Diana Ross "Las time I saw him"

I have that Hip-O CD. Interestingly, they explain in the liner notes exactly why this recording is longer and what is (I wish every CD did that!) When mastering/compiling the original album back in 1974, the master tapes on a few of the songs were longer and the engineer was given instructions to fade these particular songs early. "Last Time I Saw Him" (the song) was one of them. So the version on the original LP is a shorter (faded) version of what's on this CD. This CD version would be logged as "18 seconds longer than the 45/LP version."

Interestingly, originally the song was even longer than this 3:06 version! There were 3 parts during the course of the song that were edited out for the LP/45 version, but the unedited version can be found on the 2 CD set - Diana Ross "Motown Anthology" - although the end of it does not match up with the end of the "Last Time I Saw Him" CD or LP versions. The ad libs at the end are different. So if you're a big fan of this song, like I am, that's 3 different versions out there.

Edited by EdisonLite

As for the original Anthology, rnell, I believe that's not the correct version because it's 12 seconds shorter than the LP/45 version, is that correct?

The single and album version were always the shorter, 2:48 version. The long version you speak of only was released in the past few years, on "Motown Anthology" and then on "Last Time I Saw Him". According to liner notes, this long version was the way it was ORIGINALLY recorded, but was edited down to the 2:48 version for BOTH LP and 45. (And yes, the '86 Anthology CD was faded early, to 2:36 or so). And btw, the aforementioned liner notes are wrong - because you can't take that long version and edit it down to the original LP/45 version -- as there are overdubs near the end of both versions that are unique and not found on the other version, so the liner notes writer wasn't quite correct.

Edited by EdisonLite