For our next cover versions interlude, here are three covers of chart-topping hits with a little Motown flavouring.
Starting with possibly Motown’s biggest star, Stevie Wonder…
Wonder covered ‘We Can Work it Out’ for his 1971 album ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, and it made #13 on the Billboard 100 when released as a single. He was still only twenty-one, though already a full decade into his recording career. Of course, Stevie Wonder’s career would cross paths with a Beatle again in the eighties, with the not-quite-as-classic ‘Ebony and Ivory’ hitting #1. Wonder then performed for Paul McCartney’s Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony a few years later, singing this very tune.
Sonically, this is very early-seventies Stevie, with a brilliant fried-funk bassline, and a harmonica solo. It’s also a much more positive sounding record than the baroque pop original, with the soaring vocals and backing leaving us in no doubt that whatever is wrong will indeed be worked out.
And if Stevie Wonder is Motown’s biggest star, then Smokey Robinson can’t be far behind…
He scored a belated number one with the Miracles in 1970 with the classic ‘The Tears of a Clown’, which was also co-written by Wonder. A decade later, in that incredibly fertile post-punk/new-wave landscape, the Beat (or English Beat, or British Beat, depending on where you’re from) took this ska cover version to #6 in the opening weeks of the 1980s.
I wouldn’t count myself as the biggest fan of ska, but I am a fan of hearing great songs that work in very different arrangements, and the staccato riff, played like a circus theme in the original, sounds great in a two-tone style.
My third cover is bending the rules a little. Or completely…
For years I assumed the Foundations were a Motown act, or at the very least Americans from somewhere near Detroit. But of course they were British, and released their music on Pye Records. I’ll class them as honourary Motown stars, though, as hits like ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ and ‘Baby, Now That I’ve Found You’ are so very indebted to the Tamla sound.
Not that Alison Krauss’s bluegrass inflected version sounds anything like that. It is stripped back, richly smooth, almost haunting. It was recorded in 1995, and didn’t do much on the charts, but won a Grammy for Female Country Vocal Performance and has featured on Best Country Songs lists. Despite this, I like it because it’s not too country, if you know what I mean.
Hope you enjoyed these not too oft-heard cover versions of three sixties classics. Back to the regular countdown next, and we are only ten chart-toppers away from a very special anniversary!
The UK Number Ones Blog 
I always assumed the Foundations were Motown-adjacent too, especially ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You’.
It’s more Motown than most actual Motown records…
I like all three of your picks. I only knew Stevie Wonder’s neat rendition of “We Can Work Out.”
I missed Stevie’s cover at the time, and as an oldie cover I wasnt too fussed about it compared to The Beatles’, but it’s pretty decent actually. Tears Of A Clown was also a decent cover, both Stevie and The Beat doing something different with a classic, as did Alison Krauss. I love her version of The Foundations classic, tender Bluegrass cover in an era of Country Music that was quite bombastic and Rock-oriented. Alison was harking back more to Dolly Parton and earlier more rootsy Country & Western and was refreshing next to over-rated Garth Brooks and some other male acts of the time. She’s still great.
At this point, I think we can consider Motown its own genre of music. When decades later – and even within the decade – artists are emulating the Motown sound and some are doing very good imitations, you know Motown has become its own genre. Tamla-Motown is the label. Motown is the genre. You think of Motown, you think of that distinct and beautiful and intoxicating blend of R&B, pop and soul.
I adore Stevie Wonder’s version of We Can Work It Out. In fact, I honestly think it blows the original away. The original is really good but Stevie utterly transforms the song and makes it his own while also honoring the spirit of the original. I find it interesting in the 60s in the US Stevie was in the A-Tier of Motown stars in terms of chart hits in the 60s decade – if the S-Tier was Supremes and The Temptations, Stevie, Marvin Gaye and The Miracles are just below – while in the UK in the 60s he was firmly S-Tier of the Motown acts. You Brits really took to Stevie from 1967 onward.
I like the English Beat version of Tears of a Clown. Very intriguing.
LOL, yeah, The Foundations sound extremely Motown. The lead singer of “Baby I Found You” sounds like hes doing his best David Ruffin impression. “Build Me Up Buttercup” sounds like the best Motown song never written by Tamla-Motown. The Alison Krauss version is interesting.
I would have maybe included the Colin Blunstone/Dave Stewart version of “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” which went #13 in the UK. The OG by Jimmy Ruffin is one of the best Motown songs, but the Blunstone/Stewart version is surprisingly good. They make it a synth-pop ballad but honour the bittersweet nature of the OG. of course Colin Blunstone could sing the phone book and it would sound good, voice of an angel that one.
Yeah there were lots of Motown covers to choose from. Maybe worth a part two sometime.
And good point about it being a genre in its own right. Makes me feel less bad about bending the rules!