‘If You Ever Get Your Hands on Love’: The Gladys Knight Motown masterpiece that was never actually released
For a label that seemed to churn out more hit records than any other back in the 1960s, the quality control department of Motown Records was infamously difficult to get by, and there is a wealth of utterly incredible yet unreleased Motown singles to prove that point – Gladys Knight being the artist behind one of the greatest.
Having arrived at the doors of Hitsville USA in 1966, already boasting a few hit singles under their belt, Gladys Knight and the Pips were never intended to become one of the label’s flagship acts.
Despite Berry Gordy pouring much of his attention into the ever-expanding empire of The Supremes, though, The Pips quickly proved a hit with mainstream audiences and, within only a few years, they had amassed some of the biggest-selling Motown hits of all time, ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ being the biggest.
That intense success is all the more impressive when you remember that Knight spent the majority of her Motown career resigned to the Soul imprint, reserved for the parts of the roster with a more overt soul sound and, by extension, a lesser degree of mainstream pop focus.
Despite both the commercial success afforded to the band and the clear star power of Gladys Knight, though, not every record they cut for Berry Gordy made it to the stage of mainstream consumption. In fact, one of her greatest moments, ‘If You Ever Get Your Hands On Love’ was shelved by the label after its original recording – which likely took place between 1966 and 1968 – never to see the light of day again.
Unlike certain Motown releases, which existed as promo 45s or were only released briefly before being pulled from circulation, ‘If You Ever Get Your Hands On Love’ never seemed to get close to the risk of being released. Despite this, there is scarcely a Motown fan or northern soul obsessive out there who couldn’t recite the entirety of the song beat for beat, making it one of the biggest mysteries and missed opportunities in the label’s history.
With its pounding upbeat rhythm, triumphant spirit, and the kind of typically incredible vocal performance that soon came to be expected of Knight, the single is a classic of the fabled ‘Motown sound’, and the exact reasons why Gordy never saw fit to release the single remain unknown. Regardless, though, it wasn’t until 2002 that audiences finally got to hear the song, when it was released on the CD compilation A Cellarful of Motown.
Since then, the single has been endlessly bootlegged, pressed onto acetates, and shared around northern and rare soul circles, making it one of the most beloved Motown tracks never to actually be released by the label. The closest it has ever gotten to an official single release was in 2014 – nearly 50 years since it was originally recorded – when it appeared on volume two of The Motown 7s Box.
Whether heard through a scratchy bootleg or one of those elusive official recordings, ‘If You Ever Get Your Hands On Love’ still stands as a core reminder, both of the magic of golden-age Motown and the absolute goldmine that the label struck upon when signing the ‘Empress of Soul’, Gladys Knight.
