"Hold On To My Love" Jimmy Ruffin

I have the "25 Years .... 1980" CD (UK) you mentioned. It's very very muffled sounding, but I brightened it to match the 45. I can send an mp3 if you'd like to hear it. It has the full length (single/album) version, which can also be found on another UK CD, also muffled - I forget the name but it might be some kind of "NOW" compilation of '80s stuff.

I also have the Ripete CD you mention, but I'd skip looking for that because it fades the song about 30 seconds early, matching the promo 45 fade.

It's possible the 8:28 version might be the Disconet remix, as I've come across a version with that length and labeled as such.

About five years ago, I obtained a used copy of the lone U.S. CD in Pat's book/database that contains this song, the V/A compilation titled Ocean Drive 4 (Ripete 5151). But like most here, I was also disappointed that "Hold On to My Love" runs only (3:03) on that CD - cutting off the last 29 seconds or so, as abagon reported in 2008 that both the 45 & LP have an actual time of (3:32). Luckily, that CD cost me all of about five or six bucks...

Well, I recently obtained a lot of 60+ import CDs from the U.K. and Europe, almost all compilations of '70s & '80s music (most of them now out-of-print), and one of them does include this elusive hit by Jimmy Ruffin. As an alternative to the V/A CD that EdisonLite previously reported here, there's also an 18-track V/A compilation that was released in the U.K. in 1991 titled Soul Dreaming, on Stardust STACD 006. "Hold On to My Love" is the original hit recording, and has an actual time of (3:26) on this CD. The complete track list is as follows (bold = top 40 U.S. hits, by Pat's standards):

01) "Like Sister and Brother" - THE DRIFTERS (1973)
02) "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" - DELFONICS (1970)
03) "Love Come Down" - EVELYN KING (1982)
04) "Native New Yorker" - ODYSSEY (1978)
05) "Woman in Love" - THREE DEGREES (1979)
06) "You Make Me Feel Brand New" - THE STYLISTICS (1974)
07) "Hold On to My Love" - JIMMY RUFFIN (1980)
08) "When She Was My Girl" - FOUR TOPS (1981)
09) "Living in America" - JAMES BROWN (1986)
10) "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" - BARRY WHITE (1975)
11) "Joanna" - KOOL & THE GANG (1984)
12) "Summer Breeze" - ISLEY BROS. (1974)
13) "I Really Didn't Mean It" - LUTHER VANDROSS (1987)
14) "Never Knew Love Like This" - ALEXANDER O'NEAL ftg. CHERRELLE (1988)
15) "Sexual Healing" - MARVIN GAYE (1983)
16) "Let's Hear it for the Boy" - DENIECE WILLIAMS (1984)
17) "Come Back and Finish What You Started" - GLADYS KNIGHT (1978)
18) "Kiss and Say Goodbye" - THE MANHATTANS (1976)

This particular CD is long out-of-print and admittedly somewhat tough to find today, although I did notice that a used copy recently appeared on eBay's U.K. site at a very reasonable price, and failed to sell: CD on eBay So if anyone here wants to acquire this CD, perhaps it would be best to contact the U.K. seller, and see if he could re-list it??? Fading the song 29 seconds early on the Ocean Drive 4 CD was definitely unacceptable, but I can live w/ just 6 seconds on this Soul Dreaming CD...

I've never understood why "Hold On to My Love" has been so elusive on CD here in the U.S. over the years, but it has appeared on about a half-dozen other V/A compilations in the U.K. to date, mostly on box sets of either disco or '80s hits. (I don't have any of those other collections, or else I'd report the details here on them as well.) I do remember hearing the song on top 40 radio in SoCal somewhat regularly when it was a hit back in 1980, but since then, until I'd acquired the Ocean Drive 4 CD, the only time I'd ever heard it was whenever I played my old K-tel cassettes titled Hitline (Vol. 1) or Power Play, lol. IMO, it's been so forgotten that it's now hard to believe it was actually a top 10 pop hit - even more surprising when you consider it hit only #29 R&B in Billboard! An eBay seller in Estonia has recently been selling new/sealed copies of a "remastered" CD version of the song's original 1980 parent album, Sunrise, on the American eBay site. He's actually sold quite a few of them at a fairly decent price, but I haven't sprung for one myself, so I can't vouch for the quality or authenticity of that seller's CDs...

EdisonLite wrote: I have the "25 Years .... 1980" CD (UK)...It's very very muffled sounding, but I brightened it to match the 45...It has the full length (single/album) version...

So what's the actual time for "Hold On to My Love" on that CD - are you saying it runs the full (3:32)???

(Also posted in abagon's original thread for this song started on 29 April 2008...)

I should add that when I worked with Rhino on their "Radio Daze: Pop Hits of the '80s" series, we put in a request to license this song and got a rejection from the label. But if we were rejected, probably every other request from labels was rejected, and that's why it never showed up on any US CDs, not from a lack of wanting but because of this.

I don't know any more than that. I don't know if it would be owned by Universal or Robert Stigwood himself, but whoever Rhino thought owned it gave a refusal (perhaps because Universal and Stigwood don't know who really owns it).

Edited by EdisonLite

<perhaps the difference lies in U.K. vs. U.S. licensing rules/laws???>

Yes, that's absolutely it. Not so much the rules - but they're different territories. Which means there can be different owners. Most of what you cited above is simply Publishing info. The part that's of interest is the "by arrangement with Robert Stigwood Orgn". This usually suggests that the 3rd party label licensed the recording from Robert Stigwood Org. (But perhaps it just means they provided the tape.) More importantly, the rights in the US may have been bought by Polygram, then Universal (but perhaps Stigwood kept the rights in the UK and certain other territories). It's quite possible that Rhino didn't go to the correct owner, that neither RSO or Universal has any paperwork saying they own the recording now, that the owner wanted too much money for the US (though I don't think that was the case here), or that the owner never responded one way or the other by the time the deadline approached for Rhino to move forward with the manufacturing.

Edited by EdisonLite