The year before, Kim recorded a duet LP with Johnny Nash on his JAD Records. When Mickey starts the People label for MGM, Kim releases her most realized LP, Big Brass Four Poster, in 1970.
It rockets up the R&B chart to Number 4 and the Pop chart to Number 14, taking a place among Motown standards, remaining immensely popular and recognizable decades later. Then, in December, Motown releases the album’s lead track, “It Takes Two,” a song Mickey had co-written and co-produced eight months earlier. In August, Take Two – a collection of duets with Marvin – is released on Tamla. With Stevenson accepting a well-paid position at MGM Records in 1966, Kim felt the need to depart Motown for MGM with him.
H-D-H follow up that hit by overdubbing Kim on “Helpless,” a popular LP track by the Four Tops on their Second Album. Released in February 1966, it peaks at Number 12 on the R&B chart and reaches Number 56 Pop.Although Kim was partial to ballads, lyricist Eddie Holland believes this song fits her because, as he’d later say, “the track was very raunchy and she had one of those voices that I thought was very, very powerful.” It shot up to Number 4 R&B and Number 50 Pop. Then, transferring her to the Gordy label and with Holland, Dozier and Holland taking a crack, the September release of the up-tempo “Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)” gives Kim her biggest solo hit. Kim’s next two single releases, “I’m Still Loving You” in January 1965, and “A Thrill A Moment” in April – both Stevenson-Ivy Jo Hunter productions – also undeservedly failed to chart.
TV program Ready, Steady, Go! She shares the bill with the Isley Brothers, Martha & the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye and the Beatles. and at the end of the month she lip-syncs it on the U.K. The original, however, remains released in the U.K.
Smokey Robinson takes a crack at getting Kim another hit in 1964, but his August release of “Looking For The Right Guy” – which echoes his earlier Mary Wells’ smash “My Guy” – doesn’t do the trick.Her follow-up single, the Dinah Washington-influenced ballad “Just Loving You,” fails to chart, but Kim later names it as her favorite Motown recording, adding she helped her boyfriend, Motown A&R chief Mickey Stevenson, write it, although she did not receive a credit.Behind that success, Kim begins touring, often appearing on the bill with Marvin Gaye. It rises to Number 24 on the R&B charts and Number 88 on the Pop chart. Disc jockeys in the South eventually flip the disc and “Love Me All The Way” begins to make noise, causing Motown to reissue the single in June. Two notable simultaneous firsts from February 1963: With Norman Whitfield’s first production credit, Kim releases “It Should Have Been Me,” with B-side “Love Me All The Way,” as her first single on Tamla.She begins recording material for new producer Norman Whitfield and the company gives her a new stage name, Kim – after Hollywood film star Kim Novak. In ’62, she sings on secular demo recordings for Motown songwriters Brian and Eddie Holland and, impressed with her voice, they arrange a solo contract later that year. A member of the Detroit gospel group Wright Special, Agatha Weston records with them at Hitsville in 1961, songs that are released on a pair of singles for Motown’s Divinity label in 19.