenda treatment. She does it justice. Those violin parts appear again in this one. They can get a bit overwhelming at times - maybe the production could have been a little softer at times?

A Favor For A Girl (With A Love Sick Heart) slightly ups the beat a bit (not before time, arguably) on a vaguely Latin-ish shuffle of a number. It is still a love ballad, though. It has a smooth catchiness to it all the same. 

String-backed slow fare returns soon enough, though, with (You Can) Depend On Me. It is beautiful, but a bit more of the same. Can I? is guess what? That's right - I don't need to tell you, do I? Brenda torches it up.

A bit like Frank Sinatra's "dark" albums from the fifties, the sound on this album is too homogenous for my liking. Brenda had the ability to do other styles, as she would later prove. It would be four years until her next album, although lots of singles filled the gap.