The Temptations
With five voices and footsteps that moved as one body, the group that set Motown's elegance upon the stage.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- PatronBerry Gordy
The Motown founder who signed the group in 1961, he led the company that sustained them through three years of obscurity on the way to success.
- ColleagueSmokey Robinson
The songwriter and producer who wrote "The Way You Do the Things You Do" and "My Girl," giving the group its first hit and its first No. 1.
- MentorCholly Atkins
Motown's choreographer, who refined Paul Williams's early moves and perfected the group's stagecraft, epitomized by the Temptation Walk.
- ColleagueNorman Whitfield
The producer who took charge of the group in 1966 and steered it from gritty soul to psychedelic soul, the man who shaped both its peak and its conflicts.
- InfluenceSly Stone
The sound of Sly and the Family Stone, which mixed rock with funk and had its members trade the lead, was a direct spur to the change of direction that followed “Cloud Nine.”
- ColleagueRick James
Melvin Franklin's nephew, he wrote and produced “Standing on the Top,” the first single from the 1982 reunion album.
I. Two roots · 1939–1961
(Formation) In 1960, in Detroit, Michigan, members of two vocal groups that were falling apart came together as one. On one side were the Distants, led by Otis Williams; on the other, the Primes, whose ranks had included Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams, both from Birmingham, Alabama. Otis, Melvin Franklin, Elbridge 'Al' Bryant, Kendricks and Paul Williams would later become the first face of the Temptations. (The South) Most of the members were children of Black families who had moved from the South to the industrial cities of the North. Otis Williams was born Otis Miles Jr. in 1941 in Texarkana, Texas, and was raised by his grandmothers until, at around ten, he came to his mother in Detroit. Melvin Franklin (born David Melvin English) was born in 1942 in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew up in Detroit. His deep, low bass voice was already famous around the neighborhood when he was in his teens. (Church) Kendricks and Paul Williams were best friends who had grown up together in Birmingham's Ensley neighborhood, and they began singing in church. In the mid-1950s the two formed a group called the Cavaliers and made their way through Cleveland to Detroit, where they performed as the Primes. From then on, Kendricks's high, slender falsetto and Paul Williams's warm baritone were a pair. (Coming together) The Distants won some notice in 1959 when they released “Come On” on the local Northern label, but members kept leaving. When the Primes, too, broke apart, Otis brought in Kendricks and Paul Williams. The new group first called itself the Elgins, and in 1961, after passing an audition at Motown, the label Berry Gordy had founded, it changed its name to the Temptations. Accounts differ as to who first suggested the name.
II. Unknowns at Hitsville · 1961–1965
(Obscurity) The three years after signing were long. Beginning with “Oh, Mother of Mine,” released in 1961 on the subsidiary Miracle label, single after single failed, and inside the company a joke went around about “the Hitless Temptations.” Meanwhile, at the Hitsville U.S.A. studio, the members lent handclaps and backing vocals to other singers' sessions, absorbing the Motown way of working firsthand. (Lineup change) In late 1963, after a fistfight with Paul Williams, Al Bryant left the group. The empty place was filled by David Ruffin, from Mississippi. Born in 1941 the son of a Baptist minister, he lost his mother as an infant and grew up touring the gospel circuit with his brother Jimmy Ruffin. His baritone, shot through with a rough grain, stood at the opposite pole from Kendricks's falsetto. (Smokey) The man who broke through the impasse was Smokey Robinson, leader of the Miracles and one of Motown's key songwriters. “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” which he wrote with Bobby Rogers, reached No. 11 on the pop chart in early 1964 and became their first hit. Robinson next wrote “My Girl” with Ronald White; with Ruffin on lead, the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1965. Given a major lead for the first time, Ruffin became the face of the group overnight. (Choreography) The stage act, too, was refined around this time. On top of the early moves Paul Williams had worked out, Cholly Atkins, the choreographer Motown had brought in, layered intricate steps. The so-called 'Temptation Walk,' in which five men in matching suits glided as if they were one body, became the group's emblem. Otis, Melvin, Kendricks, Paul and Ruffin would later come to be known as the Classic Five.
The first hit, ending three years of obscurity. Smokey Robinson's witty song put Kendricks's falsetto forward as the group's first face.
