‘How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)’: the Marvin Gaye masterpiece that was eclipsed by Junior Walker
Across Motown’s vast and ever-expanding soul empire back in the 1960s, there was no sharper weapon in Berry Gordy’s arsenal than Marvin Gaye; the most distinctive voice on the label, and a cheat code for creating charting pop hits. Yet, back in 1966, his throne was challenged by Junior Walker.
During its heyday, Motown operated like no other record label. In addition to hoarding as much of Detroit’s soul and R&B talent as humanly possible, Berry Gordy also cultivated a backroom staff composed of some of the greatest songwriters in American history, whose work would then be distributed among its roster of performing talent. It was by these means that the label was so successfully able to become a haven of pop hits and soul mastery during the 1960s, but it also allowed them to release the same song recorded by multiple different artists.
Typically, if one artist had already had a hit with a song, then it wouldn’t be offered up to any of their labelmates, hence why it took Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ so long to be released after Gladys Knight’s version went to number-two in the pop charts. There were, however, exceptions to this rule, again concerning the output of Marvin Gaye.
In the winter of 1964, Gaye struck upon his latest chart success with a recording of the Holland-Dozier-Holland masterpiece ‘How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)’, which exemplified the quality of his performing prowess during that time, reaching number six in the US pop charts in the process.
It might not have been his greatest hit, but a number six was nothing for Motown to sniff at, particularly given the overwhelming quality of the charts back in 1964 – the year that The Beatles entered the US market.
Nevertheless, the song wasn’t deemed enough of a success for ‘How Sweet It Is’ to become a Gaye-exclusive anthem. So, two years later, the track was offered out to Jr Walker and the All Stars, the group that had come into the Motown fold two years prior, after their previous home on the Harvey label was bought out by Berry Gordy.
Limited largely to Motown’s Soul subsidiary, which rarely gained the same degree of commercial mastery as the main label, Walker and the All Stars were not among Motown’s most successful outfits. They did, however, have a few R&B hits under their belt by 1966, and their recording of ‘How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)’ was to become a defining anthem for the group. In fact, they managed to pull off the virtually impossible task of eclipsing Marvin Gaye.
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Not only did Walker’s performance on the song arguably triumph over the apparently unbeatable tones of Gaye, but the entire performance and atmosphere created by the group suited the song far more than Gaye’s original recording. It also matched the commercial prowess of the origin, reaching number three in the R&B charts just as the first recording had done two years prior.
Ultimately, Marvin Gaye’s crown as the king of Motown was retained in the wake of Walker’s track, but ‘How Sweet It Is’ remained an ultimate gem from the label’s output, exemplifying the undeniably stunning, soulful, saxophone stylings of Junior Walker, who was rarely spoken about in the same breath as Motown’s flagship artists.
