Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
David Ruffin – Me ‘n Rock ‘n Roll Are Here to Stay Motown M6-818S1 (1974)
This one has that pure Norman Whitfield psychedelic soul sound. “I Saw You When You Met Her,” “Smiling Faces Sometimes” and the title track kill. Looping in canned applause on two tracks was a hugely dumb decision. Still one of Ruffin’s best.
David Ruffin – Feelin’ Good Motown MS696 (1969)
Made up of leftovers from the My Whole World Ended sessions plus some additional material that leans a little toward psychedelic soul, Feelin’ Good seems to fall just short of something bigger. There’s great singing and all, but sometimes the strings and backing seem underwhelming set against Ruffin’s leads (“What You Gave Me”). Decent but forgettable next to My Whole World Ended.
David Ruffin – David: Unreleased LP & More Hip-O Select B0002509-02 (2004)
Ruffin recorded a batch of songs primarily in late 1969 and early 1970, some of which were briefly slated for a new LP but shelved and mostly not released until 2004. A few tracks dribbled out as singles and on rarities collections, but the bulk of this just sat in the Motown vaults. The planned original LP (tracks 1-12 here) picks up where Feelin’ Good left off. The opener “Each Day is a Lifetime” is the pick of them. What’s interesting though is how much of the “bonus tracks” — those not slated for the cancelled original album — are among the best here. The original planned album clearly catered to a mostly sweet, orchestrated sound, while the bonus cuts feature heavier rhythms and a little more rock inflection. There is little doubt that the original album would have not made much of a dent. It’s a competent offering but it rarely if ever excites. The energy of some of the bonus tracks would have livened it up a lot — “It’s Gonna Take a Whole Lot of Doin'” and “I Want Her to Say It Again” are great. In fact, “It’s Gonna Take a Whole Lot of Doin'” might well be one of the very best of his solo career (break-up song or reparations song? — you decide). It’s hard to figure what went wrong with a talent as great as Ruffin’s. His debut album was a magnificent achievement. But perhaps it was his ego, his drug habit, a lack of ambition, a clash of personalities with Motown management, or just bad luck that he seemed to end up relegated to second rate material and the backwaters of the Motown empire. He would make a brief artistic resurgence with the under-appreciated Me ‘n Rock ‘n Roll Are Here to Stay a few years later. Yet it wasn’t really meant to be for Ruffin, whose career seemed to just unceremoniously slide out of view.
David Ruffin – David Ruffin Motown M762L (1973)
This self-titled album was my first exposure to David Ruffin’s solo material, back in the late 1990s. I knew him as the lead singer of The Temptations, and hey, those glasses were back in style! Definitely not his best. Yet stuff like “I Miss You, Part 1” is still decent. The problem is that he’s not doing the sweet, sumptuous string backing thing but also hasn’t fully committed to the psychedelic soul sound that would work well on his next effort Me ‘n Rock ‘n Roll Are Here to Stay. So he’s stuck in some kind of middle-ground limbo. It’s that, plus the material is forgettable and his voice isn’t as effective as elsewhere. He had that once-in-a-lifetime coarse soulfulness in those vocal chords. Here he comes across as almost hoarse much of the time. Adequate, but unessential.
David Ruffin – My Whole World Ended Motown MS685 (1969)
Take a hundred albums at random, no ten thousand, and chances are you won’t end up with even one with the depth and sweetness of My Whole World Ended. It’s hard to go wrong with Motown’s golden age soul, which practically offers a guarantee of one or two classics somewhere on a full-length LP. But it was rare before the 1970s for Motown to produce an album that felt like a classic as a whole. To that short list add David Ruffin’s solo debut.
Ruffin was a singer gifted with a one-of-a-kind voice, but he was also someone who paid his dues and put in the work to learn what it takes to be a soul singer. Through his teens, he was touring in gospel shows and had first-hand experience with just about all the biggest acts on the gospel highway, Mahalia Jackson, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Swan Silvertones, you name it. He was even in The Soul Stirrers briefly. A gospel background was the secret weapon of many great soul singers, and Ruffin had that pedigree too.
