GALVESTON — For decades, Detroit’s Motown Records label was synonymous with a pop sound that practically defined the baby boom generation. But when the label was no longer interested in the songs, it was too much for Otis Williams to bear.
Williams, who began singing R&B songs for a living in 1961, spent years wandering through the label’s recording studios, hanging out with the likes of Smokey Robinson and label chief and producer Berry Gordy.
Williams’ band, The Temptations, was one of Motown’s most prolific acts. The band was filled with superstar vocalists who cranked out a seemingly endless parade of soul music hits in the 1960s and ’70s.
But after Gordy sold the label in the late 1980s, Williams saw too many changes, many of them painful. So after a relationship that spanned some 40 years, in which the Temptations’ vocal power outlasted every musical flavor of the month, from punk to disco, it was time to move on.
“We saw a different philosophy, and the label became too much like a conglomerate,” said Williams, the lone original member of the Temptations set to perform sold-out shows at The Grand 1894 Opera House tonight and Saturday.
Williams is excited when he thinks about the kind of songs the band has found for its newest CD, “Reflections,” to be released at the end of January on the Universal Record Group label.
Together with the other, newer Temptations, Williams looked through the voluminous number of Motown songs recorded by other stars and picked out favorites, everything from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” to “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing” and “I’ll Be There.”
(Note to readers: If you immediately began humming one of those songs, it is quite probable that you may have once owned a pair of bell-bottom trousers.)
“It was really difficult to pick these songs,” Williams said. “You know there are enough good ones to do a couple more albums.”
As for the music of The Temptations, there may be enough good ones to record more than 40 albums, which is what the group has done over the years, with hits such as “Get Ready,” “Just My Imagination” and “My Girl.”
Williams, who grew up in Texarkana, moved with his family to Detroit when he was 12, and he became enamored with the music of Nat King Cole and Jackie Wilson. But at age 15, when he went to a concert featuring Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers at Detroit’s Fox Theater, he said he knew he wanted to be a singer.
His first group was known as Otis Williams & The Distants, along with Elbridge Bryant and Melvin Franklin. They recorded their first single, “Come On,” in 1959.
The Temptations — known briefly as the Elgins before a name change — came together in 1961 when Williams, a baritone and second tenor singer, Bryant and Franklin hooked up with some former members of the Primes: Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams.
But it wasn’t until David Ruffin replaced Bryant in 1964 and Smokey Robinson came on board as a producer — and it was decided that they would really play up the choreography part of the act to go along with the lush harmonies — that the band hit its stride. That year, the group released “The Way You Do The Things You Do,” the first of 37 Top-Ten hits. The group was backed in the studio by some of the best musicians in the industry, such as legendary bass player James Jamerson.
It was the emotional tenor vocals of Kendricks and Ruffin that defined the group’s sound, even when it ventured into a harder-edged vein in the late 1960s with songs like “Ball of Confusion.” The group still managed to cut chart-topping songs such as “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” in the early 1970s after Kendricks and Ruffin departed, but with several lineup changes the group’s star power faded. Paul Williams committed suicide in 1973, two years after he left the group.
Some reunion tours were staged in the 1980s, but tragedy struck in 1991 when Ruffin died of a drug overdose, and Kendricks died of lung cancer a year later. Franklin died in 1995. All of them were in their 50s.
Besides Otis Williams — the group’s original cornerstone — the 21st century version of The Temptations includes G.C. Cameron, former lead singer of the Spinners, another famous Motown act; Ron Tyson (a member for more than 20 years), Terry Weeks and Joe Herndon.
“The group has been through everything life can toss at you,” said Williams. “The harmony, the lyrics and production in The Temptations’ songs are something that people can relate to no matter how old the songs are. The music stays in your subconscious, not like a lot of these songs you hear today that once they’re finished you can’t remember diddly-squat.”
Which leads to one final question. Can Williams name his favorite Temptations’ song? “No,” he said with a laugh, “Don’t ask me to do that. I like them all.”
