Post by Weak4Weeks on Dec 17, 2005 14:52:51 GMT -5
(Thanks again to Aba21!)
June 1971
Tan Magazine Article
“The Real Reason Eddie Kendricks Left The Temptations”
Why did Eddie Kendricks leave The Temptations? Was he sick? Was the road taking its toll on the 6’ 1” 145 lbs singer who for some inexplicable reason became the sex symbol of the singing Temptations of Motown, a group that, as much as any other, dominated the R&B, Pop-Rock scene in the turbulent 1960’s.
These questions came down like Niagara gushing on the huge headquarters of the black owned Motown Record Corp., in Detroit, MI. Women and girls flooded the phone lines with cries of “Why, Why, Why? What are you doing to Eddie? Why? Said Pat Coleman, a publicist of the company, “Its almost as if we were doing or had done something terrible to Eddie.”
Motown promptly announced,” a massive manhunt for a handsome replacement was under way” of the moody and sensitive Kendricks, a lead tenor whose singing range brings out the unbridled audience hysteria when he reaches falsetto level.
By the time you read this, Motown will have probably ended its massive search for Eddie’s replacement. if indeed it hasn’t as this is written. It has solved quite neatly the replacement of Paul Williams, second tenor/baritone, whose doctors told him to come in off the road for further testing to determine the cause of an undiagnosed illness. Williams replacement is Richard Street who has traveled with the group for the last 6 months as the sixth Temptation, and like so many others in the Motown family of singing groups, Street came from another Motown aggregation.
Edward G. Abner, Jr. Motown Multi-Media Management Corporation Vice-President, hastens to assure us that Kendricks is not leaving Motown and that, “I will assume personal responsibility for developing his career as a single artist”.
Paul Williams plays the guitar and sings in several ranges; Otis Williams Miles is sometimes called the “leader” of the Tempts because he and David English, bass singer. Who started out together in another group, brought the Tempts together. Dennis Edwards came to the Tempts in 1968 form the Contours, to replace a departing David Ruffin, who was in turn, dead set on making it as a single.
In Detroit earlier this year, I interviewed all the Tempts at their homes, except Eddie. He was the most distant, the most shy, the most fiercely private almost to the point of paranoia. He set the interview at his barbeque restaurant, The Three Little Pigs, On Detroit’s northwest side, and although I tried to steer the questioning to personal and private matters concerning his life and his family’s, he abruptly shut it off, declaring, “I’m not going to discuss my private life. What do you want to know the name of my wife and children for? If you want to talk about my business here,” he waved expansively at his well kept but lightly patronized (that day) restaurant” fine. I’ll tell you all about it. But my private life is my own.”
Well said, and of course a man is entitled to keep his private life private, even if he is an entertainer, or maybe because he is an entertainer who must give 90 per cent of his life to an adoring public. And while stubborn refusal to permit me to explore his marriage, discuss his kids, made the profile piece I was doing on the group considerably weaker, I was forced to admit to his right to privacy in those matters, respect it and go on from there.
What shook me however, as much as the Tempts most avid fans, was that he quit the group. Throughout my interview with the group, not one word of the possibility of his leaving for a solo career was mentioned, and the announcement struck like a thunderbolt weeks after I returned to Chicago, and long after the piece had gone to press.
In a recent telephone interview with Tan, however, Kendricks attempted to set the record straight. Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving the group when I was in Detroit I asked? " Well I thought I about leaving last November, but then I though it was all straightened out and I wouldn’t leave. I didn’t want to go, but that’s the way it is", was his answer.
What did he mean by that? What did he mean he thought he was leaving in November, but then thought it was all straightened out? The statements appeared to be covering up a multitude of causes, conflicts, confusions, surly decisions.
But deeper, the statements appeared to mask, as indeed I later learned, a grim determination on the part of Kendricks to break out of the old mold of performing he had been in the last 11 years and attempt to seek broader, more complete fulfillment in other entertainment pursuits.
Right now however, Kendricks, a crop of thin and wispy whiskers adorning his slender face was hard at work on the promotion of his new recording, This Used To Be The Home Of Johnnie Mae. But the B-side, It’s So Hard To say Good-by is also taking off. It’s threatening to become a double-sided hit! That ain’t bad man, says Kendricks.
