Floy Joy (album)

Floy Joy
Studio album by The Supremes
Released	May 1972
Recorded	1971–1972
Genre	Pop, soul
Length	29:33
Label	Motown
Producer	Smokey Robinson
The Supremes chronology
Dynamite (1971) Floy Joy (1972) The Supremes Produced and Arranged by Jimmy Webb (1972)
Singles from Floy Joy
"Floy Joy" Released: December 1, 1971 "Automatically Sunshine" Released: April 11, 1972 "Your Wonderful, Sweet Sweet Love" Released: July 11, 1972

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]
Christgau's Record Guide	B+[2]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[3]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[4]

Floy Joy is the twenty-fifth studio album released by The Supremes on the Motown label. This was the only Supremes album solely produced and arranged by Smokey Robinson and included the U.S. top 20 hit, "Floy Joy" and the U.S. top 40 hit, "Automatically Sunshine", both of which were top 10 hits in the U.K.

Overview

Following the aborted album Promises Kept, Motown handed-over production duties for the Supremes to in-house songwriter, producer, artist, and company vice-president William "Smokey" Robinson. At this time the group included original Supreme Mary Wilson, Cindy Birdsong, and Jean Terrell. Appearing on the album cover alongside Terrell and Wilson was new member Lynda Laurence, brought in to replace Cindy Birdsong, who was noticeably pregnant at the time of the photo shoot. Despite appearing on the album cover, Laurence's vocals are not on the album.

Floy Joy marks for the first time that Mary Wilson had several leads on an album. Wilson takes solo lead on the ballad "A Heart Like Mine." Wilson and Terrell trade-off lead vocals on "Floy Joy" and "Automatically Sunshine", whilst Terrell has sole lead on the album's third single, "Your Wonderful, Sweet Sweet Love". Cindy Birdsong provides a rare co-lead vocal on "Now the Bitter, Now the Sweet" and a spoken passage in "The Wisdom of Time".

The "Floy Joy" single was the Supremes' final Top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching as high as #9 in the UK.^[5] Its follow-ups, "Automatically Sunshine" and "Your Wonderful, Sweet Sweet Love" were not as successful, with "Automatically Sunshine" peaking at 37 on the Billboard Hot 100, 21 on the Top Soul Singles and being the group's final Top 10 hit in the U.K. (#10, the fifth in little over two years for the post-Ross line-up),^[6] and "Your Wonderful, Sweet Sweet Love" peaking at 59 on the Billboard Hot 100 and 21 on the Top Soul Singles, and missing the UK Charts altogether. Mary Wilson praised Robinson in her second auto-biography "Supreme Faith" for finding a good vocal blend between she, Terrell and Birdsong. However, on the back cover of the album, Robinson listed Motown's in-house backing vocalists The Andantes for contributing to the set. In fact, the Andantes are audible in the background vocals partially or in full on all but one track, Precious Little Things, which only features Wilson and Birdsong behind Terrell.

Track listing

Side one

Superscripts denote lead singers for each track: (a) Jean Terrell, (b) Mary Wilson, (c) Cindy Birdsong.

1. "Your Wonderful, Sweet Sweet Love" (Smokey Robinson)^a
2. "Floy Joy" (Robinson)^{a, b}
3. "A Heart Like Mine" (Robinson, Ronald White)^b
4. "Over and Over" (Robinson)^a
5. "Precious Little Things" (Robinson, Marvin Tarplin, Pam Moffett)^a

Side two

1. "Now the Bitter, Now the Sweet" (Robinson, Cecil Franklin)^a,b,c
2. "Automatically Sunshine" (Robinson)^{a, b}
3. "The Wisdom of Time" (Robinson, Moffett, Clifford Burston)^{a, c}
4. "Oh Be My Love" (Robinson, Warren Moore)^a

Personnel

• Jean Terrell, Mary Wilson, & Cindy Birdsong - lead vocals and background vocals
• The Andantes (Louvain Demps, Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow) - additional background vocals
• William "Smokey" Robinson - producer
• Instrumentation by The Funk Brothers:
  • Jack Ashford, Jack Brokensha, & Eddie "Bongo" Brown - percussion
  • Dennis Coffey, Robert White, Eddie Willis, & Marvin Tarplin - guitars
  • Johnny Griffith & Earl Van Dyke - piano, keyboards
  • James Jamerson - bass
  • Zachary Slater & Andrew Smith - drums
• Berry Gordy - executive producer
• Paul Riser - arranger
• Jim Britt - photography

Charts

References

This page was last edited on 3 February 2024, at 17:31