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Temptations Anthology




This collection is unavailable via iTunes or Amazon.com but other suitable collections exist.
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The Temptations
Anthology - 10th Anniversary Album

Motown Records
M782A3
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Original 1973 triple album liner notes


Side 1

THE WAY YOU DO THE THINGS YOU DO 
2:37
(Robert Rogers, William Robinson)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 1/23/64

I’LL BE IN TROUBLE  2:52
(William Robinson)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 4/29/64

THE GIRL’S ALRIGHT WITH ME  2:49
(Eddie Holland, Norman Whitfield, Eddie Kendricks)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 4/29/64

GIRL (WHY YOU WANNA MAKE ME BLUE)  2:10
(Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 8/20/64

MY GIRL  2:55
(William Robinson, Ronald White)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producers: Smokey Robinson & Ronald White 12/21/64

IT’S GROWING  2:57
(William Robinson, Warren Moore)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 3/18/65

SINCE I LOST MY BABY  2:49
(William Robinson, Warren Moore)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 6/1/65
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Side 2

MY BABY
  2:57
(William Robinson, Warren Moore, Robert Rogers)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 9/30/65

DON’T LOOK BACK  2:53
(William Robinson, Ronald White)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 9/30/65


GET READY  2:37
(William Robinson)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Smokey Robinson 2/7/66

AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BEG  2:32
(Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 5/3/66

BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP  2:21
(Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 8/4/66

(I KNOW) I’M LOSING YOU  2:26
(Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland, Cornelius Grant)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 11/2/66

ALL I NEED  2:59
(Frank Wilson, Eddie Holland, R. Dean Taylor)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Frank Wilson 4/13/67
__________________________________________________

Side 3

YOU’RE MY EVERYTHING
  2:59
(Norman Whitfield, Cornelius Grant, Roger Penzabene)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 6/13/67

(LONLINESS MADE ME REALIZE) IT’S YOU THAT I NEED  2:36
(Norman Whitfield, Eddie Holland)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 9/22/67

I WISH IT WOULD RAIN  2:51
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, Roger Penzabene)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 12/21/67

I TRULY, TRULY BELIEVE  2:43
(Margaret Gordy, Allen Story, George Gordy)
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Henry Cosby 12/21/67

I COULD NEVER LOVE ANOTHER (AFTER LOVING YOU)  3:15
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, Roger Penzabene)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 4/18/68

PLEASE RETURN YOUR LOVE TO ME  2:21
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, B. Neely)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 7/16/68

CLOUD NINE  3:15
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 10/25/68
__________________________________________________

Side 4

RUNAWAY CHILD, RUNNING WILD
  4:30
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 1/30/69

DON’T LET THE JONESES GET YOU DOWN  4:15
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 5/1/69

I CAN’T GET NEXT TO YOU  2:53
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 7/30/69

PSYCHEDELIC SHACK  3:53
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 12/29/69

BALL OF CONFUSION (THAT’S WHAT THE WORLD IS TODAY)  4:04
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 5/7/70
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Side 5

FUNKY MUSIC SHO NUFF TURNS ME ON
  2:57
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 6/1/72

I AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’  3:30
(C. Maurice Kong, Evans King)
Arranger: Paul Riser
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 7/27/72

OL’ MAN RIVER  4:24
(Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II)
T.B. Harms (ASCAP)
Producers: Frank Wilson & Jeffrey Bowen  11/27/67

TRY TO REMEMBER  3:02
(Tom Jones, Harvey Schmidt)
Chappell & Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producers: Frank Wilson & Jeffrey Bowen  11/27/67

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM  5:31
(Joe Darion, Mitch Lee)
Sam Fox Publishing Co., Helena Music Corp. & Andrew Scott, Inc. (ASCAP)
Producers: Frank Wilson & Jeffrey Bowen  11/27/67

