Over the decades, I've spun a lot of "Best of__" albums that make me wonder "If this is the best, what can the rest sound like?" Sometimes I know the answer. I also know that there are many singers and groups without enough outstanding songs and/or hits to fill even a disc of less than an hour.

David Ruffin sang a lot of great songs and a number of hits, but he did so as the lead singer of a group known as The Temptations. Many of those songs were composed by "Smokey" Robinson, produced by "Smokey" Robinson, and had Ruffin sounding like "Smokey" Robinson. My favorite Temptations album, produced by Smokey" Robinson is "The Temptations Sing Smokey." My other favorite Temptations songs (I Wish It Would Rain, Just My Imagination, etc.) postdate David Ruffin stalking off because the other Temptations were not willing to change the name of the group to "David Ruffin and the Temptations." (I may be overly influenced by the tv miniseries on the Temptations, but it seems to me that they did just fine without him and he did not do very well without them. I don't think that there is any doubt that he was a very difficult dude with an ego even bigger than his not-small talent.)

Ruffin's only solo sort-of-a-hit was just after his acrimonious break with the Temptations was My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me from his first album (1969), that has a lot of orchestral bells and whistles (not literally--flutes or piccolos rather than whistles) and sounds like a mediocre Temptations recording. Ruffin's voice sounds muffled (misengineered). From the same album I've Lost Everything I Ever Loved comes. It also sounds like he was still with the Temptations with a Ruffin at his rawest (but trying to channel Jackie Wilson more than "Smokey", but his own man on the "Ooo"s).

I'm So Glad I Found You (1969) is Memphis Blues with a neo-gospel chorus. Like "My Whole World Ended," it seems overproduced to me (by Berry Gordy himself).

It was another six years after that before a David Ruffin song cracked the charts with Walk Away from Love (1975, produced by Van McCoy). It has some uncredited female backup singers very much in the Los Angeles (post-Motor City) Motown style (verging on disco). Ruffin goes way, way up even for falsetto singing near the end.

I would like Ruffin's cover of the country (Jack Greene) hit Statue of a Fool (1976, also produced by Van McCoy), which does not sound country at all in his rendition, even more, but his tendency to be on the down side of the pitch slid to being unmistakably flat (in key) here. His voice sounded raspy (from freebasing too much?), but he sold the song even with unusually tinkley strings and occasional choral support. It is slow but not downbeat. (It also has a flight, way, way up on "see" at the end of "so that all can see"; he does not try go back there with the rhyme ("me" in "name it after me").

Everything's Coming Up Love is completely pedestrian: the LA Motown sound with no vocal distinction. Honey Love is pretty boilerplate, too, with more female backup singers in unison with Ruffin on choruses. Female backup singers on Just Let Me Hold You For A Night sound like they are channeling Gladys Knight. There is more soul in Ruffin's performance in the preceding few tracks, but the song (by Charles Kipps, who also wrote "Walk Away from Love") is threadbare.

David Ruffin's last sorta hit was 99% Temptations--a medley of ("Smokey Robinson songs) The Way You Do the Things You Do and My Girl that was recorded live in 1985 at the reopening of the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, backed up by Eddie Hendricks (of the original Temptations) and Temptations admirers Daryl Hall and John Oates. That trip down memory lane was Ruffin's last chart entry. His long and painful decline ended with a fatal cocaine overdose in 1991.

(I skipped over the three early 1970s songs, produced by Bobby Miller, that seem undistinguished to me. Some like Ruffin's cover of I Miss You (first popularized by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes). It has some screaming, again has Ruffin muffled (too far from the microphone or misbalanced), and has some spoken female commentary that I don't like. Ruffin is a bit squeaky when he tries to sound like Otis Redding in Common Man, but also goes to the bottom of his register, an area he didn't frequent.)



© 2006, Stephen O. Murray
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Complete track listing
My Whole World Ended The Moment You Left Me 3:30
I've Lost Everything I've Ever Loved 2:56
I'm So Glad I Fell For You 4:23
Each Day Is A Lifetime 3:18
I Miss You Pt.1 3:50
Common Man 3:10
Walk Away From Love 3:20
Statue Of A Fool 4:24
Everything's Coming Up Love 4:56
Honey Love 4:53
Just Let Me Hold You For A Night 4:01
A Nite At The Apollo Live!-The Way You Do The Things You Do/My Girl 4:36

Total run time 47:17



Recommended: No

Great Music to Play While: Cleaning the House