Mary Wells

Genres:	Documentaries • Music & Radio • Music Videos & Concerts • Pop / Rock • R&B / Soul
Descriptive "tags":	soul • motown • female vocalists • 60s • oldies
Decades Active:	1960s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s
Links online:	BBC Music • IMDb • Official Homepage • Wikipedia

Biography

13 May 1943, Detroit, Michigan, USA, d. 26 July 1992, Los Angeles, California, USA. At the age of 17, Mary Wells composed ‘Bye Bye Baby’, a song which she offered to R&B star Jackie Wilson. His producer, Berry Gordy, was sufficiently impressed to offer her a contract with the newly formed Motown Records label, and Wells’ rendition of her song became one of the company’s first Top 50 hits in 1960. Gordy entrusted her career to Smokey Robinson, who masterminded all her subsequent Motown releases. Robinson composed a remarkable series of clever, witty soul songs, full of puns and unexpected twists, and set to irresistible melody lines. Wells responded with the fluency of the natural vocalist and the results were Motown’s most mature and adventurous records of the early 60s. ‘The One Who Really Loves You’ set the pattern as a Top 10 hit in 1962, while ‘You Beat Me To The Punch’ and ‘Two Lovers’ matched that...

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