Episode 133: “My Girl” by the Temptations

A History of Folk Music in 500 Songs

by Andrew Hickey.

Episode 133:

My Girl

by The Temptations.

For the last few weeks, we've been looking at Motown in 1965, but now we're moving away from Hollandozia and Holland.

We're also going to move back in time a little and look at a record that was released in December 1964.

I normally try to keep this series in more or less chronological order, but to tell this story I had to first show the new status quo of the American music industry after the British invasion, and some of what had to be covered there was covered in songs from early 1965.

And the reason I wanted to show that status quo before doing this series of Motim records is that we're now entering into a new era of musical segregation, and really into the second phase of this story.

In 1963, Billboard had actually stopped having an RB chart.

Cashbox magazine still had one, but Billboard had got rid of theirs.

The reasoning was simple.

By that point, there was so much overlap between the RB charts and the pop charts that it didn't seem necessary to have both.

The stuff that was charting on the RB charts was also charting pop, people like Ray Charles or Chubby Checker, or the Ronettes or Sam Cook.

The term rock and roll had originally been essentially a marketing campaign to get white people to listen to music made by black people, and it had worked.

There didn't seem to be a need for a separate category for music listened to by black people, because that was now the music listened to by everybody.

Or it had been, until the Beatles turned up.

At that point, the American charts were flooded by groups with guitars, mostly British, mostly male, and mostly white.

The story of rock and roll from 1954 through 1964 had been one of integration, of music made by black people becoming the new mainstream of music in the USA.

The story for the next decade or more would be one of segregation, of white people re-taking the pop chart, and rebranding rock'n'roll so thoroughly that by the early 1970s nobody would think of the Supremes or the Sherelles or Sam Cook as having been rock and roll performers at all.

And so today we're going to look at the record that was number one the week that Billboard reinstated its R ⁇ B chart, and which remains one of the most beloved classics of the time period.

We're going to look at the careers of two different groups at Motown, both of whom managed to continue having hits and even become bigger after the British invasion.

and at the songwriter and producer who was responsible for those hits, and who was also an inspiration for the Beatles, who inadvertently caused that invasion.

We're going to look at Smokey Robinson and at My Girl by the Temptations.

When it's cold outside,

I've got the month of May.

The story of the Temptations both starts and ends with Otis Williams.

As I write this, Williams is the only living member of the classic Temptations line-up and is the leader of the current group.

And Williams also started the group that, after many line-up changes and mergers, became the Temptations, and was always the group's leader, even though he has never been its principal lead singer.

The group that eventually became the Temptations started out when Williams formed a group with a friend, Al Bryant, in the late 1950s.

They were inspired by a doo-wop group called the Turbans, who had had a hit in 1956 with a song called When You Dance.

be sure to hold her, hold her tight.

When you dance,

you'll squeeze her yeah with all your might.

Such a throng.

Oh, when she's close to you,

well,

hold

her tight.

The Turbans, appropriately enough, used to wear turbans on their heads when they performed, and Williams and Bryant's new group wanted to use the same gimmick.

So they decided to come up with a Middle Eastern-sounding group name that would justify them wearing Arabic-style costumes.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the greatest grasp of geography in the world, and so this turban-wearing group named themselves the Siberians.

The Siberians recorded one single under that name.

a single that has been variously reported as being called the Pecos Kid and Have Gun Will Travel, but which sold so poorly that now no copies are known to exist anywhere, before being taken on by a manager called Milton Jenkins, who was as much a pimp as he was a manager, but who definitely had an eye for talent.

Jenkins was the manager of two other groups: the Primes, a trio from Alabama, who he'd met in Cleveland when they travelled there to see if they could get discovered, and who had moved with him to Detroit, and a group he put together called the Primettes, who later became the Supremes.

The Primes consisted of three singers, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, no relation to Otis, or to the soft pop singer and actor of the same name, and Kel Osborne, who sang lead.

