Chart entered : 18 July 1970
Chart peak : 33
Number of hits : 59 ( not including any credited to Diana Ross and the Supremes )
Having long since relegated ( or at least acquiesced in it ) her bandmates to the role of backing vocalists I suppose the only surprise is that we'd gone into the new decade before Miss Ross dispensed with them altogether.
Motown boss Berry Gordy was planning Diana's solo career from mid-1969 onwards , more in response to the Supremes' declining sales ( more evident in the US than here ) than anything else. Some of the latter singles credited to "Diana Ross and the Supremes" didn't feature Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong at all, their parts being put down by session singers. This was true of "Someday We'll Be Together" which was meant to be Diana's first solo single but Gordy wanted another number one for the Supremes and so "they" chalked up the final number one of the sixties. He stage managed a handover to Jean Terrell at the end of Diana's last performance with the Supremes in Las Vegas in January 1970.
And so this song came to be the launching pad for Diana's solo career. As the chart position would suggest it didn't quite live up to expectations ( it did slightly better in the US reaching number 20 ). Perhaps the ground had been prepared too well and people thought she was a solo performer already but more likely the reason lies in the record itself. Diana wanted to do a meaningful song and Ashford and Simpson came up with this one which puts the charity begins at home message across well enough although apart from the neat couplet "If you see an old friend on the street /And he's down, remember his shoes could fit your feet", it's expressed in terms woolly enough for Brotherhood of Man. The real problem is that it's so boring melodically with the chorus relying on a rudimentary "there and back again" eight note pattern which kills off any desire for hearing it again. Diana tries some ad libs at the end but it's a wasted effort.
Surprisingly it has lasted, with Ashford and Simpson performing it with Teddy Pendergrass at Live Aid and Diana herself choosing it to close the Tsunami Aid concert twenty years later , but I reckon the record buyers of 1970 got it right.
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