How does it feel to be on your own, now that you have left the Tempts, a group like no other in the word, a groups that shaped you as you shaped it, bringing to the other a nurturing refinement that has made the two of you inseparable and the envy of all of show business.
At this point he talked about going out on the road again with his new five-man group, The Posse, who are managed by EJK Productions run by his cousin. "No I am not going to tell you who my cousin is", said Eddie. "But the plan is to stay on the road for 6-8 months. I need my rest he says, but I will stay out as long as I have to".
"No I don’t want to be labeled as a falsetto. When you go on the road, you have to be more than that. David Ruffin? I don’t want to talk about David Ruffin. I’m me and David is David. I try not to make judgments about others. I come form the ghetto, and I never let my feet leave the ground. If anybody hurts me, I’m gonna bleed as much as the next person. I live by the truth, nothing more, and nothing less."
And this gets us back to the question asked out the outset of this piece: Why Did Eddie Kendricks leave the Temptations? It is a good question and maybe one that is unanswerable. For now long since out of his teenage beginnings and just reaching maturity in the business. Eddie himself seems to have had everything going for himself as a member of the Temptations: money (six figure income), 12 gold records, success in business (Three Little Pigs and EJK Productions), as well as in private life, a nice family and comfortable home and fulfillment as a performer and health.
Yet, like many before him, Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls Joe Williams, Diana Ross and other performers too numerous to name, Kendricks, a lonely, questioning individual, felt stifled and longed to break out, to seek new undetermined ways in his life. He wanted to march to the beat of his own drummer and follow his inclination wherever they take him.
It is not easy for Eddie Kendricks to tell his innermost dreams and ambitions to an outsider. It is perhaps harder for an Eddie Kendricks to admit, even to himself, that he was being stifled like a bird in a cage: singing, singing, singing but always in a group, always confined and defined by his its limits, but not daring, at first to take courage in his own hands and break out.
Kendricks as was stated earlier, is a shy introverted, sensitive man, who views questions by outsiders with a barely suppressed rage and, indeed, looks upon outsiders with a suspicion bordering on hostility.
Ego is at the center of an artists being. It is the motor that shapes nurtures, drives him. The bigger the ego, the better the artist and the bigger the ego, the more narcissistic the individual.
This is not to take away from the artist, for he is nothing without a preening vanity, a self-love, and an oversized ego. This enables him to give his unique artistry to the world. It does explain in some measure why the talented performers like Kendricks must eventually go their own lonely ways--------where they can fine fulfillment in their own way.
Outsized ego or not, an artists faces hazards when he leaves the warm confines of a group. The group, likewise the disasters, shares every triumph. So while an artist as a single, may enjoy the full heady feeling of hogging the entire spotlight after a fine performance, he stands to take the blame for a flat performance. Why then did Kendricks leave?
Kendricks says it better," I want to model. I want to act. I want to be an all around entertainer. I believe I can be that. At least I’m gonna try".
"Do I have any regrets about leaving the Temptations? Listen. When I was with the tempts, I gave them my heart and soul. Now that I have left. I don’t look back. I take my heart and soul with me. That’s the kind of guy I am. I don’t believe in doing things halfway. I never have and I never will".
There you have it. Eddie Kendrick’s is not ill; he has not fallen out with the Tempts, individually or collectively. He is not being mistreated or messed over by Motown. Neither is he being ripped off by some sinister, hidden, unrecognized in impersonal forces in a barracuda industry that is certainly show biz. Nor has fatigue, boredom, ennui, inevitable foes of an arduous performing schedule on the road, overtaken him. He felt he has gone as far as he can with the Temptations.
Whether this is true or not remains to be seen but one thing is for sure, Kendricks is leaving the Temptations after 11 years of solid performing. and he is leaving at the top of his game. As an individual sex symbol of the Temptations, Kendricks leaves the group on an ascending wave of piecing female squeals, to seek the more scented oil to assuage a throbbing ego.
Here’s wishing him success. He may or may not need it, or want this gratuitous offering. For Kendricks is a pragmatic soul, above all. He will be successful or he won’t be. But he’ll be neither through default. He will be out there trying, sink or swim.
