Walk Away From Love
David Ruffin
Who I Am, 1975
Walk Away From Love
Bitty Mclean
On Bond Street, 2004
I haven’t listened to vinyl in a few months; I decided it was a good idea to give all of my iTunes mp3s (36,500+ and growing) one of those 1-5 star ratings. But last night, after a tough conversation, I sought the counsel of handful of soul records I didn’t know well. The first one I put on was ex-Temptation David Ruffin’s Who I Am album. I’m not someone who thinks things happen for a reason but it felt strangely time and space specific when the the third song came on.
I’ve been playing to Bitty Mclean’s “Walk Away From Love” pretty consistently for the last few months and I didn’t realize it was a cover until that familiar melody came through the headphones last night (almost like that father & son Coke commercial where Method Man and Mary J.’s “You’re All I Need” morphs into the Marvin & Tammi original). Ruffin’s version is produced by Van McCoy (the guy who made “The Hustle“) so some parts of the production haven’t aged well, especially the “gonnawalkaway/gonnawalkaway!” part. The song could also easily fade out at 3:54 (a minute and half before it actually does) and you wouldn’t miss anything but Ruffin’s delivery of the “breaks my heart” line is easily worth the price of admission.
According to wikipedia, this was the last top 10 hit of Ruffin’s career. He didn’t write the song (McCoy collaborator Charles Kipps did) but it seems that his version is definitely the original recording. I can’t find any other significant covers.
There is a video of Bitty performing the song live but I don’t like it that much, he tries to turn it into a party jam…and he’s smiling too much (it’s a sad song!).
Songs are available for two weeks.
