Temptations (Updated), page 9
Back home in Detroit, Smokey Robinson caught our act at the Twenty Grand one evening. One of our numbers featured each of us singing a part. The title of it escapes me, but I do remember that we brought the house down with it. After we came offstage that night, Smokey approached us and, pointing directly at David, said, “I’ve got a song for you.”
It turned out to be a tune Smokey and Ronnie White had written and planned to cut with the Miracles. It was midtempo ballad with a pretty, sweet melody. From the first lines—“I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day / When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May”—we knew we had something very special. That fall, during a run at the Apollo, Smokey came to New York to work with us in our dressing room between shows. He taught us to sing the parts as he heard them and perfect those intricate harmonies. On December 21 we recorded “My Girl” in Detroit. It was David’s first lead on a single.
We recorded our vocals over a basic track, so what we heard was basically bass, drums, and guitar. Smokey worked up those lush string parts with Paul Riser, a classically trained musician who wrote most of the orchestral music on Motown records. We listened in the studio as Smokey added the “sweetening,” and by the time he was finished with the mix, it was the most gorgeous, magical love song I’d ever heard. There was no question in our minds that we had the big one here.
Sometime around then, the five of us were talking one day about how it seemed that so many good groups broke up just when things got good. We were thinking specifically of Tony Williams’s leaving the Platters, but we knew of dozens of groups who’d let their petty nonsense ruin a good thing. It seemed to be one of the hazards of the business. Paul said, “Well, we don’t care how big we get, we’re going to stay together.” And so we took a vow, promising one another that we wouldn’t fall into that trap. Paul, Eddie, David, Melvin, and I were the Temptations and always would be. We truly believed that.
Christmas Day we did a Motortown Revue at the Brooklyn Fox with the Supremes, the Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles, and Stevie Wonder. The next day Motown released “My Girl,” and it charted at number seventy-six three weeks later. Talk about a merry Christmas.
“My Girl” continued to climb to and hit number one on March 6, 1965. By then it had sold at least a million copies. Berry sent us a congratulatory telegram, which we received while we were playing the Apollo, and setting more records. I remember feeling like I was going to burst from pride. Everywhere you walked in Detroit that spring all you heard was “My Girl.” By then, Motown had come to own Detroit. Wherever you went, if they knew you were with Motown, out came the red carpet. There was no more standing in line, no more waiting for anything. Despite all the success, Motown remained more a family than a business. When we didn’t have shows, rehearsals, or recording, all of us would stand out on the front lawn and crack jokes half the day. I remember Marvin Gaye, Norman Whitfield, Shorty Long, Smokey, Lamont Dozier, the Holland brothers, and us out there. People would ride by and honk their horns at us and wave. Some fans even made pilgrimages to Hitsville as part of their vacations, like going to Disneyland. Once when I saw Esther Edwards leading a pack of tourists through the studios, I stopped one of them and asked, “You mean to tell me you all left beautiful L.A. to come and spend your time here in Detroit?”
“Oh yeah,” the star-struck man replied. “We just couldn’t help it. We wanted to see you guys.”
Living in the middle of it, we had no real grasp of what Motown was becoming. For one thing, we had nothing to compare it to. How other record companies functioned was a total mystery to us, though as we would learn, there are two ways to run a record company: the industry way and the Motown way. And at that time, the Motown way was doing just fine by us. I remember somebody from the office boarding a tour bus and handing each of us a check—the royalties off one hit. Mine was for 18,000.
We felt that we were on our way, but even before the first hit, Paul had his sights set on where we should be going. “Man,” Paul would say, “we’ve got to play Vegas and Atlantic City. The white folks don’t want to see no guys out there bumpin’ and grindin’ and carrying on.” Plus, we didn’t want to be guys out there bumpin’ and grindin’ and carrying on.
The company was starting to boom. In March 1965 Harvey Fuqua convinced Motown to bring Cholly Atkins into artist development. We’d long been admirers of Cholly’s choreography for Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Cadillacs, the Cleftones, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Moonglows, Little Anthony and the Imperials, and others. We’d finally gotten some of that magic ourselves when he devised a routine for us to use on “The Way You Do the Things You Do” in 1964.