I’M GONNA MAKE YOU LOVE ME  2:40
Diana Ross and The Supremes & The Temptations
(Ken Gamble, Jerry Ross, Jerry Williams)
MRC Music Inc. (BMI)
Producers: Frank Wilson & Jeffrey Bowen  11/21/68
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Side 6

JUST MY IMAGINATION
(RUNNING AWAY WITH ME)  3:39
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Orchestration Direction: Jerry Lloyd
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 1/14/71

SUPERSTAR (REMEMBER HOW YOU GOT WHERE YOU ARE)  2:52
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Orchestration Direction: Paul Riser
Stone Agate Music Division (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 10/19/71

MOTHER NATURE  2:59
(Nick Zesses, Dino Fekaris)
Orchestration Direction: Paul Riser
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 6/1/72

LOVE WOKE ME UP THIS MORNING  2:38
(Nickolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson)
Arranger: Paul Riser
Jobete Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 7/27/72

PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE  6:58
(Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
Arranger: Paul Riser
Stone Diamond Music Corp. (BMI)
Producer: Norman Whitfield 9/6/72
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I’ve always liked those periods of history that could be broken down into easily-identifiable chunks, pre-war and post-war, before the revolution and after, or eras like the Industrial Revolution; all those chapter titles in high school text books.  Everything broke down into labeled slices of time, neat bundles (Victorian England, The Depression Years) that fit nicely into those charts we were always making and sat there like slabs of meat and cheese in a delicatessen freezer.  So it’s always disillusioning to find out that real history isn’t so neat, doesn’t come in over 300 pre-cut pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.  I mean, here I was all ready to fit The Temptations piece into this sprawling Motown puzzle and instead of it being one of those comfortably sharp-edged bits of history with an amoeba-like interlocking arm, it just refuses to take any simple shape at all.

The problem is, I tend to approach The Temptations as just another readily-schematized piece of Motown history.  Certainly one of the more complex pieces, especially in recent years, but still I figured it would break down into a classic sub-divided chart.  Something like this: The Smokey Robinson Era/The Norman Whitfield Era and then, sub-categories like: David Ruffin/post-David Ruffin/post-Eddie Kendricks.  Maybe even further divisions on the order of pre-“Cloud Nine,” post-“Cloud Nine,” pre-“Papa Was A Rolling Stone,” etc.  Nice, huh?  Only I’m beginning to realize the story is much more free form, closer to a Victorian novel than a history book outline.  So rather than getting out a piece of lined paper and a ruler and setting up some sort of tight historical graph – The Temptations 1960-1973 – I’ll try to sketch in the characters and plot and emphasize the action along the way.

A BRIEF PRE-HISTORY & A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

As Eddie Kendricks remembers it, he and Paul Williams left Birmingham, Alabama, for Detroit, intent on re-building a singing group called The Primes whose other original members had broken off along the way.  In Detroit they met Otis Williams (real name, Otis Miles) and Melvin Franklin (real name, David English), survivors of another splintered group, The Distants, and together they shed their old group names to become The Elgins.  (Although somewhere in there, as The Primes, they formed a sister group named, rather predictably, The Primettes, who in turn grabbed a sizable chunk of history for themselves by becoming The Supremes.)  The fifth original member of The Elgins when they first signed with Berry Gordy’s newly formed Motown Records was a guy named Elbridge Bryant who, according to Smokey Robinson, recorded a few of the tracks on MEET THE TEMPTATIONS (and, with Otis, Melvin and Gordy himself, wrote one of my favorite cuts, “Check Yourself”) before leaving the group in 1963.  Bryant is one of those deleted footnotes in history because by the time the group assumed the last in its progression of stylish names – The Temptations – and got what their press releases like to call their “first smash hit” – “The Way You Do The Things You Do” – his place had been taken rather decisively by a tall young man in glasses named David Ruffin who’d been in the Motown stable as a solo artist.

