My Guy
1964 single by Mary Wells
"My Guy" is a 1964 hit single by American singer Mary Wells for the Motown label. It was written and produced by Smokey Robinson of The Miracles.
Mary Wells version
At the session for the "My Guy" backing track, the studio musicians were having issues completing the intro. They had been playing all day and only a half-hour scheduled studio time was left. Trombonist George Bohanon said to keyboardist Earl Van Dyke that the opening measure of "Canadian Sunset" could be perfectly juxtaposed on the intro's chord changes, and Van Dyke, the session bandleader, expediently constructed an intro incorporating the opening of "Canadian Sunset" and also the "left hand notes" from "Canadian Sunset" composer Eddie Heywood's rendition of "Begin the Beguine". Van Dyke would recall: "We were doing anything to get the hell out of that studio. We knew that the producers didn't know nothing 'bout no 'Canadian Sunset' or 'Begin the Beguine'. We figured the song would wind up in the trash can anyway".
When Wells recorded her vocal she sang over the song's outro with a huskiness evoking the line delivery of Mae West: Wells would recall: "I was only joking but the producers said 'Keep it going, keep it going'."
Cash Box described it as "a tantalizing shuffle-twist hand-clapper that the lark and her combo-choral support serve up in most attractive fashion."
"My Guy" became the biggest hit ever for Wells, Motown's first female star, and reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart on 16 May 1964. The song led the Cashbox magazine R&B chart for seven weeks.
The public source identifies “My Guy” as 1964 single by Mary Wells. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around single, Mary and Wells.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6945602. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “My Guy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.