Cholly was in his early fifties when he came to Motown after a long and successful career as a professional dancer. During the 1930s, Cholly was one half of a song-and-dance team called the Rhythm Pals, which appeared in several Hollywood films. After that, he joined forces with Charles “Honi” Coles, a tap dancer who at one time also managed the Apollo. It was through working at the Apollo that Cholly met many of the young vocal groups he later choreographed.
There weren’t a lot of guys doing what Cholly did. What set Cholly’s work apart from other choreographers’ was that he built everything around the singing. Anybody can cook up a series of eye-popping moves, but to create dance that takes into consideration such things as the stage layout, the placement of microphones and cords, and how the hell you are going to move, sing, and still breathe takes a scientific approach and attention to detail. His routines incorporated dozens of tiny, nearly imperceptible movements—hitch steps, subtle turns and shifts, a little sway here or there—that when you followed them to the letter landed you in the precise spot at the exact second. However, miss one of those suckers and you were totally out of it. Just about anyone else’s choreography allowed you a few beats for “correction,” but not Cholly’s.
It was one thing for Cholly to dream up these things, but it was something else for us to learn them. Of course, Paul had started us, and he’d even made a dancer out of me, the kid whose dance-hall name was “Wallflower.” But as good as we were with that, Cholly took us into a whole other dimension. On average, learning a new routine took about two or three weeks of dance rehearsals for five or six hours a day. And while Cholly was a gentleman in all respects, he could be tough. His goal was to turn out acts with routines so ingrained in their minds that once the opening chords of any song hit your ears, your body went on automatic pilot. I remember going home after a long rehearsal, sitting down to watch television, and in my head hearing a little voice saying, “Kick, step, two, three, turn, one, two, three.” In the studio Cholly didn’t allow for one iota of deviation, and if you messed up he let you know it. We’d be sweating and concentrating, then one guy would miss something, and Cholly would yell, “You greasy snotsucker! Can’t you count?”
“Pops, why do you have to call me that?” I asked once.
“I don’t know. Because you are! Now, come on,” he’d reply as he marched over and grabbed one of us by the wrist and start walking him through the steps.
Pairing us up with Cholly was a match made in heaven and would be so for years to come. In 1983 he worked up a routine for our song “Sail Away,” a pretty ballad that ends with an African beat. During that part, Cholly had us moving back off the mike, tightening our midsections and hunching our shoulders. It was quite dramatic, and one day a woman who saw us said, “You know, when you all do that move at the end of ‘Sail Away,’ my seat gets wet.”
When I relayed the story to Cholly, now in his seventies, he replied, “That’s right. You want to touch them women and make them start thinking sexual. I know what them women like.” And he did.
Also that March, the Motown Revue went to England. “My Girl” was not that high on the British charts, but from the moment we landed in London, we were in love with the country and its people, who ever since, for the past two and a half decades, have always treated us with love and respect. We didn’t stay for the whole tour but did appear with the Supremes, the Miracles, the Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, and Dusty Springfield on a BBC special called The Sounds of Motown, which is now available on videocassette under the title Ready Steady Go! Special Edition: The Sounds of Motown. We performed “My Girl,” “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” and our then-latest single, “It’s Growing.”
At the time, we each had a group responsibility. Eddie took care of uniforms, Paul fined you if he caught you messing up onstage, Melvin handled finances, and David oversaw transportation. My job as group spokesperson and de facto leader was to see that nobody got too far out of pocket. I levied fines for things like lateness, excessive drinking, and smoking dope. This one day we were all at the Cumberland Hotel, and I decided to go down to David and Eddie’s room and see what was happening. I knocked on the door, then one of them yelled, “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Otis.”
“Oh, shit!” one of them whispered loud enough that I could hear. A second later, the other one called out, “Just a minute,” using one of those “I’m freaked but I’m cool” tones you get from guilty kids.