- From start to finish Kendricks carries the lead in falsetto, the voice with which a man floats lightly up into a high register, and because he never pushes, it sounds all the more buoyant.
- Robinson's signature, almost punning turn of phrase, praising a lover's charms by likening them one by one to everyday things, drives the fun of the song.
- Behind the lead, the other members, Melvin Franklin's low bass among them, answer with short harmonies, making the pattern of one voice calling and many responding (call and response) unmistakable.
- Handclaps and drums landing on beats two·four (the backbeat) push the song along at a tempo made for dancing.
Written by Robinson with Ruffin on lead, it was the group's first No. 1 on the pop chart and the song that opened the Classic Five era.
- In the intro, session bassist James Jamerson's short bass figure comes first, and guitarist Robert White's clear guitar riff (a short, repeated phrase) settles on top of it. Those few seconds set the impression of the whole song.
- Over finger snaps and low-lying harmonies, Ruffin begins softly, keeping his rough grain in check, and adds strength to his tone as the song goes on.
- Strings and horns are added a little more with each verse until the sound swells, and late in the song there is a moment when the pitch of the whole song steps up a notch (modulation), lifting the emotion one more time.
- The chorus, in which the members sing the title back, is a textbook example of trading lines with the lead (call and response).
III. The rough-voiced years · 1966–1968
(Whitfield) Around 1966 the group's producer's chair passed from Robinson to Norman Whitfield. Instead of sleek ballads, Whitfield wanted a hard sound with the drums and bass pushed forward, and he drove Ruffin's voice close to its limit. “Ain't Too Proud to Beg” (1966), written with Eddie Holland, went to No. 1 on the R&B chart, followed by “Beauty Is Only Skin Deep” and “(I Know) I'm Losing You.” (Loss) Bound up in “I Wish It Would Rain,” released in late 1967, is the story of lyricist Roger Penzabene. Penzabene, who wrote the song with Whitfield and Barrett Strong, was suffering through the collapse of his marriage, and on December 31, 1967, just after the single came out, he took his own life. A man's song about wanting to hide in the rain the tears he sheds for a lover who has left thus came to carry a real grief. (Conflict) Success also brought fractures. Ruffin, who had come to sing the most leads, demanded that his name be placed in front of the group's, as with Diana Ross & the Supremes, and he also asked Motown to open the books on the group's earnings. As his cocaine dependence deepened, he missed rehearsals and shows more and more often. In June 1968 the other four members put him out of the group. (Successor) His successor was Dennis Edwards, who had been singing with the Contours, another Motown group. Born in 1943 in Fairfield, Alabama, the son of a minister, and raised in Detroit, he too had a rough tone rooted in gospel. Even after he was fired, Ruffin would for a while turn up at the group's concerts and leap onto the stage, and the audiences, it is said, welcomed him.
The song in which Whitfield pushed Ruffin's voice to its limit. It stands on the border between the sleek Robinson era and a harder, rougher one.
- As Ruffin climbs into the high register he deliberately roughens his voice, as if scraping it, and that ragged grain carries the feeling of a narrator who, like a gospel preacher, casts off his pride and pleads.
- The hard rhythm, with drums and bass stepping forward to drive the song, is the starting point of the new sound Whitfield wanted.
- The members' harmonies answer the lead's cries in short bursts, sustaining the tension, and the song runs to the end without a single place to catch its breath.
- On TV stages of the day the group performed choreography to this song, stepping in unison and turning as one, fixing the image of the Temptations as a group in which song and dance were inseparable.