The Primes became known around Detroit as some of the best performers in the city.

No mean feat considering that Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, the Miracles and the Four Tops, just for a start, were performing regularly on the same circuit.

Jenkins had big plans for his groups, and he sent them all to dance school to learn to perform choreographed routines.

But then Jenkins became ill and disappeared from the scene, and the prime split up.

Kendricks and Paul Williams went back to Alabama, while Osborne moved on to California, where he made several unsuccessful records, including The Bells of St.

Mary, produced by Lester Sill and Lee Hazelwood, and arranged by Phil Spector.

when the red leaves

are warming

are

waiting on

for you

I

dream

for you

But while the primes had split up, the Siberians hadn't.

Instead, they decided to get new management, which came in the person of a woman named Johnny Mae Matthews.

Matthews was the lead singer of a group called the Five Daps, who had had a local hit with a track called Do Whapadoo, one of the few Dapps songs she didn't sing lead on.

Let me hear your hollow, wild rubber do, all the days.

After that had become successful, Matthews had started up her own label, Northern, which was apparently named after a brand of toilet paper, to put out records of her group, often backed by the same musicians who would later become the core of the Funk Brothers.

Her group, renamed Johnny Mae Matthews and the Dapps, put out two more singles on her label, with her singing lead.

I said oh hey Mr.

Fine

Take me for a ride

Come on Mr.

Fine

Take me for a ride

I said oh hey Mr.

Fine, don't give me no job Matthews had become something of an entrepreneur, managing other local acts like Mary Wells and Popcorn Wiley and she wanted to record the Siberians but two of the group had dropped out after Jenkins had disappeared and so they needed some new members.

In particular, they needed a bass singer, and Otis Williams knew of a good one.

Melvyn Franklin had been singing with various groups around Detroit, but Williams was thinking in particular of Franklin's bass vocal on Needed by the Voicemasters.

We've mentioned the Voicemasters before, but they were a group with a rotating membership that included David Ruffin and Lamont Dozier.

Franklin hadn't been a member of the group, but he had been roped in to sing bass on Needed, which was written and produced by Gwen Gordy and Raquel Davis, and was a clear attempt at sounding like Jackie Wilson.

Williams asked Franklin to join the group, and Franklin agreed, but felt bad about leaving his current group.

However, the Siberians also needed a new lead singer, and so Franklin brought in Richard Street from his group.

Matthews renamed the group The Distance and took them into the studio.

They actually got there early and got to see another group, the Falcons, record what would become a million-selling hit.

You're so

fine.

You're mine.

You're mine.

The Falcons, whose lead vocalist Joe Stubbs was Levi Stubbs' brother, were an important group in their own right, and we'll be picking up on them next week, when we look at a single by Joe Stubbs' replacement in the group.

The Distance single wouldn't be as successful as the Falcons, but it featured several people who would go on to become important in Motown, as well as several of the Funk Brothers in the backing band.

The record also featured additional vocals by the Andantes, and on tambourine, a local Pool Hole hustler the group knew, named Norman Whitfield.

The song itself was written by Williams, and was essentially a rewrite of Shout by the Isley Brothers.

Well, well, well, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.

I'm getting tired, I'm getting tired.

I'm getting

well, well, well, come on, come on, come on.

The Distance recorded a second single for Northern, but then Williams made the mistake of asking Matthews if they might possibly receive any royalties for their records.

Matthews said that the records had been made with her money, that she owned the Distance name, and she was just going to get five new singers.

Matthews did actually get several new singers to put out a single under the Distance name, with Richard Street still singing lead.

Street left the group when they split for Matthews, as did another member, leaving the group as a core of Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin and Al Bryant.

But before the split with Matthews, Barry Gordy had seen the group and suggested they come into Motam for an audition.

Otis, Melvin and Al, now renamed the Elgins, wanted to do just that, but they needed a new lead singer, and happily they had one.

