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Excuse the long post, but I thought I'd try and set the tone to steer clear of just lists, although don't feel obliged to write as much.
I'm a huge Motown fan, and a huge Temptations fan. Following on from some PM'ed discussion with Paranoidwriter, I thought I start this thread.
The Temptations, Cloud Nine.
Motown was all about bridging gaps. Set up in the late fifties, Berry Gordy was first and foremost a business man, but what his record labels did was fill the commercial gap between jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Bill Hailey and Elvis Presley tore up the charts, jazz remained very much a night-club scene, but Motown managed to find a home for some of the best jazz musicians, marrying them with some of the finest R&B voices and produce a new sound of young America, a black voice that didn’t frighten white America. And with the Temptations he had arguably the first boy band.
Five very attractive, very tall and very stylish singers, each voice as powerful as the next, each able to sing lead, they struggled at first to find a direction – working well as a live band, the group struggled to find a hit record in their first few years together. It wasn’t until Gordy held a competition for the Motown house producers to be the first to come up with a hit for the group, and Smokey Robinson gave them ‘The Way You Do The Things You Do’ that they released a single that made any kind of impact.
The group had shifted and changed – and continued to shift and change throughout it’s life – before settling in the earlier years with Paul and Otis Williams (no relation), Melvin Franklin, Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin. For most of the early success years the group were under the wing of Robinson and released a string of hit records, toured as one of the most successful Motown groups (even managing to break into the very white world of the Copa, as well as many other venues traditionally reserved for the Dean Martin/Frank Sinatra crowd) fronting television specials along the way.
Success got to the group, however, and David Ruffin was soon rubbing up the other members the wrong way, suggesting that the group should be renamed David Ruffin and the Temptations. At around this time another young writer/producer was trying to get more and more involved with the group; Norman Whitfield. After one of Smokey’s Tempts songs didn’t do as well as expected, Gordy, following a promise, released a Whitfield co-written track which showcased Ruffin’s fantastic rough but smooth style. Ain’t Too Proud To Beg was a big success, and Whitfield soon found himself getting more and more writing gigs with the group. However, Ruffin’s behaviour was becoming more and more arrogant, and the other members voted him out. Replaced by the very capable Dennis Edwards, Ruffin, painfully isolated and addicted to drugs, found it harder to let go of the group, and would often show up at live shows, crashing the stage and singing old hits at a time when the group were trying to introduce their new member.
It was in the mid sixties that the group and Whitfield found the perfect song to showcase Edwards’ voice. Equally as rough and yet smooth as Ruffin’s, it contained something more, a sense of pain and struggle. With the Funk Brothers (the Motown studio band which did so much to define the new sound of young America) Whitfield cut a track that even Gordy, who was very determined to steer clear of ‘message’ records, couldn’t ignore.
Cloud Nine, telling the story of a man struggling through life, opting for the easy route out of the rat race that is eating him up he decides to use drugs and ignore the world around him. Opening with a simple drum lead in and a light wah-wah, the song soon sinks into a fantastic bongo and bass driven track. Edwards’ first line ‘The childhood part of my life wasn’t very pretty, I was born and raised in the slums of the city’ doesn’t punch out, but cuts through the sunken track with confidence. What Whitfield did best was to allow the Funk Brothers to lead the song, and allow the group to try and catch up, bouncing each members unique voice off of the others. It was a message song, it was a funky song that Motown had never tried to get close to before (preferring to leave that to the likes of Sly and The Family Stone), but most importantly it was a huge hit, the first Motown record to win a Grammy.
The group shifted and changed, in fighting and tragedy leading to an ever evolving line up, and Whitfield continued to produce a string of hits for them until the mid seventies, including the beautiful ‘Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) – which was Paul Williams’ and Eddie Kendrick’s farewell song, but, for me, none were as powerful as the first time I heard Cloud Nine – a song that bridged the gap between Soul and Funk, between the young America of the summer of love and the socially aware peace movement of the 70’s, and a song which saw Motown’s sound evolve and develop, continuing it’s position as the home of Hitsville USA.
So, Barbelith, my questions to you;
Which Motown group/singer defined the sound for you and why?
And, which song is, for you, the greatest Motown hit? |
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