video

This price­less footage of my favourite Hat­tie Lit­tles song was filmed in De­troit in 1990, while she pri­vate­ly per­formed it for Sam­my Ward and Frances Nero. I miss Hat­tie Lit­tles ter­ri­bly. She had a most trag­ic life, and I was so grate­ful for a chance to record her, ev­er since, as a youth dis­cov­er­ing Mo­town for the first time, Dave Godin's rav­ing about her made me so es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ed in her. But Dave Godin told me he'd heard that she'd died many years be­fore we start­ed Mo­torci­ty, so when the late great Dave Hamil­ton, one of Mo­town's gui­tar play­ers, with the Funk Broth­ers, told me that this was to­tal­ly un­true, and Hat­tie was still singing gospel in De­troit, I couldn't wait to record her, and she lit­er­al­ly cried with joy at be­ing giv­en the chance to sing again. We re­leased two en­tire al­bums, "The Right Di­rec­tion", and "Bor­der­line", and then a great­est hits com­pi­la­tion en­ti­tled "The Best Of Hat­tie Lit­tles". I record­ed a to­tal of twen­ty one tracks on her, and even brought her to Eng­land to stay with me at my house, to record her sec­ond al­bum for us. She had had such a rough life, sup­pos­ed­ly mur­der­ing her hus­band in the 1960s for be­ing abu­sive, and spend­ing many years in jail, cur­tail­ing her record­ing ca­reer through­out the six­ties and the sev­en­ties. But she had a heart of gold, and was so full of op­ti­mism and joy at the new chance she had, and I was so sad to hear that she died of a heart at­tack in the 1990s, when Pat Lewis phoned and broke the ter­rble news to me. Back at Mo­town, Hat­tie's first ev­er sin­gle on the Gordy la­bel in 1962, "Back in My Arms" cou­pled with "Is It True", is leg­endary for its rar­i­ty, and thank­ful­ly was re­cent­ly fi­nal­ly re­leased, both sides in fact, on the won­der­ful new boxsets that Mo­town are do­ing of all their ear­ly sin­gles. The sec­ond sin­gle on Gordy in 1963, "Your Love Is Won­der­ful" (which we re­cut)/"Here You Come", was ac­claimed by the late Dave Godin as one of the great­est pieces of deep soul ev­er made. But mag­i­cal­ly, in re­cent years, so many un­re­leased tracks have turned up, that Hat­tie's fans have had a re­al treat, with such Mo­town gems as "Love, Trou­ble, Heartache, Mis­ery", "Mon­ey That's What I Want", "False Words", "Wish you Were Here" (writ­ten for her by Marv John­son), and "You Got Me Wor­ried" (writ­ten by Clarence Paul). In the ear­ly days of the Mo­tor­town Re­vue, Hat­tie was the open­ing act for Mar­vin Gaye, and toured with him ex­ten­sive­ly, with her cross of blues and ear­ly Mo­town, and it was fit­ting and his­tor­i­cal that when we did our huge con­cert at the Pontchar­train Ho­tel in Au­gust 1990, that Hat­tie be the open­ing act. She was a re­al trea­sure of Mo­town, and I was proud to have giv­en her a sec­ond chance to shine. I co-​wrote this gem with the leg­endary Sylvia Moy, who tai­lored the words around Hat­tie's life.