R. Dean Taylor: C/D, S&D

Therefore CLASSIC.

[chorus]
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
I wish I had you to talk to

If a man ever needed dyin', he did
No one had the right to say what he said about you
And it's so cold and lonely here without you
Out there the law's a-comin'
I'm scared and so tired of runnin'

[repeat chorus]

It hurts to see the man that I've become
And to know I'll never see the morning sun shine on the land
I'll never see your smiling face of touch your hand
If just once more I could see you, our home and our little baby

[repeat chorus]

I wish I had you to talk to

I hope this letter finds its way to you
Forgive me, love, for the shame I put you through and all the tears
Hang on, love, to the memories of those happy years
Red lights are flashin' around me
Yeah, love, it looks like they found me

[repeat chorus twice to fade among sound effects of a shootout]

-- Rickey Wright (rrricke...), September 2nd, 2004.

I heard'ja knockin' but I got nothin' for ya here. "Indiana" is a classic, but I've never heard another note from him (and don't know how integral he was to the Supremes' later hits).

Neil Young, if you count the signed, but never released, Mynah Birds.

His Canadianness gets him decent airplay here in Canada, but all the heavy rotation songs have been mentioned, and I can't think of any other. He's definitely classic on the basis of "Gotta See Jane" and "There's a Ghost in My House".

Also contains an atrocious cover version of The Beatles'Two of Us.

Anyway, "Gotta See Jane" is rad. Esp. the Fall version.
I have some Dutch-issued Canadian Rockabilly anthology Vol. 3 that has early RDT on it.

The back cover of His I Think, Therefore I Am proclaims that Taylor plays everything on "Indiana Wants Me." Presumably not the strings. It also informs me that he wrote "Love Child," "I'm Livin' In Shame," and a Temptations song called "All I Need." Huh!

The record is really promising on Side A - in addition to "Indiana" you get "Gotta See Jane" and something called "Woman Alive" which sounds exactly like "Indiana Wants Me" and is therefore fantastic. Side B is comparitively sluggish, and his covers in general seem to miss the point of the originals entirely - "Fire and Rain," "Two Of Us," and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" have never felt so overblown.

Anything else worth tracking down? Besides this video, of course?

Get the Spectrum comp mentioned above - apart from the three stone cold classic singles it has the startling Candy Apple Red on it, which is a must have.

The only white dude on Motown, wasn't he?

Not including R Dean Taylor, there was also Bobby Darin, Tommy Good, Rare Earth and lots of others that no one remembers. Plenty of white women as well.

If you've ever seen a Motown discography, you'll know that there were enough white artists to fill a box set. Not just ten or twelve, more like 100 (maybe more). Besides the white rock bands on the Rare Earth roster, Motown also had a couple of country subsidiaries - Melody in the sixties, later revived in the seventies as Melodyland, then Hitsville.

Chris Clark being one obvious standout.

Look at this: http://www.rareearthworld.co.uk/rareearthlabel.html

The Pretty Things, The Easybeats and Love Sculpture.

Wow, that Bobby Darin albums starts out with a cover of "Sail Away."

Motown also had a couple of country subsidiaries - Melody in the sixties, later revived in the seventies as Melodyland, then Hitsville.

Ha, Mike Curb cut some records on Pat Boone on Melodyland/Hitsville.

http://soulfuldetroit.com/archives/3190/2286.html?1046103674

Kiki Dee was on Motown for a bit in the late sixties.

Yeah, problem with Motown is that in white music, they always got the stars on their way up, or just as they were coming down - never in their prime.

I <3 "There's a Ghost in My House".

Not talking about the guitarist from the BJM, then?

Nope, Canadian northern soul guy.

One cool thing about R. Dean Taylor is that he made stuff that sounded downright twee psych. Which is something that no other Motown act did.

And this is not meant as an attack on Motown in general, as they provided the world with some marvellous pop music, but they sounded a bit out of date during the psychedelia explosion in 1967-68. The orchestrated arrangements on some Four Tops singles were getting close, but sadly there aren't a lot of sitars, mellotrons or phasing to be heard in 67-68 Motown recordings. No lyrics about pink elephants flying through marshmallow skies either.

"Shadow" is creepy and gross enough that I can't help but feel that it colors my perception of the rest of his output.