Happy Birthday to Temptations co-founder Otis Williams. I know you wanna leave me — and with that, a thousand necks snap in the direction of the speakers. Going from one of Motown’s most pop-oriented singles to one of its most soulful, Ain’t Too Proud To Beg is an utterly epic track. Oh, we can spend all day discussing the horn arrangement, Uriel Jones’ dominating drum track, Earl Van Dyke’s piano, the backing harmonies, or the somewhat disturbing lyrics1 and their fascinating expressions of masculinity, but there’s really only one thing you want to talk about when it comes to this song — and that’s David Ruffin. This track is the sound of one of soul music’s greats finding his voice. The raspy, pleading urgency was achieved on this song by Norman Whitfield instructing David to sing above his natural register without resorting to falsetto. This was actually a fairly common trick around Motown, but Whit and Ruff took it to a whole new level. Otis Williams recalls David “singing his butt off” a few lines at a time, sweat pouring down his face and trademark glasses fogged up, while Otis and Eddie Kendricks encouraged him from the control room. A result of hard work, this is a legendary performance, and would shape how David sang for the rest of his career.2 This song is also among the most important in the group’s catalog, not only for the career-defining vocal, but for how it severely altered the group’s future. Written and produced by Norman Whitfield, he had been on a quest for a few years now to unseat Smokey Robinson as the Tempts’ main producer. He was open about his ambition, but no one believed he could actually do it — Eddie Holland, who agreed to write the song’s lyrics, nevertheless admits to laughing at Norman and telling him he would never beat Smokey. He seemed right; at the first Quality Control meeting, this song was turned down in favor of the radio-friendly yet far less innovative Get Ready. An example of just how little control Motown’s artists had over their own output in the 60s, the Tempts were both shocked and disappointed, apparently preferring Ain’t Too Proud greatly themselves.3 But no one ever got far underestimating Norman Whitfield. Utterly fuming at his loss, Berry Gordy promised him a single release if Get Ready failed to make Top 20 — when it did, a hit was born, Smokey was out, and Norman was in. A rougher soul sound would become the group’s trademark, with David Ruffin dominating even more leads than before and helping to revolutionize what exactly constituted the Motown Sound.thecurvature/2012/08/10/top-5-motown-singles-1966/
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:35:31 +0000
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