The group’s early biographies were the best: full of strange facts strung together with no attempt to be relevant (no one really worried about being “relevant” until after 1967 anyway), they were somehow always engaging.  Again, like a jigsaw puzzle – you knew you weren’t getting all the pieces but fitting together what little you had was fun nevertheless.  I have a whole page of these bios torn from a pulp-paper music magazine in 1965, I think, and pretty yellowed now.  There’s a photograph of the group arranged on a stairway, wearing sharp onstage uniforms with rolled collars, white bow ties and processes.  Under DAVID RUFFIN it says: “He was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on January 18, 1941.  He moved to Detroit when he was very young and makes his home there.  He is 6’3” tall and weighs 154 lbs.  He likes to swim, ride and hi-jump.  He considers himself outgoing but gives the impression of being rather more self-contained.  He likes soul food.  He says that he would like to sleep for a week if he could do anything in the world.  He hates being in a crowd that pulls at him.  His favorite actor is Richard Burton and his favorite actress is Sophia Loren.  He loves to travel.  He has one goal in life and that is to keep singing.”

We are told that Eddie Kendricks collects record players and would like to own a big house with a swimming pool someday.  “Paul is the comic of the group… His parents wanted him to be a shoe repairman but are highly pleased now that he didn’t become one.”  Melvin is identified as the spokesman for the group – a position he apparently continues to hold – and a fan of Marvel Comics as well as “a responsible person who likes loud, rowdy people.”  But it was this sentence about Otis Williams that always fascinated me: “He is absolutely sure that having shell peanuts in a car is bad luck and presents authentically documented cases of this little-known evil.”  Nobody ever tells you things like that any more.

THE EARLY YEARS: THE SMOKEY YEARS.

The Temptations’ first few singles with Motown were written and produced by Berry Gordy in 1962 and 1963.  “Dream Come True,” “Paradise” and “Farewell My Love” sound astonishingly pure today, somewhat unpolished, with very sparse arrangements and emphasis on the interplay of voices, though even this was minimal compared to their later work.  William “Smokey” Robinson, who had known Melvin and Otis together at Detroit’s Northwestern High School, tried his hand at writing and producing with the group first with “I Want A Love I Can See” in 1963 but hit big the following year with “The Way You Do The Things You Do.”  Although The Temptations were being spoken of as a group with five lead singers, Eddie Kendricks’ sweet lead on “The Way You Do The Things You Do” established him as one of the central voices of the group, just as the success of the song established Smokey Robinson as the group’s main producer.  “I’d always liked them and liked their sound,” Robinson recalls, “because they always reminded me of a church group.  They always had that churchy kind of feeling, the soulful sound, from the high tenor to the low bass.”

With “The Way You Do The Things You Do” as the opening cut, the early work by The Temptations was collected for an introductory package titled MEET THE TEMPTATIONS.  With production credit shared by Robinson and Gordy, the album may sound even better today than it did in 1964 if only because it documents a beautiful style we seem to have lost irrevocably only one or two years after.  The Tempts’ next single carried this sound to a more sophisticated level and introduces another key character into the story.  Smokey Robinson’s “I’ll Be In Trouble” was the A-side and the B-side, “The Girl’s Alright With Me,” was written by the team of Eddie Holland, Eddie Kendricks and Norman Whitfield (other team collaborations: “Lonely, Lonely Man Am I” on GETTIN’ READY and “No Man Can Love Her Like I Do” on WISH IT WOULD RAIN).  Whitfield’s name had already appeared on the group’s first album where he shared credits for “The Further You Look, The Less You See” with Smokey, but this time his song got noticed, so much so that the company was eventually convinced to turn the 45 over and feature the B-side as well.  An early clue to a new direction.

