By the time this song was recorded, Kendricks was locked into a running feud with fellow founder Otis Williams, and would walk out later in the same week this TV performance was recorded. He departed between shows at the Copacabana to pursue a solo career like David Ruffin (who had advised him to follow suit).

 

Eddie was followed out of the door, for different reasons, by Paul Williams, the group’s original lead singer, who had suffered from chronic sickle-cell anaemia, alcoholism and depression.

 

It’s tempting to interpret this final performance, with Kendricks alone on a step at the front, as some sort of ominous harbinger of his departure. But far more likely he took that place simply because he sang lead on the song, which reached No.8 in June 1971. Besides, earlier in the show they had performed a medley of songs where they all sang, danced and smiled together.

 

Like so many of their hits, it’s penned by the peerless Motown songwriting team of Norman Whitfield and lyricist Barrett Strong and produced by Whitfield with his signature blend of a bluesy bassline by Bob Babbit (from Motown’s house band The Funk Brothers) and lush strings, with French horns, from members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

 

Sadly, the only one of the ‘classic’ Temps line-up still with us is Otis Williams. Following Paul Williams’s death in 1973, David Ruffin died penniless of an overdose in a crack house in 1991 (Michael Jackson paid for his funeral) and Kendricks died of lung cancer in 1992. Melvin Franklin, who had battled various diseases and survived being shot during an attempted carjacking, died in 1995. Another former Temp, Dennis Edwards, died in 2018.