Motown Treasures

It was also made available on CD in 2021 as the opening track on Volume 7 of Kent's "Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities" series.

https://mail.45worlds.com/cdalbum/cd/cdkend498

Could it have been a hit if issued in 1971?  Personally I doubt it, it would presumably have been released in The US on Mickey Stevenson's Mikim label, been distributed by Stax/Volt and got lost in the shuffle whilst Stax/Volt promoted their latest release by Johnnie Taylor or The Staple Singers.  In the UK it would undoubtedly have got picked up at the time by some of the DJs on the NS scene and become a cult classic, if it achieved a UK release (in 1973/4??) it would have sold reasonably well but I doubt if it would have received the airplay necessary to make it a "chart hit".

Not that it isn't a good record (it most definitely IS) but to me it doesn't sound like a 1971 record and would probably have been dismissed in The US as sounding too "old fashioned".  To my ears it sounds more like something from 1967/8 ... now if it had been recorded and released in 1968 it might have been picked up by some US Radio stations, become a big "Discotheque" favourite in Britain and conceivably have become a reissue hit in 1971/2!! 

Of course all these discussions about whether something could, or should, have been a hit ignore one simple fact ... if being a "hit" means being listed on one of the national charts (US, UK, etc) only a limited number of tunes could become "hits" at the time and it always used to came down to what else was around at the time, and how effectively it was promoted..

Still, the tune is a hit at Chez Roger, and presumably at Humboldt Towers as well.   

Roger