Dennis Edwards
Lead singer of The Temptations whose gospel-trained baritone gave their music a more funky edge
DENNIS EDWARDS, who has died two days before his 75th birthday, was lead singer of The Temptations in the 1970s, when the American soul group turned to psychedelic funk, yielding classic hits such as Ball of Confusion and Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.
During the 1960s, the Motown act had reeled off a series of chart-toppers including My Girl, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg and Get Ready, many highlighting the falsetto of singer David Ruffin. But towards the end of the decade tensions within the five-strong band reached flashpoint, fuelled by Ruffin’s addiction to cocaine and conviction he was the group’s main star. Latterly, he had taken to arriving at concerts with girlfriend Tammi Terrell in a limousine upholstered in mink.
Ruffin was fired by the others in 1968 and the group asked Edwards, then singing with The Contours, to be his replacement. Edwards tried to talk Ruffin into reforming his ways but eventually agreed to join the band, seemingly with Ruffin’s blessing.
Yet at their first performance featuring Edwards, Ruffin crashed the stage as the former began to sing, seized the microphone and performed the hits associated with his voice – to tumultuous applause. This went on for a month until the rest of the group decided to reinstate Ruffin. The very next night, however, he failed to show for a concert at Gettysburg and the forbearing Edwards was definitively taken on.
But it was not just the change in personnel that was to mark a new phase for The Temptations. The producer, Norman Whitfield, had become enamoured of the outré funk being made by Sly and Family Stone, while issues such as civil rights and urban deprivation were also being articulated in a harder-edged way by the likes of Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes.
The result was a radically different, contemporary sound for the group to which Edwards’s baritone, honed by his gospel training, was better suited than the smooth crooning of Ruffin. A string of guitar-propelled, up-tempo hits followed, complemented by the group’s characteristically snappy wardrobe and choreography on stage. They included Cloud Nine (1968), which won a Grammy, I Can’t Get Next to You (1969), which reached No 1 in the US, and Ball of Confusion (1970) – “People moving out/people moving in/why? Because of the colour of their skin …”
The group’s masterpiece of the era was Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone (1972) – “It was the 3rd of September/that day I’ll always remember/ ‘Cos that was the day my daddy died” as Edwards sang.
It was in fact a cover of a song by The Undisputed Truth but Whitfield turned it into an irresistible melange of hi-hat, wah-wah guitar and strings: the track was nearly 12 minutes long. It reached No 1, received two Grammys (one for the instrumental version) and was the last hit recorded by Motown in Detroit, Berry Gordy having moved the business to Los Angeles.
Although Edwards was heard on other notable records of the time by the group, such as War, later made famous by Edwin Starr, vocal duties were shared among them. Thus on the ballad Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me, 1971), it was Eddie Kendricks who featured. Indeed, the lurch into psychedelia, imposed on the group by Whitfield, had led to more stress within it and resentment at Edwards being pushed to the fore.
And, as he himself admitted, “we all dabbled in drugs and alcohol”. By the mid-1970s, members Paul Williams and Kendricks had left and Whitfield had stopped producing the group. The hits began to dry up and, in 1977, Edwards himself was sacked.
Dennis Edwards was born at Fairfield, Alabama, on February 3 1943. His father was a pastor and from the age of two Dennis was singing in church. The family moved to Detroit when he was 10 – Aretha Franklin was a childhood friend and the two later dated – where he graduated from Eastern High School.
Although his parents forbade him to listen to secular music, he formed a group and, after serving with the US Army in Germany, was signed by Motown and put on a retainer of $500 per week while they found an opportunity for him. He eventually joined the Contours, some years after their big hit Do You Love Me.
In the early 1980s Edwards attempted a solo career, having a minor success in 1984 with a duet with Siedah Garrett, Don’t Look Any Further – now more familiar for having been sampled on songs such as Paid in Full (1987) by Eric B & Rakim. By then, he had already returned to The Temptations once, for the Reunion LP, and was to do so and be fired again, for missing concerts, in 1988.
The next year, however, he appeared with the group when they joined the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Afterwards, there were legal wrangles when he tried to perform under the group’s name, eventually settling for The Temptations Review.
In 1977, Dennis Edwards was briefly married to Ruth Pointer of the Pointer Sisters, with whom he had a daughter. He is survived as well by four other daughters and a son, and his wife Brenda.