Mark Ribowsky - Aint Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations

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Book:
Aint Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations
Author:
Mark Ribowsky
Publisher:
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Genre:
Books / Detective and thriller
Year:
2010
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4 / 5
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The first and only definitive biography of legendary Motown group, the Temptations

The Temptations are an incomparable soul group, with dozens of chart-topping hits such as My Girl and Papa Was a Rollin Stone. From the sharp suits, stylish choreography, and distinctive vocals that epitomized their onstage triumphs to the personal failings and psycho-dramas that played out behind the scenes, Aint Too Proud to Beg tells the complete story of this most popular--and tragic--of all Motown super groups.

Based on in-depth research and interviews with founding Temptations member Otis Williams and many others, the book reveals the highly individual, even mutually antagonistic, nature of the groups members. Venturing beyond the money and the fame, it shares the compelling tale of these sometime allies, sometime rivals and reveals the unique dynamic of push and pull and give and take that resulted in musical genius.

The first book to tell the whole story of Motowns greatest group, with all-new interviews and previously undiscovered sources and photographs
Gives the last word on enduring Motown mysteries, including the deaths of Paul Williams and David Ruffin and the truth behind Ruffins tumultuous romance with Tammi Terrell
Reveals the secret cant miss formula behind the Temptations thirty-seven chart hits
Draws on more than one hundred interviews with the groups associates, industry figures, family members, and most importantly, founding Temptation Otis Williams

Aint Too Proud to Beg takes a cohesive and penetrating look at the life and enduring legacy of one of the greatest groups in popular music. It is essential reading for fans of the Temptations, music lovers, and anyone interested in the history of American popular culture over the last fifty years.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Compiling a saga such as that of the Temptations is something like squeezing a glob of Jell-O. The story never proceeds neatly in one cohesive direction; rather, some of it spreads here, bleeds there. As a bigmake that bigsprawling pop-cultural panorama of American music, enterprise, and tragedy, it is interconnected with other plots and smaller sagas, especially since were talking about that most storied of kingdoms, the black Camelot that was Motown. Nearly every Motown figure encountered along the path, luminary or otherwise, tells of having a book to write, each without doubt the best Motown story ever told. In truth, the Temptations story may be just that, because pilgrims such as these who soldiered beside the Tempts as they wound their way through five decades filled in the vibrant colors and subtle hues of this book with so much stark detail that the events they relate may as well have happened only last week.

For providing so much enlightenment and drama, I am grateful to, above all, Otis Williams, whose hard-earned reputation as one of the most gracious people in an industry of vipers was evident from the start of this project. Even after telling and retelling aspects of the Temptations story, he was as eager as I in making the story as complete as it could be for the sake of history, and to make it a success, all without any proprietary or monetary interest. No one has done more than this man to preserve not only the group but its original mission, and for that he is to be revered.

No less gracious was the only other living Temptation from the glory days, Dennis Edwards, a man about whom it has been said hes just too nice to make it in this business. That he has made it this far given the troubled waters hes had to traverse, and with his humility intact, is a tribute to the man and his golden voice. As with Otis, he stands as a model of how to survive the horrors of life without shedding an ounce of humility.

Although among all Temptations freaks there is a palpable sense of loss that David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, and Melvin Franklin did not survive, I was truly fortunate that family members of these singular men were willing to shed light on them, most vividly Paul Williamss younger brother Joe, who still grieves for him and tenaciously strives to keep his name alive. Providing trenchant observations about David Ruffin was his brother Jimmy, himself a onetime Motown star, and daughter Nedra, who has tried to defend the name of the father she barely knew. And for revealing some rather ugly truths about Melvin Franklins birth and paternal history, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Momma Rose Franklin, who relived painful events that she had tried putting out of her mind nearly all her life.