Eddie Kendricks phoned up Otis Williams and said that he and Paul Williams were back in town.

And did Otis know of any gigs that were going?

Otis did indeed know of such a gig, and Paul Paul and Eddie joined the Elgins, Paul as lead singer and Eddie as falsetto singer.

This new line-up of the group were auditioned by Mickey Stevenson, Motown's head of ANR, and he liked them enough that he signed them up, but he insisted that the name had to change.

There was another group already called the Elgins, though that group never had a hit, and Motown would soon sign up yet another group and change their name to the Elgins, leading to much confusion.

The group decided on a new name, The Temptations.

Their first record was co-produced by Stevenson and Andre Williams.

Andre Williams, who was no relation to either Otis or Paul, and as a side note, I do wish there weren't so many people with the surname Williams in this story, as it means I can't write it in my usual manner of referring to people by their surname, was a minor RB star who co-wrote Shake a Tail Feather and who had had a solo hit with his record Bacon Fat.

While I was down in

Seen some cotton pickers with their sacks on their backs.

They say man,

glad to see you back.

We

got a new dance they call Bacon Fat.

It goes

Andre Williams, who at this point in time was signed to Motown, though not having much success, was brought in because the perception at Motown was that the temptations would be one of their harder-edged RB groups, rather than going for the softer pop market, and he would be able to steer the recording in that direction.

The song they chose to record was one that Otis Williams had written, though Mickey Stevenson gets a co-writing credit and may have helped polish it.

I paid, I've been paid in over.

Oh, please, oh, please, don't be like yesterday.

My place, my place is at.

The new group line-up became very close, and started thinking of each other like family and giving each other nicknames, though they also definitely split into two camps.

Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin were always a pair, and Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams had come up together and thought of themselves as a team.

Al Bryant, even though he had been with Otis from the beginning, was a bit of an outlier in this respect.

He wasn't really part of either camp, and he was the only one who didn't get a nickname from the other band members.

He was also the only one who kept his day job.

While the other four were all determined that they were going to make it as professional singers, he was hesitant and kept working at the dairy.

As a result, whenever there were fights in the group, and the fights would sometimes turn physical, the fighting would tend to be between Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin.

Otis was the undisputed leader, and nobody wanted to challenge him, but from the beginning, Kendricks and Paul Williams thought of Otis as a bit too much of a company man.

They also thought of Melvyn as Otis' sidekick and rubber stamp, so, rather than challenge Otis, they'd have a go at Melvin.

But for the most part, they were extremely close at this point.

The Temptation's first single didn't have any great success, but Barry Gordy had faith in the group and produced their next single himself, a song that he co-wrote with Otis, Melvyn and Al.

and which Brian Holland also chipped in some ideas for.

That was also unsuccessful, but the next single, written by Gordy alone, was slightly more successful.

For Your My Dream Come True, Gordy decided to give the lead to Kendricks, the falsetto singer, and the track also featured a prominent instrumental line by Gordy's wife Raynoma.

What sounds like strings on the record is actually a primitive synthesizer called an on dioline.

That made number 22 on the RB chart and was the first sign of any commercial potential for the group.

And so Motown went in a totally different direction and put out a cover version of a record by a group called the Diablos, whose lead singer was Barrett Strong's cousin Nolan.

The Temptations version of Mind Over Matter wasn't released as by the Temptations, but as by the Pirates.

your love

to have.

I'll have

your love,

but you are

so fine.

My own matter,

gonna make you mine.

That was a flop, and at the same time as they released it, they also released another gaudy song under their own name, a song called Paradise, which seems to have been an attempt at making a four seasons sound alike, which made number 122 on the pop charts and didn't even do that well on the R ⁇ B charts.

Annoyingly, the Temptations had missed out on a much bigger hit.

Gordy had written Do You Love Me for the group, but had been hit with a burst of inspiration and wanted to do the record now.

He'd tried phoning the various group members, but got no answer.

