“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” is a 1965 hit song recorded by the Four Tops for the Motown label. Written and produced by Motown’s main production team Holland–Dozier–Holland, the song is one of the most well-known Motown tunes of the 1960s. The song reached number one on the R&B charts and was also the number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100 for two non-consecutive weeks. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 2 song of 1965. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song #415 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It has been covered extensively since 1965, including versions done for several television commercials. (More from Wikipedia)
Mikki was born Mikki Farrow in Detroit. She met and married a legendary saxophone player named Andrew “Mike” Terry in the mid-1960’s. In his Allmusic entry, Jason Ankeny writes: “The baritone saxophone of Andrew ‘Mike’ Terry remains an indelible component of the famed Motown sound. . . . Terry’s résumé reads like a roll call of soul’s greatest hits – his Motown track record alone spans chart smashes including the Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, the Isley Brothers’ ‘This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)’, Kim Weston’s ‘Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)’, and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’; and as a freelancer, he played on monsters like Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’, the Fascinations’ ‘Girls Are out to Get You’, and the Capitols’ ‘Cool Jerk’.”
(July 2014)
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Holland-Dozier-Holland is a songwriting powerhouse; besides writing some of Motown’s best-known hits, they wrote most of the songs on entire albums for some of the biggest stars on the label. For the Four Tops, Four Tops Second Album (1965) included two of the group’s best known hit songs, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and “It’s the Same Old Song” that were both penned by Holland-Dozier-Holland; in all, they wrote 10 of the 12 songs on the album.
(April 2015/1)