IV. Above the clouds · 1968–1971
(Turn) With Edwards's arrival, Whitfield changed course sharply. Spurred by the sound of Sly and the Family Stone, who mixed rock and funk and had their members trade the lead, he brought in wah-wah guitar, congas and long instrumental stretches. 1968's “Cloud Nine” was the first fruit of so-called psychedelic soul, and the following year it won the Grammy for best R&B vocal performance by a group, giving Motown its first Grammy. (The times) The world the songs took on grew wider, too. “Runaway Child, Running Wild,” “Psychedelic Shack” and “Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)” (1970) confronted head-on the turmoil of the age, from runaways and drugs to war and urban riots. Meanwhile, in 1968 the group made a joint album and the TV special “TCB” with Diana Ross & the Supremes, and their duet “I'm Gonna Make You Love Me” reached No. 2 on the pop chart. In 1969 “I Can't Get Next to You” took No. 1 once again. (Rifts) Within the group, disagreements over direction grew. Kendricks felt that between the socially charged songs and the long instrumental stretches there was less and less room for a vocal group, and he also clashed with the other members over how the group was run. Paul Williams was beset by debts from a failed clothing-store business, by drink and by failing health. There were even nights when Richard Street, hidden offstage, sang his parts for him. (Farewell) “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me),” released in early 1971, became the last hit the two made together. In a slow ballad, Whitfield's first return to the form in a long while, Kendricks took the lead in falsetto, and the song reached No. 1 on the pop chart. Around that time Kendricks chose a solo path and left the group, and Paul Williams, on his doctor's advice, withdrew from touring. Richard Street and Damon Harris filled the empty places.
The first song in which Whitfield changed course, just after Edwards joined. Psychedelic soul began here under the influence of Sly and the Family Stone, and it won Motown its first Grammy.
- The wah-wah guitar played by session guitarist Dennis Coffey (a guitar whose sound a foot pedal makes open and close with a 'wah-wah') forms the song's first impression.
- Percussion such as congas lays down a dense rhythm, and over it the guitar and bass interlock to build a far thicker groove than earlier Motown songs.
- No one member keeps the lead to himself; Edwards, Kendricks, Paul Williams and Melvin Franklin pass it back and forth in turn. Listen for the differences in their voices, and the group's range comes into view.
- It sings of longing to escape poverty and despair to somewhere beyond reality, and on its release it drew readings that it alluded to drugs, but the group said that was not what it meant.
The last hit Kendricks and Paul Williams made together. Amid the socially charged songs, the quiet ballad Whitfield offered became the two men's farewell.
- Kendricks's falsetto is at its most delicate here. It begins as a frail sound mixed with plenty of breath, and even on the high notes he puts almost no force into it.
- Gentle strings wrap around the lead, and the rhythm section steps back, supporting it only at a slow, walking pace.
- Sung as the daydream of a man who carries on a love affair only in his imagination, with a woman he can only watch through the window, it leaves loneliness lingering behind its happy scenes.
- The members' harmonies, laid down in the background, stretch low and long like the backdrop of a dream, making the lead voice sound as if it floats ever farther away.
V. Song of a wandering father · 1972–1980
(Peak) “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone,” from 1972, was the summit of the Whitfield era. Written by Whitfield and Barrett Strong, the song ran nearly 12 minutes on the album All Directions, and an edited single reached No. 1 on the pop chart that December. At the Grammys the following year it swept three categories: group vocal, instrumental and songwriting. (Father) It was a song in which a son raised without a father asks his mother what kind of man his late father had been. Edwards, who took the opening lines, is said to have balked at first because the father's death in the song echoed his own father's death, and Whitfield is said to have wanted that very emotion captured on tape. The other members, meanwhile, resented that the instrumental passages ran far longer than the singing. (Farewell) On August 17, 1973, Paul Williams was found dead of a gunshot wound in his car, parked in Detroit. He was thirty-four, and the authorities ruled it a suicide. This was the man who had devised the group's first choreography and sung deep leads on songs like “Don't Look Back.” It came 2 years after he had withdrawn from touring. (Parting) The relationship between Whitfield and the group reached its breaking point around the 1973 album 1990. The members made no secret of their complaint that their voices were buried under the instruments, and Whitfield stepped away from the group's work, then left Motown in 1975 to start his own label. The Temptations moved to Atlantic Records in 1977 and released two albums, but could not find their place in a market swept by disco. With Edwards, who had left the group for a time in the interim, back in the fold, the group returned to Motown in 1980 and released Power.
The peak of the Whitfield era and a symbol of its conflict. It swept three Grammy categories, yet the members felt their voices had been pushed aside by the instruments.
- On the album version, nearly 4 minutes of instrumental pass before the singing begins. A bass stubbornly repeating a single note, a crisply ticking hi-hat and a wah-wah guitar pile up one by one, ratcheting up the tension.
- A lonely trumpet and taut strings paint the city's dark landscape like a film score.
- Edwards opens the first verse in a rough baritone, and Damon Harris, Richard Street and Melvin Franklin take it up in turn. The questions and answers about the father are rendered as an exchange of voices.
