The temptations biography motown 25
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Norman Whitfield took over the reins as The Temptations’ producer with 1966’s “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.” Ever versatile, the group scored with audiences around the world with 1967’s The Temptations In A Mellow Mood, a collection of Broadway standards that featured different group members singing lead vocals.
Whitfield led the Tempts in a new direction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, producing records that were dubbed “psychedelic” soul, such as “Cloud Nine,” “I Can’t Get Next to You” and “Psychedelic Shack,” all of which reached the Top Ten charts.
Considered trailblazers in the 60’s, leading the way not only for themselves but for other R&B artists, and successfully reaching mainstream audiences here and abroad, The Temptations’ rise to fame was meteoric. He is the key to their history and their stories – how they met, their groundbreaking heights, personal and political conflicts, brotherhood, family, loyalty and more.
The album includes two wildly popular and bestselling #1 R&B singles, “Happy People,” (co-written by Lionel Richie) featuring the Commodores as instrumentalists, and “Shakey Ground” featuring instrumentals by Parliament-Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel with Billy “Bass” Nelson. The book went on to become the source for both the Emmy Award-Winning television miniseries, The Temptations, in 1998 and in 2019 the smash hit Broadway musical, Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.
The Temptations’ journey, as seen through the lens of Otis Williams, was also a blockbuster television mini-series which aired in 1998.
UMe released The Temptations’ studio album, All the Time, which was the group’s first new album in eight years. Most recently, New York Mets star player Francisco Lindor chose “My Girl” as his walk-up song. It featured three new, original Temptations’ songs, in addition to inspired renditions of songs from Maxwell, The Weeknd, Sam Smith, Bruno Mars and others.
The group’s 60-year history spans the 20th and 21st centuries, and their music transcends generations. In 1961, Berry Gordy signed them to the Motown subsidiary Miracle label and changed the group’s name to the Temptations.
The founding members were originally part of two rival Detroit vocal groups: Otis Williams, Elbridge "Al" Bryant (later replaced by David Ruffin), and Melvin Franklin of the Distants, and Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams of the Primes.
Almost any member of the group could take the lead: Eddie with his sweet falsetto (“Just My Imagination”), Paul with his gritty baritone (“Don’t Look Back”), Melvin with his rumbling bass (“Old Man River”) and, of course, David, whose soulful second tenor was frequently called upon to handle the group’s up-front assignments (“Beauty Is Only Skin-Deep”).
With ongoing support from Motown’s Artist Development team, The Temptations excelled at performance.
During the following year’s Motown 25 TV spectacular, the Temptations and the Four Tops battle in song, an inspired match which leads the two groups to tour together for years.
- In 1991, the Temptations’ triumphs are signified by Rod Stewart’s Top 10 hit, “The Motown Song” (they sing along with the British star), and by the return of “My Girl” as the title tune of a $60 million Hollywood hit movie.
Like their first Top 20 hit in 1964, “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” no other group could do things the way the Temptations did: They danced with elegant precision, sang with tight harmonies and sported the sharpest wardrobe in show business. Paul Williams leaves the group early in the 1970s, replaced by Richard Street, onetime member of the Distants.
Together, we lift our voices with love and wonder…”
For the 2019 holiday season, The Temptations’ released a first-of-its-kind, animated video featuring the Temptations’ “Silent Night,” one of the most popular holiday songs of all time.
On March 24, 2020, the audiobook edition of Otis Williams’ critically acclaimed autobiography, Temptations, was released.
They began as a merger between two groups, the Primes and the Distants and adopted the name, the Elgins. Their material has earned them four Grammy Awards.
The Temptations still exist today under the leadership of Otis Williams. In May of 1983, the televised anniversary special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, aired on NBC-TV and the extraordinary battle between The Temptations and the Four Tops led to a road tour together, famously called the “T’NT” tour.
In November of that same year, a third national television special, G.I.T.