"You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Lest I forget anything, I've been writing down some parts.  To-day I wrote down the chords and a few of the guitar parts for "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me."

Because I started doing this same type of project for the Beatles' catalogue (with even less of a chance of ever finishing) and the Beatles also recorded "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," I compared the two versions, even though Rod Argent explains in the Begin Here liner notes that "even though the Beatles have recorded it," the Zombie version "follows the Miracles original rather than the Beatle version" (although the Zombie Heaven liner notes seem to complicate this: "Though the Beatles had recorded ["You've Really Got a Hold on Me"] for their second album the previous year, the Zombies based their arrangement of this classic Smokey Robinson tune on that from The Miracles Recorded Live On Stage, where it incorporated part of Sam Cooke's equally timeless 'Bring It On Home To Me.'").

Anyway, I discovered first of all that "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" is in 3/4, which I hadn't realized.  But - more interestingly - the Zombies' version is in the same key as the Beatles' version (A major), where Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' original is in C major.  I don't own The Miracles Recorded Live on Stage, but I found it on Amazon, and the 30-second sample proves that the live version of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" is in C major too.  Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me" is also in C major.  So while the original versions of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Bring It on Home to Me" are already in the same key, the Zombies changed the keys of both.  Since it wasn't necessary to change the keys so that they could join the songs and since the key they did change it to is the same key that the Beatles did it in, maybe there's some Beatle influence there after all.