June 1971
Tan Magazine Article
“The Real Reason Eddie Kendricks Left The Temptations”
Why did Eddie Kendricks leave The Temptations? Was he sick? Was the road taking its toll on the 6’ 1” 145 lbs singer who for some inexplicable reason became the sex symbol of the singing Temptations of Motown, a group that, as much as any other, dominated the R&B, Pop-Rock scene in the turbulent 1960’s.
These questions came down like Niagara gushing on the huge headquarters of the black owned Motown Record Corp., in Detroit, MI. Women and girls flooded the phone lines with cries of “Why, Why, Why? What are you doing to Eddie? Why? Said Pat Coleman, a publicist of the company, “Its almost as if we were doing or had done something terrible to Eddie.”
Motown promptly announced,” a massive manhunt for a handsome replacement was under way” of the moody and sensitive Kendricks, a lead tenor whose singing range brings out the unbridled audience hysteria when he reaches falsetto level.
By the time you read this, Motown will have probably ended its massive search for Eddie’s replacement. if indeed it hasn’t as this is written. It has solved quite neatly the replacement of Paul Williams, second tenor/baritone, whose doctors told him to come in off the road for further testing to determine the cause of an undiagnosed illness. Williams replacement is Richard Street who has traveled with the group for the last 6 months as the sixth Temptation, and like so many others in the Motown family of singing groups, Street came from another Motown aggregation.
Edward G. Abner, Jr. Motown Multi-Media Management Corporation Vice-President, hastens to assure us that Kendricks is not leaving Motown and that, “I will assume personal responsibility for developing his career as a single artist”.
Paul Williams plays the guitar and sings in several ranges; Otis Williams Miles is sometimes called the “leader” of the Tempts because he and David English, bass singer. Who started out together in another group, brought the Tempts together. Dennis Edwards came to the Tempts in 1968 form the Contours, to replace a departing David Ruffin, who was in turn, dead set on making it as a single.
In Detroit earlier this year, I interviewed all the Tempts at their homes, except Eddie. He was the most distant, the most shy, the most fiercely private almost to the point of paranoia. He set the interview at his barbeque restaurant, The Three Little Pigs, On Detroit’s northwest side, and although I tried to steer the questioning to personal and private matters concerning his life and his family’s, he abruptly shut it off, declaring, “I’m not going to discuss my private life. What do you want to know the name of my wife and children for? If you want to talk about my business here,” he waved expansively at his well kept but lightly patronized (that day) restaurant” fine. I’ll tell you all about it. But my private life is my own.”
Well said, and of course a man is entitled to keep his private life private, even if he is an entertainer, or maybe because he is an entertainer who must give 90 per cent of his life to an adoring public. And while stubborn refusal to permit me to explore his marriage, discuss his kids, made the profile piece I was doing on the group considerably weaker, I was forced to admit to his right to privacy in those matters, respect it and go on from there.
What shook me however, as much as the Tempts most avid fans, was that he quit the group. Throughout my interview with the group, not one word of the possibility of his leaving for a solo career was mentioned, and the announcement struck like a thunderbolt weeks after I returned to Chicago, and long after the piece had gone to press.
In a recent telephone interview with Tan, however, Kendricks attempted to set the record straight. Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving the group when I was in Detroit I asked? " Well I thought I about leaving last November, but then I though it was all straightened out and I wouldn’t leave. I didn’t want to go, but that’s the way it is", was his answer.
What did he mean by that? What did he mean he thought he was leaving in November, but then thought it was all straightened out? The statements appeared to be covering up a multitude of causes, conflicts, confusions, surly decisions.
But deeper, the statements appeared to mask, as indeed I later learned, a grim determination on the part of Kendricks to break out of the old mold of performing he had been in the last 11 years and attempt to seek broader, more complete fulfillment in other entertainment pursuits.
Right now however, Kendricks, a crop of thin and wispy whiskers adorning his slender face was hard at work on the promotion of his new recording, This Used To Be The Home Of Johnnie Mae. But the B-side, It’s So Hard To say Good-by is also taking off. It’s threatening to become a double-sided hit! That ain’t bad man, says Kendricks.
