Dennis Edwards of the Temptations died Thursday, February 1 just days before his 75th birthday after a career that spanned more than five decades. Edwards, who replaced David Ruffin in the soul group in 1968, had made his home in the St. Louis area since the 1970s.
Edwards was the first new member to join the Temptations – the “sixth Tempt” – and led the group’s transformation from love songs to the psychedelic soul sound – and led Motown Records to its first Grammy Award with “Cloud Nine.”
The Temptations – the successful combination of Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin and Otis Williams – were dubbed the “Classic Five.” But as the sixth man – and one of the most memorable and beloved voices – Edwards was treated like an original. In 2013, he was included in the Grammy’s Lifetime Achievement Award given to the Temptations.
Edwards began singing in his father’s Alabama church when he was a toddler. The family moved to Detroit when Edwards was in grade school. There he continued to sing in a church where his father was pastor, eventually becoming choir director. As a teenager, he attended the Detroit Conservatory of Music.
Before the mighty Temptations, there were the Mighty Clouds of Joy. He sang with the gospel group and liberally borrowed the stylings of its lead singer, Joe Ligon. Like Ligon, his strong baritone was often punctuated with wails of joy or anguish. It was the perfect voice for a group named Dennis Edwards and the Fireballs, which he formed in 1961, over the objections of his very religious mother.
“When I first started, I would come to the house, and I would bring money and mom wouldn’t take it,” he recalled to the Alabama NewsCenter in 2016. “She said it was the devil’s money.”
The Fireballs quickly recorded a single on the International Soulville Records label titled “I Didn’t Have to (But I Did),” with “Johnnie on the Spot” on the flip side.
His nascent recording career was quickly interrupted by U.S. Army service. While stationed in Dachau, Germany, where one of the largest Nazi concentration camps had been located, a friend sent him the single, “My Girl” by the Temptations. He knew after he was discharged, he would go home to Detroit and straight to Motown Records.
In 1966, he headed to Hitsville USA, as Berry Gordy’s studio was nicknamed. He was assigned to the Contours after the group’s lead singer became ill. The following year, the Contours opened several times for the Temptations, by now a successful recording group with a burgeoning portfolio of hits.
David Ruffin, with whom Edwards had become close friends, was slowly losing his bearings to cocaine. After failing to show up for an engagement on June 27, 1968, Ruffin was fired; the next day, Edwards was hired.
He said it did not affect his friendship with Ruffin, who continued to show up at concerts, and often stole the microphone and the show. Edwards disputed the contentious scene in the 1998 TV miniseries “The Temptations,” where he was played by Charles Ley. He insisted that he cooperated in his own upstaging at concerts.
“’My Girl’ was always the last song of the show and David would come down out of the audience and sing it,” he told the Asheville (North Carolina) Daily Planet in 2012, “and the others guys (in the group) would get so mad” at both of them.
His biggest concern when he joined the group was mastering the intricate choreography and that signature Temptation Walk. He quickly learned that it wasn’t as difficult as it appeared; it was all about timing and practice.
Edwards spent the next nine years helping to make the Temptations one of the most successful groups in the world. He led the Temptations into its social consciousness season with a new, psychedelic soul sound and Motown to its first Grammy with the group’s classic “Cloud Nine” in 1968. He led “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” which netted the group three Grammys in 1972.
Edwards attributed the power of the song to having recorded it in anger and grief; his father had just died and he visualized the song differently than the producer. He angrily capitulated to the wishes of Norman Whitfield, who produced most of the group’s hits. He preferred the production style of his friend Smokey Robinson, who wrote many of the Temptations’ early songs. He later grudgingly admitted that Whitfield was right that time.
His lead of songs like “Runaway Child, Running Wild,” “Psychedelic Shack,” “Masterpiece” and “Ball of Confusion” helped cement the group’s funk and rock credentials.
Despite his star power, Edwards was hired and fired by the Temptations three times. It was always about money, he said. He first left in 1977, when the group moved from Motown to the Atlantic label. He returned in 1979 when they rejoined Motown and was part of the 1982 reunion tour. The reunion album spawned the chart-topping single “Standing on the Top,” written and produced by Rick James, who also shared lead vocals with Ruffin, Kendricks and Edwards.
He left the group again in 1983, when Motown gave him a real shot as a solo artist. In 1984, he scored not a solo, but one of the all-time great duets, “Don’t Look Any Further” with Siedah Garrett. He followed it up with the equally sensual “(You’re My) Aphrodisiac,” which became a top 20 R&B single. He recorded “Coolin’ Out,” which may have foreshadowed the cooling of his solo career. He returned to the Temptations in 1987, before making his final exit in 1989, the year he was inducted along with original Temptations into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Edwards later formed The Temptations Review, which started a fight over use of the Temptations’ name with Otis Williams, the last original Tempt. The two spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the fight. Against the advice of their attorneys, after a chance encounter, the two old friends decided to settle the name issue then and there. Until shortly before his death, Edwards continued to tour with his Temptations Review.
By his own admission, he had not lived a pristine life, but he outlived four of the five original members of the Temptations, all of whom died before their 53rd birthday.
“We dibbled and dabbled with alcohol and drugs. But it’s important for people to know if you change your lifestyle and wake up, there is hope,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I had a mother who prayed for me, and prayer changes everything.”
His mother didn’t just pray, she took action. She had moved to St. Louis and her son was living in Hollywood. During the ’70s, she decided that Edwards needed a lifestyle change. She told him she was dying.
“She fooled me here,” he said. “She had my room all fixed up.”
When his mother actually became ill shortly after she’d tricked him into a visit, he moved to St. Louis to be with her. He never left, later declaring that St. Louis was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Survivors include Issa Pointer, a daughter from his marriage to Ruth Pointer of the Pointer Sisters, and Denise Edwards, a daughter with his former wife Brenda Edwards.
Gloria S. Ross is the head of Okara Communications and AfterWords, an obituary-writing and design service.
Reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