Whitfield and Holland scored again with “Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue),” still featuring Kendricks and some very snappy handclapping and drumming, but it was Robinson who gave The Temptations their first real triumph – “My Girl.”  Smokey remembers having taped the rhythm track to “My Girl” prior to a week’s joint engagement for both The Miracles and The Temptations at the Apollo Theater.  He brought the tape along with him and, as he recalls, “All week long after every show, we would go up into The Temptations’ dressing room – they were on the top floor up there – and we’d rehearse that song and a couple of others over and over again.”  When the week was over they returned to Detroit and recorded “My Girl” just before Smokey and The Miracles left for another group of appearances.  The song moved so fast that by the time Robinson got back to Motown it was already well on its way to becoming The Temptations’ first number one single.  And the first in a solid line of Robinson beauties that was to carry the group through the next two years in fine style.

“I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day/When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May.”  I don’t care whether Bob Dylan did or didn’t call him one of the greatest living poets, Smokey Robinson is one of the finest contemporary lyricists and much of his best work was with The Temptations.  “My Girl” was the big attraction on THE TEMPTATIONS SING SMOKEY (who looks all of seventeen in this picture on the cover, a roll of sheet music under his arm) but the group’s second album also contained that single’s follow-up, the delightful “It’s Growing,” and new versions of some of the most beautiful songs Motown ever released: “Who’s Lovin’ You,” “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me,” “What’s So Good About Goodbye” – it’s a long list.  Other Smokey productions followed: THE TEMPTIN’ TEMPTATIONS, with the white-on-white cover, which went back and picked up on some pre-“My Girl” work like the two Whitfield/Holland compositions mentioned above (and included in the present package) and continued the progression with “Since I Lost My Baby,” “My Baby,” “Don’t Look Back,” and “You’ve Got To Earn It” (the first three of which are also included here).  “Since I Lost My Baby” was perhaps the epitome of this period and lyrically the reverse of “My Girl.”  Where once love had transformed a cloudy day with its own source of sunshine, now the absence of love can take the sun away: “Sun is shining, there’s plenty of light/New day is dawning, sunny and bright/But after I’ve been crying all night/The sun is cold and the new day seems old.”  David Ruffin sings with the most touching ache in his voice and the group is all sweet and sympathy behind him.  The sweep of strings that opens the song, like the first few notes of “My Girl,” still has the ability to tear me apart and I’ll never stop marveling at Smokey’s tumble of wordplay: “Every day I’m more inclined to find her/inclined to/find her/inclined to/find my baby.”

The GETTIN’ READY album was also credited to Smokey Robinson and was obviously keyed to his last big single with The Tempts, an unusually upbeat “Get Ready.”  But the album also contained a song that was to be a turning point for the group, a Holland/Whitfield composition/production titled “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.”  As one of the group’s most powerful singles up to that point, it brought David Ruffin’s voice into a new kind of prominence, emphasizing the harder, raw-edged qualities in his style and enabling him to fill out his extraordinary range unrestrained by Robinson’s tendency to sweeter, more tender songs and productions.  My favorite cuts on GETTIN’ READY were still in the classic Robinson mold – “Little Miss Sweetness,” “You’re Not An Ordinary Girl,” even a Whitfield-as-Smokey tune called “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby” – but the direction was already changing; you can’t argue with a hit.  The next single release was, sure enough, another Whitfield/Holland record, “Beauty Is Only Skin Deep,” very transitional in feeling.

NORMAN WHITFIELD, THE DEPARTURE OF DAVID RUFFIN AND THE BIG MAKE-OVER.

Inquiring Reporters: “At what point did you stop working with The Temptations?  Was there a reason?”  Smokey Robinson: “Because Norman Whitfield just started to bang out hit after hit after hit on them after ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.’  That was the main reason – because I felt they were in good hands.”  Of course, there wasn’t an immediate, clear-cut break between Smokey Robinson as a producer and The Temptations, just as there was no definite point of take-over by Norman Whitfield since he was contributing to the group’s work from the beginning.  As Whitfield describes the situation, outside of THE TEMPTATIONS SING SMOKEY, the amount of work given to a specific producer was “like a see-saw in the early years.  No one ever had an exclusive on the group.  At Motown, everything was based strictly on competition which kept a lot of energies in the production.  Competition breeds champions, and this was Berry’s philosophy to keep anyone from becoming complacent by having an automatic exclusive on the group.”  Whitfield also explains that, in most cases, production credit would be given to the producer who had the majority of the productions in an album (this was at a time when the concentration was on singles and LPs would only be put together when enough material from singles production had been accumulated).

