Baby I Need Your Loving

"Baby I Need Your Loving" is a 1964 hit single recorded by The Four Tops for the Motown label. Written and produced by Motown's main production team Holland-Dozier-Holland, the song was the group's first Motown single and their first pop Top 20 hit, making it to number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1964.It was also their first million-selling hit single. British group The Fourmost released their version of this song, reaching #24 in November 1964. A surviving episode of the trendy '60's TV music series Ready Steady Go! shows them performing the song. The song was recorded by Johnny Rivers in 1967. His version, titled "Baby I Need Your Lovin'", was released as a single, and became a number-three hit on the Billboard pop chart. O.C. Smith covered it and took it to #52 in 1970, and yet again by Eric Carmen in 1979, who took it to #62. Rolling Stone ranked The Four Tops' original version of the song #390 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. * Lead vocals by Levi Stubbs. * Background Vocals by Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Lawrence Payton, Abdul "Duke" Fakir and The Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow, and Louvain Demps. * Instrumentation by The Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (strings). * Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland, Jr.. * Produced by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier. Songwriter/producer Lamont Dozier wrote this about the genesis of this song.........‘Baby I Need Your Lovin’“ was a left over track laying around until one day I was in one of my ‘Bernadette” moods listening to it I started to sing 'Baby I Need Your Lovin’, Got To Have All Of Your Lovin'“. That started the feeling for the rest of the lyric and melody. Brian and Eddie immediately felt too, that it was the right direction for this song. We called The Four Tops in and told them that we finally had the song that we had been promising them. It was their first number one hit.