How does it feel to be on your own, now that you have left the Tempts, a group like no other in the word, a groups that shaped you as you shaped it, bringing to the other a nurturing refinement that has made the two of you inseparable and the envy of all of show business.
At this point he talked about going out on the road again with his new five-man group, The Posse, who are managed by EJK Productions run by his cousin. "No I am not going to tell you who my cousin is", said Eddie. "But the plan is to stay on the road for 6-8 months. I need my rest he says, but I will stay out as long as I have to".
"No I don’t want to be labeled as a falsetto. When you go on the road, you have to be more than that. David Ruffin? I don’t want to talk about David Ruffin. I’m me and David is David. I try not to make judgments about others. I come form the ghetto, and I never let my feet leave the ground. If anybody hurts me, I’m gonna bleed as much as the next person. I live by the truth, nothing more, and nothing less."
And this gets us back to the question asked out the outset of this piece: Why Did Eddie Kendricks leave the Temptations? It is a good question and maybe one that is unanswerable. For now long since out of his teenage beginnings and just reaching maturity in the business. Eddie himself seems to have had everything going for himself as a member of the Temptations: money (six figure income), 12 gold records, success in business (Three Little Pigs and EJK Productions), as well as in private life, a nice family and comfortable home and fulfillment as a performer and health.
Yet, like many before him, Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls Joe Williams, Diana Ross and other performers too numerous to name, Kendricks, a lonely, questioning individual, felt stifled and longed to break out, to seek new undetermined ways in his life. He wanted to march to the beat of his own drummer and follow his inclination wherever they take him.
It is not easy for Eddie Kendricks to tell his innermost dreams and ambitions to an outsider. It is perhaps harder for an Eddie Kendricks to admit, even to himself, that he was being stifled like a bird in a cage: singing, singing, singing but always in a group, always confined and defined by his its limits, but not daring, at first to take courage in his own hands and break out.
Kendricks as was stated earlier, is a shy introverted, sensitive man, who views questions by outsiders with a barely suppressed rage and, indeed, looks upon outsiders with a suspicion bordering on hostility.
Ego is at the center of an artists being. It is the motor that shapes nurtures, drives him. The bigger the ego, the better the artist and the bigger the ego, the more narcissistic the individual.
This is not to take away from the artist, for he is nothing without a preening vanity, a self-love, and an oversized ego. This enables him to give his unique artistry to the world. It does explain in some measure why the talented performers like Kendricks must eventually go their own lonely ways--------where they can fine fulfillment in their own way.
Outsized ego or not, an artists faces hazards when he leaves the warm confines of a group. The group, likewise the disasters, shares every triumph. So while an artist as a single, may enjoy the full heady feeling of hogging the entire spotlight after a fine performance, he stands to take the blame for a flat performance. Why then did Kendricks leave?
Kendricks says it better," I want to model. I want to act. I want to be an all around entertainer. I believe I can be that. At least I’m gonna try".
"Do I have any regrets about leaving the Temptations? Listen. When I was with the tempts, I gave them my heart and soul. Now that I have left. I don’t look back. I take my heart and soul with me. That’s the kind of guy I am. I don’t believe in doing things halfway. I never have and I never will".
There you have it. Eddie Kendrick’s is not ill; he has not fallen out with the Tempts, individually or collectively. He is not being mistreated or messed over by Motown. Neither is he being ripped off by some sinister, hidden, unrecognized in impersonal forces in a barracuda industry that is certainly show biz. Nor has fatigue, boredom, ennui, inevitable foes of an arduous performing schedule on the road, overtaken him. He felt he has gone as far as he can with the Temptations.
Whether this is true or not remains to be seen but one thing is for sure, Kendricks is leaving the Temptations after 11 years of solid performing. and he is leaving at the top of his game. As an individual sex symbol of the Temptations, Kendricks leaves the group on an ascending wave of piecing female squeals, to seek the more scented oil to assuage a throbbing ego.
Here’s wishing him success. He may or may not need it, or want this gratuitous offering. For Kendricks is a pragmatic soul, above all. He will be successful or he won’t be. But he’ll be neither through default. He will be out there trying, sink or swim.