They were all in the audience at a gospel music show at the time, and had no idea he was trying to get in touch with them.

So he pulled in another group, the Contours, and their version of the song went to number three on the pop charts.

Do

According to the biography of the temptations I'm using as a major source for this episode, that was even released on the same day as both Paradise and Mind Over Matter, though other sources I've consulted have it coming out a few months earlier.

Despite Paradise's lack of commercial success though, it did introduce an element that would become crucial for the group's future.

The B-side was the first song for the group written by Smokey Robinson.

We've mentioned Robinson briefly in previous episodes on Motown, but he's worth looking at in a lot more detail, because he is in some ways the most important figure in Motown's history, though also someone who has revealed much less of himself than many other Motown artists.

Both of these facts stem from the same thing, which is that Robinson is the ultimate Motown company man.

He was a vice president of the company, and he was Barry Gordy's best friend from before the company even started.

While almost every other artist, writer, or producer signed to Motown has stories to tell of perceived injustices in the way that Motown treated them, Robinson has always positioned himself on the side of the company executives, rather than as one of the other artists.

He was the only person outside the Gordy family who had a place at the very centre of the organisation, and he was also one of a very small number of people during Motown's golden age, who would write, produce, and perform.

Now, there were other people who worked both as artists and on the backroom side of things.

We've seen that Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wunder would sometimes write songs for other artists, and that Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier had started out as performers before moving into songwriting.

But these were mostly little dalliances.

In general, in Motown in the 60s, you were either a performer or you were a writer-producer.

But Smokey Robinson was both, and he was good at both.

Someone who was responsible for creating many of the signature hits of Motown.

At this point in his career, Robinson had, as we've heard previously, been responsible for Motown's second big hit, After Money, when he'd written Shop Around for his own group The Miracles.

that you love them, so now no matter my daughter,

you better shop around.

You better shop around,

shop around.

I try to get yourself a bar and sign.

Don't be so long, I'm very

close.

Continued to have hits, though none as big as Shop Around, with records like What's So Good About Goodbye?

Tell me what's so high

with the jungle.

I'll be what's so good about the five.

But Robinson had also been writing regularly for other artists.

He'd written some stuff that the Supremes had recorded, though like all the Supremes material at this point it had been unsuccessful.

And he'd also started a collaboration with the label's biggest star at this point, Mary Wells, for whom he'd written top 10 hits like The Wan Who Really Loves You.

So now you're acting like you don't know that I'm alive.

Love you better.

Wake up, yeah, before we break up, and you lose me.

Look for me, the one who really loves you.

And You Beat Me to the Punch, co-written with fellow miracle Vanny White, which, as well as going top 10 pop, made number one on the RB charts.

I was looking at

Until you must have had a heart.

So you came up to me and asked me my name.

You beat me to the punch,

that time.

You beat me to the pump.

You beat me to the punch.

Oh,

after

between 1962 and 1964, Robinson would consistently write huge hits for Wells, as well as continuing to have hits with the miracles, and his writing was growing in leaps and bounds.

He was regarded by almost everyone at Motown as the best writer the company had, both for his unique melodic sensibility and for the literacy of his lyrics.

When he'd first met Barry Gordy, he'd been a writer with a lot of potential, but he hadn't understood how to structure a lyric.

He'd thrown in a lot of unrelated ideas.

Gordy had taken him under his wing and shown him how to create a song with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and Robinson had immediately understood what he needed to do.

His lyrics, with their clever conceits and internal rhymes, became the ones that everyone else studied.

When Eddie Holland decided to become a songwriter rather than a singer, he'd spent months just studying Robinson's lyrics to see how they worked.

Robinson was even admired by the Beatles, especially John Lennon.

One can hear his melismatic phrases all over Lennon's songwriting in this period, most notably in songs like Ask Me Why, and the Beatles covered one of Robinson's songs on their second album, With the Beatles.

After writing the B-side to Paradise, Robinson was given control of the Temptation's next single.

