The sad tale of Mary Wells’ final hit
Mary Wells was nicknamed ‘The Queen of Motown‘ for a good reason, although she accomplished a lot as a musician even after she left the label.
The legendary singer enjoyed a great deal of exposure and success during her time with the Detroit imprint, but she wasn’t exactly happy with the terms of her contract. Following a messy departure from Berry Gordy Jr’s roster, she continued churning out hits with the releases of ‘Ain’t It The Truth’, ‘Use Your Head’, ‘Never, Never Leave Me’ and ‘Dear Lover’ in partnership with other record companies.
However, she was never able to pick up the same momentum as she had during the early 1960s due to rumoured legal disputes with Motown that constrained her artistic freedom.
Still, she continued to soldier on and seek out new opportunities that would allow her to continue recording and releasing her music. After brief stints with 20th Century Fox Records and Atco, she moved over to Jubilee Records, where she would record her final hit song in collaboration with her husband at the time.
Soon after leaving Motown, Wells married Cecil Womack of The Valentinos, and the two would extend their romance into a songwriting partnership as well. The duo teamed up to pen ‘The Doctor’ for her debut album with Jubilee, which reached number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100 tally and number 22 on the R&B chart. She managed to accomplish this despite the single not being promoted with too much vigour by the label, which also resulted in her Servin’ Up Some Soul album failing to perform too well upon its release in 1968.
Unfortunately, this ended up being a turning point in Wells’ career. Even though ‘The Doctor’ did well despite not receiving much of a push, the larger package it was included on didn’t generate the buzz Jubilee had hoped for. Plans for a second album by Wells were subsequently aborted, leaving her without any industry backing once again.
While she had persevered after leaving Motown, the fallout with Jubilee seemed to have pushed Wells past her limit. She did release two singles with Reprise Records in the years that followed and even put a lot of effort into promoting a re-release of ‘My Guy’ by Motown, but her frustrations with the music business were beginning to proliferate.
She walked away from recording and didn’t make another album for 13 more years, leaving many to believe that Servin’ Up Some Soul was her final LP. Of course, she would return in 1981 with In and Out of Love, but there was a long period where it seemed as though it was over for her. The sad part about the whole ordeal was that her only album with Jubilee perfectly captured her brilliance, but the fact that it didn’t chart or sell too well kept the label from letting her make another project with them.
‘The Doctor’ quite accurately demonstrates how much she still had left in the tank at the time, so for her to have walked away from the business when she was still at her creative peak was truly a shame, and while Wells did return to music years later, her health began deteriorating soon after, leading to her untimely demise in 1992, and even though fans did get closure from her comeback, it’s tough not to think about how much great music she would’ve made during the ten-plus years she was absent from the studio prior to that.
