Say These Words of Love, Temptones (1967)

I hope that someday I can figure out how to have a chat with Daryl Hall.  Because that man has stories I want to hear about spending quality time with the Temptations, and in particular, my obsession Paul Williams.

For decades, I have wondered about the 1985 recording of Live at the Apollo, a performance by Hall, John Oates, Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin, long after the latter two had left the Temptations. Daryl Hall has a phenomenal voice and this particular recording had some killer stuff on it. There was a time when I played it right into the ground.  But I never really understood what the connection was between the two duos, if there was any at all. 

So there I was listening to all the great soul music on my George McGregor and the Bronzettes station on Pandora last week when what popped up but a total obscurity called Say These Words of Love by the Temptones. And guess who the Temptones were?  Daryl Hall's early Philly-based, entirely white, band, that's who.

Research Mode ensued.  And what a story it is.  I wish it were my story.

Daryl Hall grew up in a predominantly black community outside of Philadelphia that was vibrant with a veritable melange of musical influences. He moved to Philly proper when he was a student at Temple University and started hanging in the same scene that included the nucleus of people who became the architects of the Sound of Philadelphia - Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, Thom Bell, the Delfonics, and the Stylistics. The Temptones was the group he formed with several other Temple students. Initially an a cappella quartet, they soon got a rhythm section, left doo-wop behind and moved into straight soul, with Hall as lead singer.    

The gigs the Temptones played were often in front of largely black audiences, which reportedly were stunned at the soul sound these white guys were capable of producing. They performed at soul spectaculars, blew other groups out of the water, and ended up with the chance to appear at the Uptown Theatre - which was to Philly what the Apollo was to New York - in a talent show sponsored by James Brown.  (They took 2nd place, ahead of the Delfonics.) It was there that Daryl Hall met his idols, the Temptations.

The Tempts were impressed with the Temptones - a rendition of their Farewell My Love (a pre-Ruffin ballad when Paul Williams was still co-lead singing with Eddie Kendricks) was particularly well received - and from what I've been able to dig up, Williams mentored them, even arranging an audition with Smokey Robinson.

Though dreams of Motown were not to be, a record deal with another label did follow, and they released a few singles, including Say These Words of Love, accompanied by many of the session musicians that would later back the O'Jays, Jerry Butler and the Spinners as the Sound of Philadelphia became a force to be reckoned with.  However, when two of the members got drafted to go to Vietnam, they called it quits. Daryl Hall had already met John Oates out and about, and the rest is history. 

So you can see why I want to have an audience with Hall - to learn more about his knowledge of Temptations history would send me reeling for a month, I'm sure. The story of the lifelong friendship of Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks has not been properly told - hell, it hasn't been told at all - and I believe I am the one who is destined to tell it.

Don't Look Back, Temptations (1965)

For the past few weeks, I have had a fixation on a man, unfortunately long dead, who I barely knew existed - one of the original five Temptations, Paul Williams.

There were two catalysts for this - a miniseries on the group based on member Otis Williams' (no relation) autobiography, and a priceless dvd I haven't been able to return to Netflix called The Temptations: Get Ready (1965-1972).

When the original Tempts were alive and kicking, I rarely saw them perform on TV. Odd, because they did a lot of that sort of thing. Nonetheless, I had little awareness of who the actual members were and the magic that resulted when they worked together as a unit.

No more. Now when I listen to their songs I can picture faces and mannerisms and hear each distinctive voice and, having just bought the 5-CD box set The Temptations: Emperors of Soul, nirvana has set in. Somehow the experience is so much deeper because their level of performance was so utterly evolved. It makes all the difference.

It is to Paul Williams that a lot of that difference is owed. The original Temptations came about when two Detroit-based groups joined forces. Paul and Eddie Kendricks performed in the Primes, and Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin were in the Distants. David Ruffin was a later recruit, and it was after he joined that they started having big hits.

Paul had a singular talent for choreography and it was his influence, later expanded by Motown's house choreographer Cholly Atkins, that made the Temptations the glorious and polished performing group that they were. He is a joy to watch in every recorded performance that I have seen thus far. I refer you to his rollicking antics in The Way You Do the Things You Do (he's to Eddie Kendricks' right). Oh, to have been in that audience!

But Paul also was a lead singer, as they all were at various times, although that role was eclipsed to a large degree when Ruffin became the most well known front man, with Kendricks sharing a roughly similar amount of the spotlight. Paul's stunning performance of Don't Look Back on the Ed Sullivan Show, which I never saw at the time but is on the Get Ready dvd, stopped my heart. The song apparently has legions of followers, and I am now one of them.

Written by Smokey Robinson and fellow Miracle Ronald White, Don't Look Back was a B-side to My Baby but somehow broke out onto the R&B charts, which was unusual at the time. As delivered via Paul's smoky and nuanced baritone, the emotional message of the song has become an inspiration to me, amplified by having seen his performance (unfortunately no longer on youtube).

Paul Williams was a tormented soul with more personal and health problems than anyone should have to bear. He died at 34, either of a self-inflicted gunshot wound or one fired by someone else, depending on who you ask. Knowing the tragic backstory makes watching him having the time of his life in performance a bit of a balm. I guess I'm glad I wasn't aware of him when he died - it would have been heartbreaking.

Eli's Coming, Three Dog Night (1969)

The year 1969 occupies an easily-disturbed place in my psyche because so much was going on in my life at the time. I was getting ready to graduate from high school and leave home for college the next year, I was inching tentatively toward being in love with the boy who became my boyfriend all through college, my parents were undergoing a horrific breakup ... and of course the country was going to hell in a handbasket with its involvement in the Vietnam War. So practically every song that was on the charts in those days is emotion-laden in one way or another.

However histrionic the songs of Three Dog Night might seem today, they were so of that time for me. The 'three-lead-singer' model that they had deployed was very unusual for rock music, and it produced some intense recordings which fit perfectly with the tenor of the times.

The group's first million-seller, "One," took the world by storm, but my favorite will always be Eli's Coming, which was a great example of what they seemed best at - adapting the music of relatively unknown or otherwise undiscovered composers (in this case the genius Laura Nyro) for commercial success. The Beatles' success as "self-contained recording artists," which is just a fancy way of saying that they wrote their own music, made it harder for artists who were primarily songwriters like Nyro to get their music recorded because every group felt they could and should generate their own material. In fact, there was (and probably still is) a kind of elitism around that which suggests anyone not doing their own material is somehow laughable and unworthy.

Regardless, Three Dog Night rose above it all. In addition to Nyro's haunting composition, Danny Hutton, Cory Wells and Chuck Negron with their powerhouse voices covered the music of Randy Newman, John Hiatt, Leo Sayer and Paul Williams. They were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2000. Although this YouTube video is disturbing in so many ways that will become immediately apparent upon viewing, it's worth checking out just to hear the song again and remind yourself why trousers with vertical stripes should forever remain in fashion's graveyard.

Eli's Coming and its command to "hide your heart, girl" so spoke to me that years later when I took voice lessons, the song was one that I regularly worked with to develop my voice. And of course I was inspired to find out more about Nyro, who remains today one of my most revered female vocalists.