His I Want a Love I Can See didn't do any better than Paradise, and is in some ways more interesting for the B-side.

The further further you look, the less you see.

That's not you.

And I can hear them say as they go out of me.

You better know that

That track's interesting because it's a collaboration between Robinson and Norman Whitfield, that pool hole hustler who'd played tambourine on the Distance first single.

Whitfield had produced the records by the later Distance, led by Richard Street, and had then gone to work for a small label owned by Berry Gordy's ex-mother-in-law.

Gordy had bought out that label, and with it Whitfield's contract, and at this point Whitfield was very much an apprentice to Robinson.

Both men were huge admirers of The Temptations, and for the next few years, both would want to be the group's main producer and songwriter, competing for the right to record their next single, though for a good chunk of time this would not really be a competition, as Whitfield was minor league compared to Robinson.

I Want to Love I Can See was a flop, and The Temptations next single was another Berry Gordy song.

When that flopped too, Gordy seriously started considering dropping the group altogether.

While this was happening though, Robinson was busily writing more great songs for his own group and for Mary Wells.

Songs like What Love Has Joined Together, co-written with his bandmate Bobby Rogers.

And the temptations were going through their own changes.

Al was becoming more and more of an outsider in the group, while also thinking of himself as the real star.

He thought this even though he was the weak link.

Paul and Eddie were the lead singers, Otis was the band's leader, Melvin had a hugely distinctive bass voice, and Al was just the other one.

Things came to a head at a gig in October 1963, when a friend of the group showed up.

David Ruffin was so friendly with Melvin Franklin that Franklin called him his cousin, and he was also a neighbour of Otis's.

He had been a performer from an early age.

He'd been in a gospel group with his older brother Jimmy and their abusive father.

Once he'd escaped his father, he'd gone on to perform in a duo with his brother and then in a series of gospel groups, including stints in the Dixie Nightingales and the Soul Stirrers.

Ruffin had been taken on by a manager called Eddie Bush, who adopted him, whether legally or just in their minds, is an open question,

and had released his first single as Little David Bush when he was 17 in 1958.

you and I,

you and only

you alone were meant for me.

It would be all so wonderful,

oh

so beautiful.

You'll share your love

with me.

Ruffin and Bush had eventually parted ways, and Ruffin had taken up with the Gordy family, helping Berry Gordy Sr.

out in his construction business.

He'd actually helped build the studio that Berry Jr.

owned, and where most of the Motown hits were recorded, and singing on records produced by Gwen Gordy.

He'd been in the Voicemasters, who we heard earlier this episode, and he had also recorded solo singles with the Voicemasters' backing, like I'm in Love.

When Gwen Gordy's labels had been absorbed into Motown, so had Ruffin.

who had also got his brother Jimmy signed to the label.

They'd planned to record as the Ruffin brothers, but then Jimmy had been drafted, and Ruffin was at a loose end.

He technically had a Motown contract, but wasn't recording anything.

But then in October 1963 he turned up to a Temptations gig.

For the Encore, the group always did the Isley Brothers song Shout, and Ruffin got up on stage with them and started joining in, dancing more frantically than the rest of the group.

Al started trying to match him, feeling threatened by this interloper.

They got wilder and wilder, and the audience loved it so much that the group were called back for another encore, and Ruffin joined them again.

They did the same song again, and got an even better reaction.

They came back for a third time, and did it again, and got an even better reaction.

Ruffin then disappeared into the crowd.

The group decided that enough was enough, except for Al, who was convinced that they should do a fourth encore without Ruffin.

The rest of the group were tired, and didn't want to do the same song for a fourth time, and thought they should leave the audience wanting more.

Al, who had been drinking, got aggressive, and smashed a bottle in Paul Williams' face, hospitalising him.

Indeed, it was only pure luck that kept Williams from losing his vision, and he was left with a scar, but no worse damage.

