Someday We’ll Be Together

Bruce Springsteen’s cover of Someday We’ll Be Together sent me back to Diana Ross & the Supremes’ original, a song that I misread when it came on the radio at the tail end of 1969.

Up to that point, it was difficult to think of the Supremes as “soulful.” Their records were hooky little sugar cookies, but Ross’ vocals often seemed a little too cool, emotionally detached. What grabbed me about Someday We’ll Be Together was that male voice in the background, distant enough that he sounds like he’s standing in a hallway outside the studio, and like something out of a black church sermon with his echoing “say it” and “sing it.”

My misconception was that I always thought it was one of the Temptations; after all, hadn’t the two groups cut an album together with the unwieldy title, Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations?

Turns out the “preacher” is Johnny Bristol, one of the song’s three co-authors. His idea was to sing with Ross to push her a bit and get her into the right mood. When an engineer accidentally recorded Bristol’s words of encouragement, the Motown brass thought it added something and kept it in. Bristol’s coaching seems to have worked as Ross' vocals gets a little more heated as the song goes on.

The record was originally intended to be her first solo single, so neither Mary Wilson or Cindy Birdsong are on it (which might also help account for the song's different feel from what they’d recorded before). One of the background singers is Merry Clayton, a first-call singer when white rockers were looking for a little touch of gospel (see Neil Young’s The Old Laughing Lady, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and especially the Stones’ Gimme Shelter). And just to stretch these connections even further, Clayton was married to jazz saxophonist Curtis Amy, who played the smoking solo on the fadeout of the Door’s Touch Me.

Ross’ first solo single instead, released in early 1970, was Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand), a song choice more in line with the Las Vegas/Copacabana aspirations Berry Gordy had for her.

Someday We’ll Be Together remains one of the songs from the time period that wasn’t specifically about Vietnam, but could certainly be interpreted that way, along with I Say A Little Prayer, Last Train to Clarksville and Leaving On A Jet Plane. It was also the last number one hit of the 1960s, hitting the top spot on the Billboard chart dated December 27, 1969. For those keeping score, the first #1 single of the decade was Marty Robbins’ El Paso.