- The instrumental version on the single's B-side won a Grammy of its own in the instrumental category. That the song could stand without its vocals shows the strength of Whitfield's arrangement.
VI. Reunion and farewell · 1980–1995
(Reunion) In 1982 the group called Ruffin and Kendricks back for the album Reunion and a tour. The first single, “Standing on the Top,” was written and produced by Rick James, Melvin Franklin's nephew. Seven men shared one stage, but the tour did not last; after Ruffin repeatedly failed to show, the two left the group again. (Celebration) On Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, the 1983 TV special for Motown's 25th anniversary, the Temptations and the Four Tops staged a battle on stage, trading hits back and forth. On the same broadcast Michael Jackson sang “Billie Jean” and unveiled the moonwalk for the first time, and the two performances are remembered together as the defining moments of that night. In 1984 “Treat Her Like a Lady,” written by new lead Ali-Ollie Woodson with Otis, rose to No. 2 on the R&B chart, and the group caught its breath again. (Honors) In 1985 Ruffin and Kendricks joined Hall & Oates on the stage of New York's reopened Apollo Theater, and the concert was released as a live album. In 1989 the Temptations were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Alongside Otis, Melvin, Kendricks, Ruffin and Edwards, the late Paul Williams was inducted as well. (Loss) Over the next few years the original voices went out one by one. Ruffin died of a drug overdose in Philadelphia in June 1991, at fifty. Kendricks, who had scored a solo No. 1 with “Keep On Truckin'” in 1973, had gone home to Birmingham and died there of lung cancer in 1992. Melvin Franklin, who had kept to the stage through years of rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, died in Los Angeles in 1995. Of the original five, only Otis Williams remained.
After the original members had departed one by one, a song co-written by new lead Ali-Ollie Woodson and Otis put the group back near the top of the R&B chart in the 1980s.
- Where Woodson's gospel-tinged tenor breaks rough, it sounds as if it carries on the tradition the group handed down through Ruffin and Edwards.
- Even over a 1980s sound laid down with drum machines and synthesizers, the members' harmonies support the lead as they always had, showing what the group's backbone remained as the times changed.
- Its voice is one of tender advice to treat a lover with respect, a different grain from the rougher emotions of many earlier songs.
- Melvin Franklin's deep bass still holds down the floor beneath the chorus. It is one of the later hits he took part in.
VII. The one who carries on the name · 1998–2026
(Record) In 1988 Otis published Temptations, an autobiography chronicling the group's history, written with Patricia Romanowski, and in 1998 the book became a 2-part NBC miniseries. That same year the album Phoenix Rising sold big for the first time in ages, carried by “Stay,” which borrowed the guitar riff from “My Girl.” The 2000 album Ear-Resistible brought the group the Grammy for traditional R&B vocal performance. (Legacy) The songs came alive in the hands of other generations, too. In 1993 George Michael sang “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone” stitched together with his own song “Killer,” taking it high on the British chart. The Temptations' format of five men sharing harmonies and moving in step became a model that countless vocal groups have drawn on again and again. In 2013 the group received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. (Farewell) In February 2018, Dennis Edwards died in Chicago, two days before his seventy-fifth birthday. From the late 1970s on he had left and rejoined the group several times, but he remained the first voice of “Cloud Nine” and “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.” (Stage) In March 2019 Ain't Too Proud, a musical telling the group's story, opened on Broadway and won that year's Tony Award for Best Choreography. The book was written by Detroit-born playwright Dominique Morisseau. In 2022 came Temptations 60, an album marking the 60th anniversary of the group's founding. (Otis) More than twenty members have passed through the group in 60-odd years, but Otis Williams has never once left his place. Even past eighty he has kept taking the stage with new members, guarding the original form: five voices in harmony and steps in unison. The name the Temptations now stands for both a group and a tradition.
