HARVEY FUQUA - Hello Stranger

About "Hello Stranger"

Dynamite is the third and last collaborative album between labelmates The Supremes and The Four Tops, released on the Motown label in 1971. The album was a collection of material recorded for the Magnificent Seven albums, but which had not been included on either of those two albums. The cover artwork was an illustration based on photo sessions from the Return of the Magnificent Seven album artwork. In the US, Dynamite was as commercially unsuccessful as The Magnificent 7 (1970) and The Return of the Magnificent Seven (1971), peaking at the lower hundreds of the Billboard Top 200. The album fared much better on the Billboard R&B charts, peaking at 21.

It includes several covers of previous hits and a few Motown originals. It opens with "It's Impossible", which had been a hit in Spanish as "Somos novios", for its composer Armando Manzanero, and later successfully covered by Perry Como and R&B group New Birth. Two of the cuts, "Hello Stranger" and "Love the One You're With", had also been hits for their composers, respectively Barbara Lewis and Stephen Stills, while the group Bread reached the top of the Easy Listening chart with "If", and both Aretha Franklin and The Ones had moderate successes with Franklin's composition "Don't Let Me Lose This Dream". Of the Motown material the album producers chose two mild hits by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You" and "Good Lovin' Ain't Easy to Come By"; "Do You Love Me Just a Little, Honey", a song co-written by Gladys Knight, Johnny Bristol, Harvey Fuqua and Vernon Bullock; plus two compositions by Mel Larson and Jerry Marcellino: "Melodie", which had been recorded the same year by Bobby Darin, and "The Bigger You Love (The Harder You Fall)".

No singles were picked up in the United States, but one of the favorite original compositions, "Melodie" (with "Good Lovin' Ain't Easy to Come By" on the flip side), was released in New Zealand. A year later, the Four Tops parted from Motown to sign with ABC Records (today, the catalogs of both ABC and Motown are owned by Universal Music Group). There was much speculation as to why this album was even issued as the previous two duet lps by the two groups did not sell well. Motown was perhaps trying to appease the Four Tops who were looking to leave Motown and were very vocal about their unhappiness with the company. It was said that neither knew the album was issued until fans brought them to concerts for autographs. In any event, it was a dismal failure for two groups who had seen better days.