Wer war/ist Kim Weston ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD und mehr
Kim Weston
Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)
Kim Weston
Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)
Primarily known for her sophisticated uptown soul stylings (usually produced by her husband, Mickey Stevenson) during her first few years at Motown, Kim Weston's spectacular reading of Holland-Dozier-Holland's relentless Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While) propelled the gospel-trained chanteuse in a new direction. It gave Kim the major solo hit she'd deserved for so long, peaking at #4 R&B, but was apparently a little too passionate for pop audiences, maxing out at #50.
Born Agatha Natalie Weston on December 20, 1939 in Detroit, Weston grew up singing in church choirs, joining The Wright Specials when she was 17. A segue to secular music came a few years later. "I was in church one Sunday, and a friend of mine came by," she says. "He came by and asked me if I would do some demos for a friend of his, and that friend happened to be the cousin of Brian and Eddie Holland." Eddie didn't care for the songs but loved Kim's pipes. "I was just doing the demo to get the money," she says. "I wasn't thinking about becoming a professional." Kim made her 1963 debut on Motown's Tamla logo with the love triangle lament It Should Have Been Me, but it was the other side, Love Me All The Way, that ended up a hit. Her follow-ups shimmered with class, but only What Good Am I Without You, a duet with Marvin Gaye, cracked the charts in '64, the same year Kim and Mickey married.
H-D-H's Take Me In Your Arms sent Kim back to the winner's circle. "I just enjoyed doing that with her, because to me the track was very raunchy, and she had one of those voices I thought was very, very powerful. But mostly she always thought she was more like a ballad singer. But she had a powerful voice. And so I thought that doing that track, doing that song for her and her singing it, would make a very, very strong song," says co-writer Eddie Holland. "Because I felt that the track was so dynamic, and her voice was ballad-y. So she was sort of singing almost like a ballad type of way, but it was powerful, and it was going with this very up-tempo track. So I thought that made a great combination."
Co-producer Lamont Dozier describes The Funk Brothers' drive on Take Me In Your Arms as "grinding away, the wheels of the train comin' at'cha." Weston sang iton NBC-TV's 'Hullabaloo,' precariously perched atop a pedestal as dancers gyrated beneath her. "Did I move?" Kim asks. "I'm sure I didn't do too much!" Compared to Weston's earthy original, The Doobie Brothers' '75 hit remake of Take Me In Your Arms sounds downright anemic. H-D-H also supplied Kim's rousing '66 hit follow-up Helpless. Kim left Motown along with Mickey when he moved to L.A. to run a division of MGM Records, but she went out with a bang: It Takes Two, her uplifting duet with Marvin, was her top pop seller of all in early '67.
- Bill Dahl -
Various - Sweet Soul Music
Various - Sweet Soul Music 30 Scorching Classics From 1965
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