The nascent days of the Temptations, when everything seemed possible but very little attainable, came alive with the wonderful memories of James Crawford, who was a member of the groups earliest configurations, and Richard Koloda, whose microfilm combings unearthed gems like the first newspaper story written about Kendricks and Paul Williamss nascent group the Primes. And Maxine Ballard, sister of the cursed Supreme Florence Ballard, graciously provided a priceless photo of the Primes flashy manager Milt Jenkins.

I was honored to spend quality time with Mickey Stevenson, a man without whom Motown might never have gotten off the ground, such was his knack for signing talent like the Temptations. Just as sagacious was Shelly Berger, whose wise and steady hand guided the group to their biggest crossover successes in the late 1960s, and who remains the Temptations manager to this day.

A shout-out is in order for two men who spent more time with the Tempts and know more about them than anyone, guitarist Cornelius Grant and former road manager Don Foster. Thanks, guys, for spilling some juicy secrets. Another goes to Billy Wilson, who, while he wasnt old enough to have run with the Tempts in their prime, got so tight with them later on when he became president of the Motown Alumni Association that he was able to offer some rollicking, no-B.S. revelations, grisly as some wereparticularly about Ruffins scarred childhood. (Not to mention those impossible-to-find phone numbers only Billy seems to know. Keep em coming, Billy.) Another phone number, the one that connected me to Dennis Edwards was provided, to my great joy and appreciation, by the Premier Radio Networks golden-throated music maven Mike McCann.

For their help and direction, I thank two still fabulous Motown grandes dames, Janie Bradford, who cowrote the indelible Money (Thats What I Want), and Claudette Rogers, who was better known as Mrs. Smokey Robinson for twenty-seven years. Thanks also to Michael Sembello for some typically forthright anecdotes. And for setting the bar on Temptations recording information so high, the world should thank Harry Weinger, producer of 1994s amazing Hip-O Select Temptations four-CD, six-and-a-half-hour Emperors of Soul. To a dedicated Temptations fanatic, the information contained thereinsuch as the exact musicians who played on every track on the albumisnt just essential but the ultimate argument-settler of party trivia games.

A product not of Motown but rather Hoboken, New Jersey, this book owes its life and care for detail and accuracy to John Wiley senior editor Hana Lane, editorial assistant Ellen Wright, and production editor Rachel Meyers, as well as to my agent, Michael Dorr, president of the LitPub Ink literary agency, whom I thank for much support over a very long year.

Introduction

Somewhere at this very moment, on some stage in some auditorium in some province large or small, theyre setting up for a Temptations gig. The Temptations in question may be one of two, or moremany moregroups that have through the years appropriated the cosmic name for fun and profit. It could, of course, be the actual Temptations, the most successful African American recording group in the history of mankindor at least its lineal descendant by dint of the fact that its driving wheel is Otis Williams, the sole surviving member of the original group, who in the last half century has soldiered in twenty-seven different Temptations configurations with twenty-one other Temptations of varying authenticity. But it could just as easily be The Temptations Review Featuring Dennis Edwards, fronted by the belated Temptation who in 1968 replaced the spectacularly brilliant and even more spectacularly messed-up David Ruffin. At one time, Edwards too billed his unit the Temptations, leading Otis Williamswho fired him three times when he was in the real Temptationsto sue him for infringing on Williamss sacred copyright. In fact, Otis has initiated similar lawsuits to keep the name from other ersatz Temptations, leading to the formation of some loopy pseudo-Temptations permutations out there on the hustings, among them one led by someone whose life span with the group was two years.

As Otis will tell you, that thar gold reaped by the Temptations for selling twenty-five million records worldwidethe monetary reward of seventeen Top 40 pop hits, four of them No. 1 hits, and fourteen No. 1 R&B hitsaint fools gold. And its his gold, his brand, one carved into his domain by seventy-one Top 40 R&B records (more than anyone else) and fifty-two albums. The hardiness of the brand explains why men with the most tenuous connection to the Temptations will splay the name about on a stage, squeeze into a tight suit, and swing a hip joint for an hour. Theres money in that name, and has been since the Johnson administration.

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