Kim Weston

Kim Weston was born Agatha Natalie Weston on 30 December 1939, in Detroit, Michigan, and started singing in the church at the age of four.

Later, while singing with a gospel group, she was signed by Motown Records in 1961, scoring a minor hit a year later with Love Me All the Way – actually the B-side to her first single, It Should’ve Been Me.

Her biggest hits with Motown were Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While) (1965) and Helpless (1966).

Her biggest claim to fame, though, was singing the classic hit It Takes Two in a duet with Marvin Gaye in 1966.

Weston left Motown in 1967 and later sued the label over disputes about royalties. She and her then-husband William “Mickey” Stevenson (former A&R head at Motown) resettled in Los Angeles and both went to MGM Records.

Weston cut a couple of singles for MGM, I Got What You Need and Nobody, which went largely unnoticed due to lack of airplay and promotion.

She also recorded an album for the label, This Is America, which included her popular version of the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. All the money from the single was donated to the United Negro College Fund.

She recorded several more albums for various labels, including Stax/Volt, and also made an album of duets with Johnny Nash.

None of these recordings charted, and Weston relocated to Israel, where she worked with young singers.

She signed with Ian Levine’s Motorcity Records in the 1980s, releasing the single Signal Your Intention and the album Investigate (1990) which included some re-recordings of her Motown hits.

A second album for the label Talking Loud (1992) was never released although all the songs were included on the compilation The Best Of Kim Weston (1996).

She later worked as a disc jockey on a local Detroit, Michigan radio station, touring sporadically, often alongside former Motown colleagues Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves, and Brenda Holloway.

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