Best known for their silky
soul
vocals and smooth-stepping routines,
the Temptations
were firmly entrenched as the undisputed kings of
Barry Gordy
's
Motown
stable when cutting-edge producer
Norman Whitfield
walked into the studio and announced that it was time to shake things up. The resulting freakout became the first half of the stellar
Cloud Nine
, an album that would become one of the defining early
funk
sets, with songs that not only took
in a new direction, but helped to shape a genre as well. On one side and across three jams,
Whitfield
and
would give '70s-era
musicians a broad palette from which to draw inspiration. The title track, with its funky
bordering on
psychedelic
frenzy, was an audacious album opener, and surely gave older fans a moment's pause. Only two more songs rounded out side one: an incredibly fresh take on
"I Heard It Through the Grapevine,"
which jazzed up the vocals, brought compelling percussion to the fore, and relegated the piano well into the wings, and
"Run Away Child, Running Wild,"
an extravagant nine-minute groove where the sonics easily surpassed the vocals. After shaking up the record-buying public with these three masterpieces,
brought things back to form for side two. Here, their gorgeous vocals dominated slick arrangements across seven tracks which included
"Hey Girl"
and the masterful
"I Need Your Lovin'."
Funk
continued to percolate -- albeit subtly -- but compared to side one, it was
Temptations
business as usual. It was this return to the classic sound, however, which ultimately gave
its odd dynamic. The dichotomy of form between old and new between sides doesn't allow for a continuous gel. But the brash experimentation away from traditional
on the three seminal tracks which open the disc shattered the doorway between past and present as surely as the decade itself imploded and smooth
gave way to blistering
. ~ Amy Hanson