Although the fifth Temptations album (not counting a LIVE release and a GREATEST HITS collection in the interim) was dominated by Whitfield material, WITH A LOT O’ SOUL was so transitional it doesn’t even list a producer.  The three William Robinson songs are essentially fillers, and there’s a Frank Wilson production, “All I Need,” that’s nice but too much like Whitfield or the Holland-Dozier-Holland numbers The Supremes were knocking everybody out with.  But the real meat was in “(I Know) I’m Losing You” and “You’re My Everything.”  Ruffin was out front more than ever now, screaming like no one else could, and Whitfield knew how to use him to the best effect.  Playing Kendricks’ falsetto against Ruffin’s husky cries in “You’re My Everything” sounds as brilliant today as then.  The production became more dense, the sound more intense, tougher.  Yet Whitfield was far from settling into a predictable style, and his first album with a producer credit, WISH IT WOULD RAIN, seemed to contradict many of the moves he’d been making previously.  Again, there were a number of songs by Robinson and others, but even the Whitfield cuts – “I Wish It Would Rain,” “Please Return Your Love To Me” and “I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)” included in this collection – are sweeter and, with the exception of “Rain,” not as interesting as the work that led up to them.  A production note: For the first time, Whitfield introduced sound effects into his music with the bird cries and thunder claps of “I Wish It Would Rain;” it was like opening Pandora’s box, though not entirely without its excitements and rewards.

A SWITCH IN STYLE.

If any historic before-and-after can be made in The Temptations’ career, it’s right about here, toward the end of 1968, when two not totally coincidental events changed the group completely.  First, David Ruffin, increasingly The Tempts’ featured singer left “to pursue a solo career” as they say, to be replaced by Dennis Edwards, formerly lead with The Contours.  Then, Norman Whitfield teamed with Barrett Strong, gave them “Cloud Nine.”  It’s hard to go back today and imagine what a surprising sound that was at the time.  It’s not that we’d never heard anything like it – Whitfield admits his debt to Sly & The Family Stone – but we’d certainly never heard anything like it by The Temptations or any other rhythm & blues-identified group.  It was the New Frontier, though a lot of people weren’t sure they wanted to go there.  “Cloud Nine” marked a turning point for the black Message Song, as well.  Curtis Mayfield (“He used to be my idol a long time ago,” Whitfield says) and James Brown had delivered eloquent messages before (and continued to do so), but Whitfield seemed to have discovered the strongest medium; he knew what McLuhan was saying.  The new sound came first, but it was sayin’ something.

Although the switch in style came at a time when the group might have floundered slightly behind the loss of their strong lead voice, Whitfield had already been contemplating a change in direction (in fact, as Otis remembers it, he’d already cut the track for “Cloud Nine” before Ruffin made his move).  “It took a lot of research,” Whitfield says, “and I really consider myself somewhat of a perfectionist.  I don’t like to speculate and I don’t like to take chances with the guys.  My thing was to try and revolutionize the sound – cause it was a challenge to me, too – but without speculating.  With Dennis Edwards in the group, I was trying to keep him from trying to assume the role of being David Ruffin and establish his own identity yet still not placing all the value on one individual.”  So he broke down the traditional lead/chorus structure of the group and, like Sly & The Family Stone, gave everyone in the group an equal weight.  The vocal movement was accelerated and the production heightened: swirls of electronic effects, lots of Latin percussion and congas, wah wah guitars, echoes, sound effects, voices used like instruments, scatting.  Nouveau soul.

