By Matt Koelling
Due to the amount of time passed by, plus myriad of line-up shifts, in the fifty-seven years since The Temptations first signed to Motown, it was easy to head into Monday night’s sold-out show at the Ocean City Music Pier with tempered expectations. This is, after all, a group whose many trials and tribulations, along with personnel changes, made for a network television mini-series in 1998. The lone surviving member of the group’s original line-up, baritone Otis Williams, is the author of a 1988 autobiography that NBC’s
The Temptations was based upon.
The most memorable line from that four-hour TV event was troubled lead-singer David Ruffin coldly declaring “ain’t nobody coming to see you, Otis”. Ironically, almost fifty years after Ruffin’s firing from the group, and twenty-five since his tragic demise, people are still coming out to see Otis. Or perhaps more accurately, they’re coming out to see The Temptations, in whatever form they can get.
It was just after 7 PM, on a beautifully sunny and mild evening on the boardwalk, when the 2017 incarnation of The Temptations, along with the Temptations Orchestra, took the stage while instructing five generations of fans in attendance to “Get ready, ‘cause here I come”. Almost immediately this reporter realized that any reservations he might’ve had, about what level of show The Temptations were bringing to the stage nowadays, were unfounded. Despite the lack of participants from the group’s “Classic Five” era, the stage was still littered with veteran show-business talent, ready to give the people what they wanted.
This included a sprinkling of appropriate covers during different portions of the soul-revue styled show: Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up” to blend in some beach-inspired positive vibrations, McFadden and Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” as a nod to the born-nearby Philadelphia sound, “Old Man River” with Otis reprising the vocal first sung by Paul Robeson on Broadway as a tribute to the struggles and sacrifices made by their ancestors, and even the chanted chorus from Sly and The Family Stone’s “Sing A Simple Song” late in the proceedings to galvanize some wordlessly passionate crowd participation.
Still, the main draw was all the classic cuts this group has brought to the popular music cannon. How many acts have added more classic records to the Great American Songbook than The Temptations? That list is very short, if there’s even any act on the list at all. To hear so many of them, performed with reverence, in staggering succession, can feel a bit overwhelming in the best sense of the word.
You don’t get to be onstage, on a show billed as The Temptations, if you can’t sing or play at the highest level. Monday night was further proof of that fact. Former Tower of Power lead singer Larry Braggs did yeoman’s work in the lead tenor slot. Ron Tyson, whose first appearance in the “Eddie Kendricks” role came on live TV back in 1983 at
Motown 25, continues to hold those falsetto notes for three decades and counting. Terry “Babyface” Weeks, who sung lead on the group’s last two hits in their late-90’s renaissance, showed on “Stay” why he had been tapped to replace ailing-from-throat-cancer late-great lead singer Ali-Ollie Woodson. The quintet is then filled out capably by relative newcomer, circa 2002, former George Harrison and Dolly Parton collaborator, Willie “Always Clean” Green on bass.
While the fellas up front didn’t miss a step, in their trademark matching jackets, much of the heavy musical lifting continued to be done by The Temptations Orchestra, led by musical director/producer/arranger McKinley Jackson, who first came to fame by doing the same for fellow Motown legend Marvin Gaye. Jackson came out on occasion from his stage-left perch to animatedly implore the seven-piece horn section to give a bit more, plus added to Braggs’ crowd work with some dancing of his own. Adrian Williams’ guitar dutifully brought Detroit funk to “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and some prescribed psychedelia to “Cloud Nine”.
The hits were seemingly endless. You know all of these songs, and it felt like they played them all. “The Way You Do the Things You Do” got the crowd shimmying in their seats early, but “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” was the first to get them standing up and dancing. Braggs channeled some of Ruffin’s vocal pain on “I Wish It Would Rain”. Tyson found his way towards Kendricks’ dreamy high lead on “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)”. By the time the group got around to performing “The Temptations National Anthem”, aka “My Girl”, the capacity crowd was standing and swaying their hands back and forth above their heads.
Filing out shortly after the set closer, a fiery “I’m Losing You”, with a wide smile on her face, was Philadelphia-raised, long-time Ocean City seasonal resident Donna Gamber. Having seen Gamber earlier in the evening, escorting an 87-year-old woman she’d met seated nearby out to the aisle for a dance, we asked for her thoughts on the show, even though her answer was readily apparent before doing so. “They’re always great. I’ve been going to see The Temps since the Sixties, when they were playing the Uptown Ballroom in Philly and the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.” When bringing up her dance partner, Gamber was quick to exclaim, “wasn’t she amazing, that woman was 87!”, further marveling at founder Otis Williams, managing to be onstage for two hours “still doing all the steps, at 74”.
While it may be nostalgia that first draws these fans inside the door, the end result of an event that manages to honor this legendary group, on a night like this, becomes something more. Regardless of whether you never have before, or like Donna Gamber have done so countless times, the next time The Temptations are coming in your Jersey shore direction, go shower them with love and affection.
