♫ My Girl ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, music

Another “oldie but goodie” from the Motown collection …

This was written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White, who were both members of The Miracles. Robinson wrote the lyrics – he was married at the time to his first wife, Claudette (they were wed from 1957-1986), but Smokey said that the song is not about a specific girl, but “written with all the women in the world in mind.”

This song was written in the Apollo Theater when The Temptations were playing as part of a package tour with The Miracles. According to Robinson, he was working out the song on a piano at the theater when his bandmate Ronald White joined him and they hashed out the song. When The Temptations heard it, they convinced Robinson to let them record it instead of The Miracles. Robinson, who was Berry Gordy’s right-hand man at Motown agreed, and rehearsed the song with The Temptations over the next week. When they returned to Detroit, Robinson and White produced the session on December 21, 1964 when they recorded this song.

The previous year, Robinson wrote My Guy for Motown singer Mary Wells. That song carried the same sentiment of unconditional love, but from a female perspective. Hmmmm … I’ll have to play that one soon, for it’s great, too!  Somebody remind me, for we all know that my memory is gone!

This was the first of four US #1 hits for The Temptations. It was also the first #1 for a male vocal group on the Motown label.  The Temptations were a groundbreaking act in terms of choreography, doing precise movements to accentuate their songs. This one used big, expressive gestures that became widely associated with the song – it was not uncommon to see people doing the moves while listening to it. The Motown choreographer was a dancer named Cholly Atkins.

One thing I didn’t know is that Mr. ‘Sittin’-on-the-Dock-of-the-Bay’ Otis Redding had also done this song.  Now, I love Otis, and I was prepared to offer his rendition up as a second tonight, but after I listened to about 30 seconds of it, I said … “Nah, sorry Otis, you flubbed this one”.  Nobody can do everything well, and he will always have my heart on Dock o’ the Bay!

My Girl
The Temptations

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day
When it’s cold outside I’ve got the month of May
Well I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl)

I’ve got so much honey the bees envy me
I’ve got a sweeter song than the birds in the trees
Well I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl ooh)

Hey hey hey
Hey hey hey
Ooh yeah

I don’t need no money, fortune, or fame (ooh hey hey hey)
I’ve got all the riches baby one man can claim (oh yes I do)
I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl)

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day
With my girl (My girl)
(Talkin’ ’bout my girl my girl) I’ve even got the month of May
With my girl (My girl, woah)
She’s all I can think (my girl)
(Talkin’ ’bout my girl my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout, talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl, woah)

Songwriters: William Smokey Robinson / Ronald White
My Girl lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

27 thoughts on “♫ My Girl ♫ (Redux)”

  2. Jill, this song had a hard time getting released by Motown as Gordy was against it. He felt it was too close to “My guy.” Apparently, they had a committee that voted on which songs to release and Gordy was overruled. Keith

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    • From this, and other things I have read, it seems to me that Berry Gordy had a bit too much power within Motown and used it in ways he ought not have. I’m glad the committee won on this one, for it’s truly a great song!

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  3. Pingback: ♫ My Girl ♫ (Redux) | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

    • Diabola just posted that comment for me, before I was finished. It was her time, and she wanted attention! But now she has moved on, so I hope I can finish.
      This song is the quintessential love song from a guys point of view, just like My Guy had been from a girl’s point of view.
      I don’t know if it ever happened, but joy and happiness for me would have been seeing Mary Wells and The Tempts together on stage singing their songs in counterpoint to one another, a back-and-forth with the Funk Brothers in the backbround blending the melodies perfectly together.
      I was 15 when this came out, and in a new relationship with the cutest girl in our high school, (Listen to His Girl by the Guess Who. Burton Cummings saw us together walking the halls of St. John’s High School shortly before he wrote the lyrics, so we just assumed he wrote it about us!) It worked for us, but I am not offering it here because we are discussing Motown, and) The Temptations and Mary Wells too, so anything less would be sacriledge.

      (Okay, I took some liberties with the actual timeline, but it tells such a wonderful story I could not resist condensing a few years into one fantastic time period! It just goes together so smoothly. Mea culpa!)

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      • Ha ha … I know how that goes! Boo has sent emails for me before I was finished, too! I will check out “His Girl” by the Guess Who in a bit. I love the way music, more than anything else, can bring back long-buried memories of things past.

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          • Truth to be told, I think I have forgotten more than I now still know. I used to be one of the kings of NTN (bar) Trivia in North America. Not the best, but one of. Now I try to play along with Jeopardy, and I get like one out of 5 questions. (It doesn’t help that I pay no attention to modern culture anymore. I have been to the movie theatre once in the last 15 years. I could not tell you anything about current themes, or stars, or anything like that.)

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            • I know I have! Chris was teaching Natasha how to use the sewing machine this afternoon and she asked me a simple question about threading the bobbin. While I used to sew all the time, I haven’t done so for probably 25 years, and I couldn’t remember at all how to do that! As re Jeopardy, you and I could both probably ace those questions if they asked questions about things from back in our day, but as you say, the current culture flies past without my notice, for the most part.

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          • The music always matters. But I just cannot get into modern music. I follow a Canadian music blogger who covrs music new and old. He writes on “future hits” but when I listen, I cannot understand why they bother. It is a whole different world out there. He says the top song in the world right now is something called “Kill Bill” about a jilted lover who kills her ex AND the girl who stole him from her. How the hell is that a topic for a song, and why do all the young people all over the world love it? Is this an acceptable way to deal with break-ups these days?????

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            • I agree with you completely about modern music, but remember … our parents said the same thing about our music back then. I well remember my mother referring to the Beatles as “just so much noise”. And, like you, I see no place for calls for violence in music … none at all!!!

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              • Oh, I remember the voices of adults in the 60s very well. Example: “THAT YA YA NOISE gives me a headache!” Spoken even if the Beatles’s song I was listening to was a ballad. That particular person never advanced beyond “She Loves You, Yeah, yeah yeah!”
                Yes, I am well aware of how things never change, but, our parents listened to things like Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald. They didn’t have any taste to begin with! (Tongue very much in cheek!)

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                • Ha ha … my own parents were more along the Sinatra/Martin/Davis lines, and oddly enough, while I rebelled against those in my youth, I now rather like listening to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr.!

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                  • I still can’t stand NE&JM. Sinarra was just okay, Sammy Jr. was good. I always liked Deano. I’m taking it my parents were older than yours… 1907 and 1908, but Mom was older.

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                    • Yes, my father was born in 1915 and my mother in 1925, so not much older, but perhaps enough to make a difference in music tastes. Or, it could have been location … New York vs Canada?

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                    • Nah, I wasn’t implying that Canada was backward, and I think you guys probably had plenty of culture. It’s just that different areas, even different sections of the same country, have different tastes sometimes.

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                    • I was just pulling your leg. Winnipeg has one of thw world’s best known Ballet companies. A world known Symphony. But to be honest, it is NOT New York City. We aren’t even country cousins. Just distant beighbours.

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