Of course, the reason most people know Ruffin is as one of the lead singers of The Temptations. He might be the only lead singer they recognize, from his lead on one of the most instantly recognizable pop songs ever recorded, “My Girl.” Fans might also know his lead on other greats like “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” too. A few other things might come to mind if you know anything beyond Ruffin’s music. He developed a reputation as a prima donna. He wanted The Temptations to rename themselves “David Ruffin & The Temptations.” Through the years he developed a massive cocaine habit as well.
After finally exiting The Temptations, Motown gave Ruffin every opportunity for his solo debut. He got the best songs, the best producers, and of course probably the best studio band around, The Funk Brothers. This album came out of the Hitsville, U.S.A. assembly line. It bears all the hallmarks of the classic Motown sound, with throbbing bass from James Jamerson punctuated with horns, strings, woodwinds, and backing vocals. With the handful of producers on board this never settles into any sort of rut, but these musicians worked together so much that there is still a cohesion. The best part is that almost nothing repeats. These songs grow and evolve. They don’t just extrapolate a simple riff. The embellishments vary too. One moment it’s horns, the next strings, the next some vocals, then a harpsichord, elsewhere a flute, and a few time some hints of bells are draped over the top. A light touch keeps the arrangements from crowding out Ruffin’s vocals, and, as one of the supreme achievements, the orchestration fits the core electric soul instrumentation like a glove. Take the backing vocals too. They don’t resemble what The Temptations did. These have no doo-wop roots. They come across casually. It’s like some friends wandered along and just couldn’t help but sing along. But they keep their voices down, to be polite and supportive.
These songs all have a dark side. Just look through the words in the song titles: worlds are ending, everything is lost, there’s a double-cross, there’s darkness, dreams have been stolen, and this guy’s baby is gone. When you then read a title like “Message from Maria,” could it possibly be a hopeful message? Not in the bleak universe Ruffin crafted.
All this discussion hasn’t even touched on the magnificent vocal performances yet. David Ruffin has a voice that almost any soul singer would die for. There is a grit and coarseness in it that makes every note seem like a bitter and tragic struggle. And that’s every note. When bolstered by the sweet, sumptuous music, Ruffin’s voice conveys a great tragic sense of loss. But not an everyday loss. This is world-crushing loss. It cuts, like a deep wound that might never heal.
“My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)” opens the album. The first things heard are woodwinds and strings with heavy maracas. Only after a few moments is a syncopated beat introduced. When Ruffin enters, he’s humming. By the time he’s singing, “Last week my life had meaning…,” there is no question that the star of this album has arrived. Some of the lyrics rhyme, but only a few. They are about holding on to find a new world, now that the old is gone. But it almost doesn’t matter what the words are. Ruffin’s voice has all the ache and sadness needed. His voice alone conveys the heartbreak. This is a song perfectly suited to his style of singing. He’s always shifting, singing with a bit of a smooth crooner’s style but marked with gravelly texture, and broken up with melismata and added phrases (“aww, tell me baby,” “oh yes it did, baby, baby”). He’s cataloging ways to cope with loss. This is a song that can make an album. It’s a song that, in the right setting, could just play again and again on repeat and no amount of repetition would ever be enough. Yeah, it’s that good.
“Everlasting Love” has been sung by many others. When Ruffin does it here he seems adrift. He’s mining all the drama in the song. The confines of the rhythm aren’t enough to hold him. He even screams. It seems like a love song, but it’s also a plea, built from regret, longing and loneliness.
So much bleakness and uncertainty…it’s only a few hard-fought personal connections that seem tangible on My Whole World Ended and in that this feels like a grounded sort of music. There isn’t the mysticism of Van Morrison‘s Astral Weeks, but this one feels like a more pubic version of the same searching, longing and obsession that fuelled Morrison’s classic. Ruffin is posed on the album cover almost like Rodin’s “The Thinker,” and (apart from the corny globe in the background) he’s making a thinking person’s album.
There are a lot more great songs here, “I’ve Lost Everything I’ve Ever Loved,” “My Love Is Growing Stronger,” and “The Double Cross.” These tunes run a gamut from slow ballads (“Somebody Stole My Dream,” “Message from Maria”) to mid-tempo, funky rockers (“Pieces of a Man,” “Flower Child”) and even a roiling, off-kilter rocker (“World of Darkness”). My Whole World Ended is just one of those albums that is worth it. It was a hit in its day but for some reason tends to be left off the list of essential soul classics. Rescue it, if only for yourself.