Do Yourself A Favor (a.k.a. If You See Me) was first released without Prince input by Jesse Johnson (on Shockadelica in 1986), but the first release containing input by Prince, recorded much earlier as If You See Me, was in two versions (instrumental and vocal) on a 1992 reissue of 94 East's first collection of studio recordings Minneapolis Genius, featuring Prince on guitar.
The track has featured on every subsequent collection of 94 East's early recordings. In 1995 both versions were included on Symbolic Beginning (re-released in 1999 as The Legends Collection). In 2000 the vocal version was included as the seventh track on 94 East Featuring Prince.
Also in 2000, both versions of If You See Me were included on One Man Jam. In 2002, both versions were included on If You Feel Like Dancin'. In 2011, a remixed version by Matt "Dr." Fink was included as the second track on the digital collection The Cookhouse Five.
Basic tracking of If You See Me took place on 4 December 1975, at Cookhouse Studios, Minneapolis, Minnesota (during the same set of sessions as Games, I'll Always Love You, If We Don't and Better Than You Think), marking the earliest recording sessions featuring Prince to have been released.
Pepé Willie later recounted that Prince was unhappy with his guitar playing at one part of the track and asked the next day if he could re-record a section of his part; Willie arranged with the studio for this to happen while Willie himself played golf. Due to a change in the recording equipment's EQ levels (which had been changed for another artist's recording session), Prince's re-recorded guitar segment is audibly different than his guitar on the rest of the track.
Matt "Dr." Fink remixed the track in June 2010, at StarVu Studios, Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with the other Cookhouse Studios tracks from the same session.
Somewhere during the summer of 1982, Prince recorded an entirely new version of the track at his at Kiowa Trail Home Studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, now titled Do Yourself A Favor; according to Pepé Willie, Prince recorded it from memory and had not heard it for years.
Jesse Johnson released a version, clearly inspired by Prince's 1982 take, also titled Do Yourself A Favor, on his album Shockadelica, in 1986, but it misses Prince's own lyrical contribution to the track, a humorous spoken section in his "Jamie Starr" voice, so his version is not considered to have any input by Prince.
Prince's 1982 version of Do Yourself A Favor was released in 2019 as the eighth track on the Vault Tracks part 2 disc of a Deluxe edition of the 1999 album.
|