Temptations (Updated) by Otis Williams

Author:Otis Williams [Williams, Otis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780815412182
Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Published: 2002-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

7

Eddie officially left the Temptations in March 1971. We hustled to find his replacement, knowing it would be a difficult task.

Through the years we had worked countless times with the Vibrations, the Los Angeles quintet known for their outrageous dancing and showmanship. One of their members was Ricky Owens, a tall, nice-looking first tenor who had been with them since the beginning. During his tenure with the Vibrations, he became known for a couple of special numbers, “Misty” and “Cindy,” which never failed to drive the girls crazy.

The word out was that the Vibrations were splitting up, so we asked Ricky to come to Detroit and audition. His singing was great, as we expected, but for some reason he wasn’t moving that well. He appeared awkward, and his timing was off. Figuring it was something we could work on, we enlisted him anyway. We usually toured less in the spring and spent that time recording. That summer Motown released the second single from Sky’s the Limit, “I’m the Exception to the Rule,” backed with “It’s Summer,” songs we’d recorded after Eddie and before Ricky with just the four of us.

The scene of Ricky’s public debut with the Temptations was the Carter Barron Amphitheater in Washington, D.C. Of course, the shows were all sold out, and on opening night the place was jam-packed. Everything was running smoothly, but the moment of truth arrived when Ricky started singing “Just My Imagination.” Instead of singing the first line, “Each day from my window, I watch her as she passes by,” he sang something like “Each window, my day . . .” A loud hush fell over the audience, then the booing started. It was a nightmare. The next night the Carter Barron was so empty you could have shot a cannon from the stage and not worried about hitting a damn thing. The word spread all over town: New Temptation Ricky Owens can’t sing, and the Tempts are in trouble. We knew we’d have to let him go right away.

We didn’t imagine that we’d have to start looking for another tenor so soon, but the trouble with Ricky persisted. A woman we knew told us about a guy she’d seen in Baltimore named Damon Harris. According to her, not only could Damon sing very much like Eddie, but he was also good-looking, a fact that was always a consideration. We got in touch with him and asked him to come over to meet us the next day.

Damon, whose real name is Otis, was quite a bit younger than we, only about nineteen years old when we met. In a funny twist, he had sung in a group called the Tempos, which he’d patterned after the Temptations. A fellow member of the Tempos was Billy Griffin, who later replaced Smokey Robinson in the Miracles. Damon seemed in awe of us. He’d brought along a little list of songs to sing, and he sang a few. While I didn’t hear anything particularly outstanding, everyone else seemed to like him a lot.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.