The hit song with a message that nobody heard

Cassandra returns after more than 3100 years

On September 30, 1968, during the very zenith of the free love 60’s, Motown Records released its single—catalog number 1135. This record would reach number one on November 30th, and stay at the top of the charts for two weeks. Written by ace tunesmiths Pam Sawyer, R. Dean Taylor, Frank Wilson, and Deke Richards, and recorded by Diana Ross and the Supremes, Love Child [links to the record on YouTube] took a bold and most contrarian view on sex out of wedlock.

Blending emotionally charged vocal performances and a driving beat featuring Earl Van Dyke on keyboards,  legendary bassist James Jamerson, guitarist Joe Messina, and drummer Richard “Pistol” Allen, the title character tells her story to her boyfriend, in an attempt to explain why she won’t go all the way…

You think that I don’t feel love
But what I feel for you is real love
In other’s eyes I see reflected
A hurt, scorned, rejected

Love child, never meant to be
Love child, born in poverty
Love child, never meant to be
Love child, take a look at me

Just three years earlier, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) issued a report entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, describing the breakdown of the urban Black family as approaching “crisis level.” In 1965, the Black illegitimacy rate was 26 percent. At present it stands at 64 percent, and 34 percent across all American ethnicities. Moynihan, the last of the intellectual Democrats, was nothing if not prescient since he also predicted the difficulties inherent in assimilating huge numbers of immigrants, back in 1963.

I started my life in an old, cold run-down tenement slum
My father left, he never even married mom
I shared the guilt my mama knew
So afraid that others knew I had no name

Imagine that! Her father never even married mom, and mother and daughter feel guilty. How repressed. How outmoded. In truth, though, the song’s love child is a Cassandra—doomed to correctly predicting the future, but never being believed.

And, worse than the Trojan princess, our Cassandra isn’t even going to be believed after what she predicts happens! No Democrat or Socialist worth his salt will ever acknowledge the horrible destruction wrought by the social programs started in the 1960’s. Sad to say, they can hardly identify any accomplishments, save confiscatory tax rates, an overall spike in the cost of living, and the creation of a latter day dependent underclass/slave class, voting about 95% on their ticket.

Well, the Democrats always were the party of slavery.

This love we’re contemplating
Is worth the pain of waiting
We’ll only end up hating
The child we may be creating

What, exercise some self-control? More repressive advice during the very height of the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll 60s?

Love child, never meant to be
Love child, scorned by society
Love child, always second best
Love child, different from the rest

Hold on, hold on
Mmm, baby (Just a little bit longer)
Hold on, hold on
Mmm, baby (Just a little bit longer)

I started school
In a worn, torn dress that somebody threw out
I knew the way it felt, to always live in doubt
To be without the simple things
So afraid my friends would see the guilt in me

Just think. No tolerance. No diversity. What barbarians. They didn’t have abortion on demand, then, like we do now.

Don’t think that I don’t need you
Don’t think I don’t want to please you
But no child of mine will be bearing
The name of shame I’ve been wearing

Love child, love child, never quite as good
Afraid, ashamed, misunderstood

A dose of reality. Love might not conquer all, although Diana does repeat until the fade out…

But I’ll always love you
I’ll always love you

The geniuses at Motown came up with something truly unique, especially for the 1960’s:  A protest song, that protested against ourselves and our own behavior—not against “Amerika,” not against the “war machine,” or the much over-used (even then) racism.

How ironic and tragic that a Billboard number one song can fall on deaf ears. Here’s a superb remix by Dj Reverend P, which includes the rarely heard third verse (Let me be proud, what you’re wishing for means so much more with a ring on my hand…).

[Lyrics quoted as “fair use,” as is the record jacket image]