Otis, Eddie, and Melvin decided that they needed to sack Al, but Paul, who was the peacemaker in the group, insisted that they shouldn't, and also refused to press charges.

Out of respect for Paul, the rest of the group agreed to give Al one more chance, but Otis in particular was getting sick of Al, and thought that the group should just try to get David Ruffin in.

Everyone agreed that if Al did anything to give Otis the slightest reason, he could be sacked.

Two months later, he did just that.

The group were on stage at the annual Motown Christmas Show.

which was viewed by all the acts as a competition, and Paul had worked out a particularly effective dance routine for the group to try to get the crowd going.

But while they were performing, Al came over to Otis and suggested that the two of them, as the pretty boys, should let the other three do all the hard work while they just stood back and looked good for the women.

Otis ignored him, and carried on with the routine they'd rehearsed, and Al was out as soon as they came off stage, and David Ruffin was in.

But for now, Ruffin was just the missing element in the harmony stack, not a lead vocalist in his own right.

For the next single, both Smokey Robinson and Barry Gordy came up with songs for the new line-up of the group, and they argued about which song should be the A-side, one of the rare occasions where the two disagreed on anything.

They took the two tracks to Motown's quality control meeting, and after a vote, it was agreed that the single should be the song that Robinson had written for Eddie Kendricks to sing: The Way You Do the Things You Do.

The way it smells so sweet

You know you could have been some perfume

Well, you could've been anything that you wanted to and I can tell

the way you do the things you do the way you do all day

At first, the group hadn't liked that song and it wasn't until they rehearsed it a few times that they realized that Robinson was being cleverer than they credited him for with the lyrics.

Otis Williams would later talk about how lines like, You've got a smile so bright, you know you could have been a candle, had seemed ridiculous to them at first, but then they'd realised that the lyric was parodying the kind of things that men say when they don't know what to say to a woman, and that it's only towards the end of the song that the singer stops trying bad lines and just starts speaking honestly.

You really swept me off my feet, you make my life complete, you make my life so bright, you make me feel alright.

That track was also the first one that the group cut cut to a pre-recorded backing track, Motown having upgraded to a four-track system.

That allowed the group to be more subtle with their backing vocal arrangements, and the way you do the things you do is the point at which the temptations become fully themselves.

But the group didn't realise that at first.

They spent the few weeks after the record's release away from Detroit, playing at the Michigan State Fair, and weren't aware that it was starting to do things.

It was only when Otis and David popped into the Motown offices and people started talking to them about them having a hit that they realised the record had made the pop charts.

Both men had been trying for years to get a big hit with no success, and they started crying in each other's arms, Ruffin saying, Otis, this is the first time in my life I feel like I've been accepted, that I've done something.

The record eventually made number 11 on the pop charts, and number one on the cash box RB chart.

Billboard, as we discussed earlier, having discontinued theirs.

But Otis Williams still thinks that given the amount of airplay that the record was getting, it should have charted higher, and that something fishy was going on with the chart compilation at that point.

Perhaps, but given that the record reached the peak of its chart success in April 1964, the high point of Beatle mania when the Beatles had five records in the top ten, it's also just possible that it was a victim of bad timing.

But either way, number 11 on the pop chart was a significant hit.

Shortly after that, though, Smokey Robinson came up with an even bigger hit.

My Guy, written for Mary Wells, had actually only been intended as a bit of album filler.

Motown were putting together a Mary Wells album, and as with most albums at the time, it was just a collection of tracks that had already been released as singles, and stuff that hadn't been considered good enough to release.

But they were a track short, and Smokey was asked to knock together something quickly.

He recorded a backing track at the end of a day cutting tracks for a Temptations album, The Temptations Sing Smokey, and everyone was tired by the time they got round to recording it.

But you'd never guess that from the track itself, which is as lively as anything Motown put out.

My Guy was a collaborative creation, with an arrangement that was worked on by the band.