Lesser-known stories
The Supremes' beginnings are tied to the Temptations. Milton Jenkins, manager of the Primes, the group Kendricks and Paul Williams belonged to, put together a 4-girl sister act called the Primettes, and that group later became the Supremes, led by Diana Ross. Because both groups' stories usually begin with their Motown contracts, the fact that they started out as sibling groups under the same manager survives only as an early footnote in each one's history. The Temptations were not the first to record “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.” Whitfield first had the Undisputed Truth, a group he was producing that same year, record the song, but the response was modest; a few months later he remade it for the Temptations, far longer and darker. Recording one song with several artists and picking the best version was a long-standing practice for Whitfield and Motown. The Temptations, too, once recorded “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” made famous by Marvin Gaye's version, and put it on an album. Melvin Franklin and Rick James were uncle and nephew. In the mid-1960s in Toronto, James formed a band called the Mynah Birds with Neil Young and others and signed with Motown, but the album never came out; he later established himself as a funk star in his own right. When he wrote and produced “Standing on the Top” for his uncle's group in 1982, the two met on a recording for the first time. The connection is covered in more detail in James's biographies than in the group's official chronology.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Falsetto
(Etymology) The Italian falsetto comes from falso, meaning 'false.' That is why Korean, too, calls it gaseong ('false voice', 假聲): a false (假) voice (聲). (In pop) A way of singing in which notes out of reach of your ordinary speaking voice are floated up toward the head and produced lightly. When a male singer such as Eddie Kendricks uses it, it sounds soft and delicate. If you suddenly pitch your voice very high to make a friend laugh, you feel something 'click' over in your throat and the texture of the sound change; the voice on the far side of that click is falsetto.
Call and response
(Etymology) Joining the English words call and response, the phrase means a practice in which one person calls and many answer. In Korean folk song the same practice is called megigo banneunda ('leading and receiving'). (In pop) A song structure in which the lead vocalist sings a line and the other members or instruments answer it briefly. A tradition carried over from the sermons and gospel of Black churches, it became the backbone of Temptations songs. It works on the same principle as a school sports day, when the cheer captain shouts a chant and the whole class shouts it back in one voice.
Psychedelic soul
(Etymology) Psychedelic combines the Greek psyche ('mind·soul') and delos ('revealing'), meaning to reveal the depths of the mind. In the 1960s it spread as a word for hallucinatory experience and the art that resembled it. (In pop) A late-1960s style that mixed soul, a Black music, with rock's raw guitars, effects-laden sounds, long instrumental passages and socially conscious lyrics. The Temptations' “Cloud Nine” is counted as its signature starting point. Think of how adding cheese and cream to your usual tteokbokki yields an entirely different taste: this is music that piled unfamiliar ingredients onto familiar soul to create a new flavor.
Session musician
(Etymology) Session comes from the Latin sedere ('to sit') and means a stretch of time in which people sit together and work. (In pop) A professional musician who doesn't release albums under their own name but is called in to play on other artists' recordings. Motown had session players known as the Funk Brothers, who created unforgettable sounds such as the bass and guitar of “My Girl,” yet for years their names didn't even appear on the records. Picture the friends at a school talent show who play the accompaniment in the back while their classmates sing up front, holding up the whole performance. (Elsewhere) In computing and on the internet, the connection that lasts while a user is logged in is called a session.
Wah-wah pedal
(Etymology) Named because the sound seems to go 'wah-wah,' the word imitates the sound itself. (In pop) A foot-operated device connected between the guitar and the amp. Each time you press down and release with your toe, the brightness of the tone shifts, so the guitar seems to cry like a human voice. In “Cloud Nine” and “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone,” this sound sets the mood of the song. Try saying 'wow' as you go from pursed lips to a wide-open mouth: only the shape of your mouth changes, yet the color of the sound shifts, and a wah-wah pedal does that same job with your foot.
Riff
(In pop) A short phrase repeated within a song that lodges in the ear. Usually carried by guitar, bass or horns, it serves as the song's face, so much so that once heard it comes to mind before the title. The opening guitar of “My Girl” is a classic example. Like the snippet of background music that plays when you start a favorite game and then keeps circling in your head, a riff is the handle by which you remember a song.
Modulation
(Etymology) Jeonjo (轉調) combines 轉 (jeon, 'to turn and shift') and 調 (jo, a system of pitches, i.e. a key), meaning to shift the key (調) of a song. (In pop) A technique of raising or lowering the pitch of an entire song by a step partway through. Raising it a step near the end, in particular, lifts the listener's emotions one notch higher, so it is common in pop. It is much like pressing the key-up button at karaoke just before the last chorus to lift the mood.