One minute, two minutes, three minutes went by. What the hell was going on in there? If I’d caught them smoking dope, I’d have fined their asses a hundred dollars, which in those days wasn’t chump change. But whatever they might have been up to, I never did find out.
During the summer we did one of Murray the K’s shows at the Brooklyn Fox. Murray the K was a hot New York City disc jockey who was also known as the fifth Beatle and, for a while, the sixth Temptation. Murray was a nice guy, and his shows always had the top acts. I recall one bill with us, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Tom Jones, the Ronettes, and the Shangri-Las. All of the girls were real cute, but, of course, the Ronettes were the hottest. At the time, Tom Jones’s career had just taken off with “It’s Not Unusual.” He later smoothed out his appearance a bit, but then he was pretty rugged and chasing Ronnie Bennett (later Spector) of the Ronettes.
What I remember most vividly about that run was walking out the stage door in the wee hours of the morning and seeing people lined up, bundled in sleeping bags, waiting for the next show. These were great shows, and you worked your ass off for pay that averaged out to about ten bucks per guy per show. Still there was no place else I wanted to be then.
“My Girl” opened the door for us, and slowly but surely things got bigger and better. The crowds were wilder, the halls were bigger—even the groupies were classier. Of course that didn’t mean that next week they wouldn’t all be with the O’Jays or whoever else came through, but that was how it was. All that female attention could compromise your judgment, so you had to watch yourself. But overall, these were good times.
More than once, each of us was the target of a jealous boyfriend’s rage. One night we were playing the Twenty Grand to a packed house. From backstage we could hear women hollering, “The Tempts! The Tempts!” Once the show ended, I was walking toward my car when a young lady called out, “Oh, please, would you sign your autograph for me?”
I said, “Sure,” and took the paper and pen she offered me, but the whole time I could see that she wanted me to say, “What’s your name, darlin’? What’s your number?” As I was signing my name, a guy came and grabbed her tightly by the arm and snapped, “Not this one, motherfucker, this is mine.”
“Hey, man,” I replied coolly, “I’m just signing the autograph. I wasn’t saying nothin’ else to your woman.”
“I just want to make sure,” the guy said, “because she’s my wife, and all I’ve been hearing from her is ‘Temptations this, Temptations that.’ I got so tired of hearing about the damn Temptations that I decided to come down and see you guys.” He paused for a minute. “And you know what? Yeah, you all are bad. I like you. But this is my woman.”
“Fine,” I said. He offered his hand, we shook, and I split.
One time the jealous boyfriend was Kenny Gamble, who thought that David was moving in on his girlfriend (later wife), singer Dee Dee Sharp of “Mashed Potato Time” fame. Kenny was in a group called Kenny Gamble and the Romeos, which included future producer Thom Bell. We were playing the Uptown in Philadelphia when we got wind that Kenny might be thinking of bringing down some guys to jump David Ruffin. Naturally the four of us went to David’s defense, and I told Kenny, “You might be in your hometown, but it ain’t like we can’t pick up the phone.” David was unharmed, and Kenny and I became close friends. By the mid-sixties he and Leon Huff had their own label, and through the years produced Wilson Pickett, the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Jacksons, and others. Kenny and I would shoot pool and talk about the business.
For the most successful Motown acts this was the dawn of a golden era. But for others, the so-called B acts, whose hits weren’t as big or as consistent, it was the beginning of a slow and, for some, bitter decline. Smokey wrote and produced most of our hits then, and since he was one of Berry’s closest friends and a vice president of the company, some other artists assumed that we had an “in.” We’d come to Motown with a group organization, and I dealt with Berry directly, just as I’d dealt with Johnnie Mae. Not all acts had that kind of thing with him, but I don’t know why. We pretty much kept to our own business. Each act was out on the road almost constantly, so Hitsville wasn’t the same friendly hangout.
