Alright! The Lost & Found series is brilliant, and we certainly don't get titles that often. A deeper look at vault Mary coincides nicely with the new Peter Benjaminson biography.

All of these, except the alternate version of "Operator," will be on the forthcoming set. (Although I provided the author with that list, that alternate, it seems, doesn't really exist.)

In Motown’s beginning Mary Wells was the Queen: its first genuine solo star, the headliner of the Motortown Revues, whose hits are among the finest of the early 1960s: “Two Lovers,” “You Beat Me To The Punch,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” “My Guy.” And, like every other artist on the growing roster, Wells recorded as often as possible, creating more than enough for her singles and albums releases. With this revealing new 2-CD collection, Something New: Motown Lost & Found, we’ll hear all of her amazing “extra” music: 47 rare tracks, 23 of them never before heard.

Something New: Motown Lost & Found is an extraordinary, chronological overview of Mary working with nearly every producer at the company, from Smokey Robinson to Holland-Dozier-Holland, Berry Gordy to Mickey Stevenson, even the Contours’ Sylvester Potts. Among the unreleased sides are four newly discovered duets with Marvin Gaye. Two near-duets with the young “no-hit” Supremes. Sessions for an unfinished standards album, featuring a sublime set of tracks targeted for the adult market in which she is backed on a few tracks by the newly signed Four Tops. An early version of the B-side “You Lost The Sweetest Boy,” known as “Your Loss, My Gain.” A classy “cha-cha” track, “This Is Something New,” whose sublime performance inspired this collection’s title.

You’ll also hear the two-dozen songs issued after Mary left the label in 1964, now collected in one place for the first time: the seven vault tracks from the 1966 LP Vintage Stock, including Smokey’s “When I’m Gone” and “I’ll Be Available”; three rare duets with Marvin Gaye from his first box set; the 11 cuts first issued on the 2-CD set from the 1990s, Looking Back; and three others scattered across various rarities collections. The difference here: all of them are in unreleased stereo mixes for the first time.

Something New: Motown Lost & Found is housed in a digi-pak that includes a 32-page booklet, a treasure trove of rare photos and an essay by writer Stu Hackel. It’s a special collection telling a deeper story of young Mary Wells and the ascent of an iconic company.