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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 included in two versions (instrumental and vocal) on 94 East’ second collection of studio recordings Symbolic Beginning, featuring Prince on guitar. 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 Super Deluxe Edition edition of the 1999 album.
94 East’s vocal and instrumental versions were included on various reissues of Symbolic Beginning (The Early Years, in 2000 as One Man Jam). In 2013, the song was included on the Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound compilation. The vocal version was also included as the seventh track on 94 East Featuring Prince released in 2020. 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. In 2011, the remixed version by Matt "Dr." Fink was included as the second track on the digital collection The Cookhouse Five.
Somewhere during the summer of 1982, Prince recorded an entirely new version of the track at his Kiowa Trail Home Studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, now titled Do Yourself A Favor. According to Pepé Willie, Prince, who recorded the song from memory and had not heard it for years, told him that he wanted to release it on one of his next albums. Do Yourself A Favor was not included on any known configuration of 1999, Purple Rain, Around The World In A Day or Parade.
In 1986, Willie gave his permission to Jesse Johnson to release a version of the track, clearly inspired by Prince’s 1982 take, also titled Do Yourself A Favor, on his album Shockadelica. Johnson’s version 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. The song is credited to Pepé Willie and Jesse Johnson, but Johnson’s contribution is unknown (If You See Me is credited to Pepé Willie only).
Prince’s 1982 version of Do Yourself A Favor was released in 2019 on the Super Deluxe Edition edition of the 1999 album. Oddly, the credits on 1999 Deluxe are shared by Pepé Willie and Jesse Johnson, and Prince’s lyrical contribution is not acknowledged.
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