It was apparently the Funk Brothers who came up with the intro, which was lifted from a 1956 record, Canadian Sunset, by Hugo Winterhalter.

Compare that

To my guy

Nothing you can take and tear me away from my God

Nothing you could do, cause I'm stuck right clue to my God

I'm sticking to my God like a snail to a letter I

The record became one of the biggest hits of the 60s, Motown's third pop number one and a million seller.

It made Mary Wells into a superstar, and the Beatles invited her to be their support act on their UK summer tour.

So of course, Wells immediately decided to get a better deal at another record label, and never had another hit again.

Meanwhile, Smokey kept plugging away, both at his own records, Good and Miracles went through a bit of a dry patch at this point, as far as the charts go, and at the Temptations.

The group's follow-up, I'll Be in Trouble, was very much a remake of the way you do the things you do, and while it was good, it didn't quite make the top 30.

This meant that Norman Whitfield got another go.

He teamed up with Eddie Holland to write Girl Why You Wanna Make Me Blue, which did only slightly better than I'll Be in Trouble.

Can't understand why you treat me cold.

You every wish, girl, if I can let,

and that's why I can't sing to understand

why, girl, girl, girl, why you wanna make me blue?

I'm asking you, girl, girl, girl, why you wanna make me blue?

The competition between Robinson and Whitfield for who got to make the Temptations records was heating up.

Both men were capable of giving the group hits, but neither had given them the truly massive record that they were clearly capable of having.

So Smokey did the obvious thing.

He wrote a sequel to his biggest song ever, and he gave it to the new guy to sing.

Up until this point, David Ruffin hadn't taken a lead vocal on a Temptations record.

Paul Williams was the group's official lead singer, while all the hits had ended up having Eddie's falsetto as the most prominent vocal.

But Smokey had seen David singing Shout with the group, and knew that he had lead singer potential.

With his fellow miracle Ronald White, Smokey crafted a song that was the perfect vehicle for Ruffin's vocal, an answer song to My Guy, which replaced that song's bouncy exuberance with a laid-back, care-free feeling.

I've got sunshine

on a cloudy day

when it's cold outside.

I've got the month of May.

I guess

you've said

what can make me feel this way.

But it's not just Ruffin's record.

Everyone talking about the track talks about Ruffin's vocal, or the steady pulse of James Jameson's bass playing, and both those things are definitely worthy of praise, as of course are Robinson's production and Robinson and White's song.

But this is a temptations record, and the whole group are doing far more here than the casual listener might realise.

It's only when you listen to the a cappella version released on the group's Emperors of Soul box set that you notice all the subtleties of the backing vocal parts?

On the first verse, the group don't come in until halfway through the verse, with Melvin Franklin's great doo-wop bass introducing the backing vocalists, who sing just straight chords.

I've got sunshine

on a cloudy day

when it's cold outside.

I've got the month of May.

It's not until the chorus that the other group members stretch out a little, taking solo lines and singing actual words rather than just ooze.

I guess

you've said

what can make me feel this way,

my girl, my girl, my girl, talking about

my girl,

They then drop back until the same point in the next verse, but this time, rather than singing just the plain chords, they're embellishing a little, playing with the rhythm slightly, and Eddie Kendricks' falsetto is moving far more freely than at the same point in the first verse.

I've got a sweeter song

than the birds in the trees.

The backing vocals slowly increase in complexity until you get the complex parts on the tag.

Note that on the first chorus they sang the words My Girl absolutely straight with no stresses, but by the end of the song they're all emphasising every word.

They've gone from Jordanaire's style precise straight harmony to a strong black gospel feel in their voices, and you've not even noticed the transition.

Talking about my girl.

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day with my girl.

I've even got the month of May with my girl.

Talking about, talking about, talking about my girl.

My girl.

So all I can talk about is my girl.

Why don't you believe she's all my girl?

The track went to number one on the pop charts, knocking off this diamond ring by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, before itself being knocked off by eight days a week by the Beatles.