Being back in Detroit meant being back in the studio. We recorded live then, with all the musicians in the room playing as we sang. The Funk Brothers, Motown’s studio band, must go down in history as one of the best groups of musicians anywhere. Each of them was a master in his own right, and sometimes I’d get so wrapped up listening to them, I’d miss my cue and forget to sing. They’d also get their little barbs in. James Jamerson was a funny guy, and so was Eddie “Bongo” Brown, a percussionist. If one of us goofed, it meant starting the song over from the top, and that was always the musicians’ chance to make a nasty crack, like, “Those damn doo-wops.” Then someone else would say, “Yeah, you know they can’t even doo-wop right.” Or, “You guys better be glad that you got the Funk Brothers behind you, or you wouldn’t sound like nothin’.” Generally, we could cut a track in three to four hours and wrap up a whole album inside a week. Even though today technology affords artists the chance to make perfect records, they still haven’t come up with the machine that puts in that special electricity and energy of those live records.
Our following two singles, “It’s Growing” and “Since I Lost My Baby,” featured David. “Since I Lost My Baby” is one of my favorite songs. That fall we released one of the few singles to feature Paul, “Don’t Look Back.” Although Norman Whitfield was getting in a song here and there, we were still primarily Smokey Robinson’s act, and Smokey wrote with David or Eddie in mind. Paul wasn’t exactly bitter about this, but he did make it known that he’d like to do more singing. “Shit,” he would say, “I can sing too!” No one could argue with that, but no one seemed to be writing for him either.
I remember doing “Don’t Look Back” during a run at Leo’s Casino in Cleveland a couple years later. Leo’s was small but well known for bringing in great acts, such as Chuck Jackson and the O’Jays. Once again we were in a battle of the groups, this time against the O’Jays. Cleveland being their hometown put us at a disadvantage. In those days there were five O’Jays—Eddie Levert, Walter Williams, William Powell, Bobby Massey, and Bill Isles—and from the dressing room we heard the applause through the walls. They were killing that audience with a tune called “Stand in for Love.” We’d been on the road for a week, doing four shows a day, and we were dead tired, but somehow we rose to the challenge. “Okay, guys,” I said, “we’re really going to have to go for it.”
We got onstage, did a little this, a little that, went into “My Girl,” and bingo! We had that crowd dying for us. But the real capper came when Paul did “Don’t Look Back” because we had a part in the routine where we all fanned out across the stage slick as water, leaving Paul in the center. At that point he’d start breaking the song down and really milking it as only he could. By the time we wrapped the show up, it was “O’Jays who?” From then on we did “Don’t Look Back” just about every place we played.
Late in 1965 Motown released our third LP, titled after our now-famous introduction, Temptin’ Temptations. Starting with the second album, The Temptations Sing Smokey, more thought went into the filler tracks, and so these records still hold up today. But as much as I liked most of the tunes (including “Born to Love You,” on which Jimmy Ruffin sings with us), I can’t look at the cover—with us in white suits and black shoes—without wincing a little. For all of our style and class, we didn’t have those damn white shoes when we needed them.
Everything seemed to happen in 1965, and things moved in a flash, so it’s hard to find any benchmark. It was that year, though, when it struck me and, I’m sure the rest of the guys, that we were bigger than we ever dared imagine. I remembered back to when I’d have been walking on air just to get into the Arcadia and challenge the Cadets. Everything seemed so unreal, and the extent of our success didn’t finally sink in until we did The Ed Sullivan Show.
The fact that the show was broadcast live and we would be seen by tens of millions of people didn’t escape us. We stood backstage in our sleek black-and-gray tuxes, praying to God, “Please, please, please let me hit my note and make my steps. Don’t let me make a fool of myself.” Our tuxes were wringing wet with perspiration, and our mouths were dry as cotton. Of course, Eddie always had that cool exterior, so he seemed fine, and David had a way of making things seem more manageable: “It ain’t nothin’ but another television show,” he said, then proceeded to go out and kick ass. I couldn’t stop having one of my many conversations with myself. “Otis, there are millions of people out there watching your black ass. Do not mess up!”
