David

by David Ruffin

Overview

It's well known that Motown recorded more material than it could release, but its reasons for shelving material remain a mystery to this day. Ever since the CD reissue boom of the late '80s, this unreleased material has begun to trickle out of the vaults, and when it does surface in such forms as the dynamite double-disc set A Cellarful of Motown!, the music is so good it's hard to believe that it never was released at the time. Knowing this, it should not come as a complete surprise that former Temptations lead singer David Ruffin had a full, completed album shelved in 1971, but hearing Hip-O Select's excavation of that album on the 2004 release David: The Unreleased Album, it's still a wonder that this record sat in the vaults for over three decades, with very few of the songs recorded during the sessions appearing on other records and compilations over the years. Far from being unreleasable, David (titled as such because the album was never given a proper title -- it was given a catalog number and track sequencing, with David Ruffin penciled in as its name, but that was used as the title for his 1973 album) finds Ruffin at a solo peak, not just a singer but in terms of material. He cut the 12 songs that comprised the album, along with the seven bonus tracks from the same sessions that fill out this CD reissue, in late 1969 and 1970, after he had a big solo hit with "My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)," with the intent of releasing the album in 1971. There were a pair of covers of recent hits -- an appropriately heartbroken and seductive "Rainy Night in Georgia" and a rather revelatory "I Want You Back," which added real grit to the Jackson 5's effervescent smash -- but most of this was material written for Ruffin and it played to his strengths. While this music was rooted in Motown's signature sound and performed by the Funk Brothers, it also looked beyond Detroit, adding heavy doses of funk, psychedelia, and smooth soul, filled with galvanizing horns, driving guitars, down-n-dirty clavinets, flourishes of electric sitar, fuzz tones, and wah-wah guitars, all grounded by Ruffin's earthy testifying and tied together by top-notch songwriting. All these elements wound up sounding much hipper than much of the music officially released by Motown in the early 1970, when Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were just beginning to break free of the studio's formula, and while David and its accompanying bonus tracks are not a masterpiece along the lines of Talking Book or What's Going On (or even Where I'm Coming From, for that matter), it's vibrant, exciting music that still sounds fresh -- arguably fresher than full-length Temptations albums of the late '60s -- which qualifies it as a lost classic of sorts. Why was it lost, consigned to the vaults for nearly three and a half decades? According to the liner notes, nobody really knows. Ruffin wasn't popular among the executives at Motown in the early '70s, and he was also going through a number of well-documented personal problems, so it's possible that Motown simply didn't want to promote him at the time, but it's also true that the label had a number of great records, including Marvin's What's Going On, to release in 1971, and Ruffin had two LPs out in 1970, including a duet album with his brother Jimmy, so the market may have been saturated. We'll likely never know the reason why David was buried, but fortunately it has been unearthed, and it's a reason for hardcore soul and Motown fans to celebrate. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Product Details

Release Date:	09/25/2021
Label:	Third Man Records
UPC:	0810074420181
Rank:	72584

Album Credits

Performance Credits

David Ruffin   Primary Artist
The Originals   Vocals (Background)
The Andantes   Vocals (Background)

Technical Credits

Alphonso Mizell   Composer
Earl Van Dyke   Musician
Andrew Skurow   Research,Vault Research
Pat Lawrence   Executive Producer
Joe Hunter   Producer
Clay McMurray   Composer,Producer
Fonce Mizell   Composer
Janie Bradford   Composer
Eddie Willis   Musician
Freddie Gorman   Composer
Uriel Jones   Musician
Joe Messina   Musician
Johnny Griffith   Musician
Wade Marcus   Arranger
Dennis Coffey   Musician
Dino Fekaris   Composer
David Gorman   Package Design
Rose Ella Jones   Composer
Vernon Bullock   Composer
Martin Cohen   Producer
Michele Horie   Production Manager,Production Coordination
Al Cleveland   Composer,Producer
Detroit Symphony Orchestra   Musician
Camile Guillemette   Composer
Ronn Matlock   Composer
Harry Weinger   Mixing,Liner Notes,Compilation Producer
Amy Herot   Research
Paul Riser   Arranger
David Van De Pitte   Arranger
Jack Ashford   Musician
Joe Hinton   Composer
Freddie Perren   Composer
Ellen Fitton   Mixing,Digital Mastering
Gene Page   Arranger
Deke Richards   Composer
Johnny Bristol   Composer,Producer
Smokey Robinson   Composer,Producer
Ron Miller   Composer,Producer
Henry Cosby   Arranger,Composer,Producer
William Robinson   Composer
Suha Gur   Mixing,Digital Mastering
Tony Joe White   Composer
Vartan   Art Direction
Nick Zesses   Composer
Merald "Bubba" Knight   Composer
Tom Baird   Arranger,Producer
Bob Babbitt   Musician
Duke Browner   Composer,Producer
Clifford Burston   Composer
Pistol Allen   Musician
Lewis Peters   Composer
Kelly Martinez   Licensing
The Corporation   Composer
Carol Peters   Composer
Robert White   Musician
Stu Hackel   Liner Notes
Martin Coleman   Composer
John Bristol   Composer
Ryan Null   Photo Coordination
Lena Manns   Composer
Ronald Norman Miller   Composer
Merald Knight   Composer
Ricky Matthews   Composer
Robert L. Purdue   Composer
Roderick Harrison   Composer
William Guess   Composer
The Motown Horns   Musician
Ricky Mathews   Composer
Ronald Matlock   Composer
Pam Sawyer   Composer
Terry Johnson   Producer
Gladys Knight   Composer
Berry Gordy, Jr.   Composer
Ivy Jo Hunter   Composer,Producer
Eddie "Bongo" Brown   Musician
James Jamerson   Musician