But it also went to number one on the newly re-established RB charts and stayed there for six weeks.

my girl, talking about

my girl,

my girl.

Smokey Robinson was now firmly established as the Temptations producer, and David Ruffin as the group's lead singer.

In 1965, Robinson and Pete Moore of the Miracles would write three more top 20 pop hits for the group, all with Ruffin on lead, and also managed to get a B-side sung by Paul Williams, Don't Look Back, to the top 20 on the RB chart.

Not only that, but the Miracles were also on a roll, producing two of the biggest hits of their career.

Pete Moore and Marv Tarplin had been messing around with a variant of the melody for the Banana Boat song, and came up with an intro for a song.

Robinson took that as a jumping-off point and turned it into the song that would define their career.

Cause I tell a joke or two.

Although I might be delighted, loud and honey,

deep inside and blue.

So take a good

look at my face.

You'll see my smile looks out of place.

If you look closer, it's easy to trace the tracks of my tears.

And later that year, they came up with yet another million seller for the Miracles with Going to a Go-Go.

Well, that's a brand new place I found.

Where people go from miles around em.

They come from everywhere, and if you drop in there, you might see anyone in town.

Everybody

come on now.

Don't you wanna go?

Yeah,

Robinson and his collaborators were being rather overshadowed in the public perception at this point by the success of Holland Dozier Holland with the Supremes and the Four Tops.

But by any standards, the records the Temptations and the Miracles were putting out were massive successes, both commercially and artistically.

But there were two things that were going to upset this balance.

The first was David Ruffin.

When he'd joined the group, he'd been the new boy and just eager to get any kind of success at all.

Now he was the lead singer, and his ego was starting to get the better of him.

The other thing that was going to change things was Norman Whitfield.

Whitfield hadn't given up on the Temptations just because of Smokey's string of hits with them.

Whitfield knew, of course, that Smokey was the group's producer while he was having hits with them, but he also knew that sooner or later, everybody slips up.

He kept saying, in every meeting, that he had the perfect next hit for the Temptations, and every time he was told, no, they're Smokey's group.

He knew this would be the reaction, but he also knew that if he kept doing this, he would make sure that he was the next in line, that nobody else could jump the queue and get a shot at them if Smokey failed.

He badgered Gordy and wore him down, to the point that Gordy finally agreed that if Smokey's next single for the group didn't make the top 20 on the pop charts, like his last four had, Whitfield would get his turn.

The next single Smokey produced for the group had Eddie Kendricks on lead and became the group's first RB number one since My Girl.

So get it ready, so get it ready.

Oh, I'm following your lovely tune.

So get it ready,

so get it ready, get out.

Cause if I come all

But the RB and pop charts were diverging, as we saw at the start.

While that was their biggest RB hit in a year, Get Ready was a comparative failure on the pop charts, only reaching number 29.

Still a hit, but not the top 20 that Gordy had bet on, so Norman Whitfield got a chance.

His record featured David Ruffin on lead, as all the group's previous run of hits from My Girl On had, and was co-written with Eddie Holland.

Whitfield decided to play up the Temptations RB Edge, rather than continue in the softer pop style that had brought them success with Robinson, and came up with something that owed as much to the music coming out of Stacks in Atlantic at the time, as it did to Motown's pop sensibilities.

I don't mind, cause you mean that much to me.

Ain't too proud to beg, as you know it.

Please don't leave me, girl.

Whitfield's instinct to lean harder into the RB sound paid off.

Ain't too proud to beg returned the group to the pop top 20, as well as going to number 1 on the RB charts.

From this point on, the Temptations were no longer Smokey's group, they were Norman Whitfield's, and he would produce all their hits for the next eight years.

And the group were also now definitively David Ruffin's group, or so it seemed.

When we pick up on the story of the Temptations, we'll discover how Ruffin's plans for Solo Stardom worked out and what happened to the rest of the Temptations under Whitfield's guidance.

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