Kiki Dee: Love Makes The World Go Round - The Motown Years

White English vocalist (and later Elton John protégée) Kiki Dee recorded some reasonable stuff for Motown. Kiki, from Bradford, Yorkshire, was the first British artist to sing for Motown. 

Here is a taster of her Motown material.

Firstly, we get a genuine Northern Soul treasure - The Day Will Come Between Sunday And Morning - with Kiki sounding like an amalgam of Diana Ross and Martha Reeves. She does a great job on this signed and sealed deep cut gem.

Similarly, her take on David Ruffin's My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) is as good as any interpretation any other Motown female artist may have put out. Kiki doesn't sound out of place at all. Far from it. She, as everyone knows, went on to have some success on Elton John's Rocket label in the mid-seventies. The song was also recorded in the same year (1970) by The Spinners.

Johnny Raven was also covered by Michael Jackson on 1973's Music and Me and The Supremes on their 1971 Touch album. Kiki's version is probably the match of either of them. Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing is also done competently enough, but Kiki just wasn't Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, was she? 

I Just Can't Give Back The Love I Feel For You, a sumptuous ballad, was done by both Diana Ross and Rita (Syreeta) Wright. As with many Motown songs, they got shared around. Love Makes The World Go Round was a hit for Deon Jackson in 1966. Kiki gives it a smooth and pretty immaculate makeover, it has to be said. I'll Try Something New was also done by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles and the Motown "supergroup" Diana Ross & The Supremes & The Temptations. Once again, Kiki's version is fine, she just wasn't a "name".

The punchy, brassy More Today Than Yesterday was a Northern Soul hit for both Kiki and Spiral Starecase (more so for the latter, actually - it was a Wigan Casino hit tune). It is full of those upbeat, melodious Northern Soul vibes. In the same vein is the equally lively and catchy Love Is A Warm Kind Of Sorrow. Mr. Loneliness is a good track too. 

Jimmy is a darker, soulful ballad that had Kiki sounded very English, sixties-style, sort of like Petula Clark all perfect word enunciation. It demonstrated, though, that Kiki had quite a bit of intrinsic soul in her. She deals confidently with both these songs and she later admitted her experience at Motown was invaluable in teaching her how to own a song.

There are several other covers of songs for which the original releases were far more popular - For Once In My Life (Stevie Wonder), I'll Second That Emotion (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles) and Walk On By (Dionne Warwick). Kiki does a good job on all of them, but they just aren't the versions that we all know. Her Walk On By is a sort of appealing mix between Dionne's version and Isaac Hayes's one, complete with fuzzy guitar. 

Kiki cut her teeth here, despite her lack of commercial success and backing. It is an interesting, comparatively unknown and unexpected item to listen to.