Though excessive at times, Whitfield was also among the first to make successful experiments with long cuts, pushing the limits of the Motown song (and, by extension all pop music) past the three-minute barrier.  On CLOUD NINE, the big break-through album (remember the “psychedelic” cover?), “Runaway Child, Running Wild” ran 9:38 (only Whitfield seemed to take it all back on the album’s second side where it’s practically 1965 again with a run of love songs all under three minutes).  PUZZLE PEOPLE and PSYCHEDELIC SHACK were more confident, though most of us didn’t even want to hear the word “psychedelic” in 1970.  “Message From A Black Man,” on PUZZLE PEOPLE is still one of Whitfield’s most successful message cuts with The Temptations and one of his strongest statements.  PSYCHEDELIC SHACK, represented here by its title cut, is a mixed bag, experimenting with time and ideas in a way later perfected into a Norman Whitfield trademark.

MORE CHANGE. 
A BRIEF NOTE OR TWO ON SIDE 5.


Early in 1971, shortly after The Temptations’ surprising reversal of mood with a Kendricks-led sweet ballad – one of their sweetest ever – “Just My Imagination,” Eddie Kendricks left the group to record on his own.  His replacement was a young man from Baltimore with a strikingly similar voice named Damon Harris.  About the same time, Paul Williams retired from the group due to “illness” and was quickly replaced by Richard Street, another former member of The Distants and a Motown group, The Monitors.  Musical chairs.  The current Temptations line-up is: Melvin Franklin, Otis Williams, Dennis Edwards, Richard Street and Damon Harris.  Like they say in the press release, they’re an institution.  There will always be a Temptations.

Side 5 is a Change-of-Pace, emphasizing The Temptations, according to the album title, IN A MELLOW MOOD and including cuts from that 1967 LP like “The Impossible Dream,” “Try To Remember” and an incredible “Ol’ Man River.”  “I Ain’t Got Nothin’” is in a similar mood, though much more contemporary – from the ALL DIRECTIONS album, “Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On” starts the side and frames the softer cuts along with the duet hit, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” from the album JOIN which The Temptations recorded with Diana Ross & The Supremes, bringing back memories of the two original T.V. soundtrack albums T.C.B. and ON BROADWAY that the groups recorded together in the late sixties.

ALL DIRECTIONS

With the most recent material represented here, from SKY’S THE LIMIT, SOLID ROCK and ALL DIRECTIONS, Whitfield continues to take the group higher.  In a variety of styles: the soft lushness of “Just My Imagination” and “Love Woke Me Up This Morning,” the double-punch of “Superstar,” the plaintive call to “Mother Nature.”  But the crowning touch is appropriately one of Whitfield’s most adventurous productions, “Papa Was A Rolling Stone.”  Gorgeously hypnotic, the composition builds like an intricate spider’s web with that miles-deep bass drawing you closer and closer into the center.  When Dennis Edwards comes in with that first line, “It was the third of September…,” you’re completely hooked.  On a delicious chunk of history.  It’s been a tremendous ten year serving – hit songs – hit albums – a full decade of hit records and hit appearances.  But The Temptations (Elbridge Bryant, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams and the present group, Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, Dennis Edwards, Richard Street and Damon Harris) have laid out a whole feast here; a turntable full of rich desserts.  You don’t really need a menu, just take it all.

– Vince Aletti
(Noted writer and frequent contributor to Rolling Stone and Creem)
__________________________________________________

Illustrations – Frank Frezzo

Design – Desmond Strobel/AGI

Photos: Jim Britt


STEREO

MOTOWN

(P) 1973 Motown Record Corporation  © 1973 Motown Record Corporation, Hollywood, California 90028. All Rights Reserved. Trademark Motown Record Corporation. Printed in U.S.A.


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