The very title of
Ace
's
Finders Keepers: Motown Girls 1961-67
suggests this 2013 collection digs deep into the vaults, excavating sides that are rarely -- or possibly never -- heard. And that is indeed true: half of these 24 songs are unissued, while much of the rest were unearthed at a relatively recent vintage, either in the late '90s or early 2000s. That leaves just a handful of songs released at the time: Martha & the Vandellas' album track "No More Tearstained Make Up,"
Mary Wells
' Detroit hit "What's Easy for Two Is So Hard for One,"
the Adantes
' "(Like A) Nightmare,"
the Supremes
album track "Long Gone Lover,"
Saundra Mallett & the Vandellas
' "Camel Walk,"
LaBrenda Ben
's "I Can't Help It, I Gotta Dance,"
' "Buttered Popcorn,"
the Miracles
(not
Smokey
's group) with "He Don't Care about Me," and
the Vells
' "You'll Never Cherish a Love So True ('Til You Lose It)." Of these, only the
Wells
was a big hit -- it reached Billboard's R&B Top 10 in 1963 -- but the hook of this compilation is how everything here is vaguely familiar yet unheard. Some of these sides were clearly destined for the vaults as they lack distinction (or border on the silly, as on
Hattie Littles
' "My Black Belt"), and the cuts gathered at the end (
Liz Lands
,
Kim Weston
) emphasize
Motown
's enduring fascination with supper club crossover crooning. Fortunately,
Finders Keepers
is sequenced cleverly, so the slight unevenness of the material isn't readily apparent. Instead, this plays a bit like an unexcavated jukebox from the '60s, one that contains a few period pieces that are overshadowed by the songs that feel like they could've been hits. Those are the tunes that make digging into this disc a joyful thing. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine