David Ruffin ranks with Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Al Green among the greatest soul singers. With a craft he honed from his native Mississippi to his adopted Detroit, Ruffin brought lightning to classics like the Temptations’ “My Girl” and “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” and his own hits. He was admired by peers and respected by producers. Ruff’s legacy, though, is overshadowed by missteps in a troubled life.
This collection excavates lost Ruffin recordings from the late sixties and early seventies, when he arguably was at his peak. Author David Ritz witnessed a Ruffin show just after these cuts were completed, in 1971. “He was on fire,” Ritz says. “He had the moves, the style, the gritty grace that only the most powerful soul preachers command.”
Yet the fire never spread. Motown shelved the planned album from these sessions. Only now can we hear what may have been for the complicated man behind the dark-framed glasses.

“David was heartbroken because he was no longer a Temptation,” says producer Ivy Jo Hunter. Ivy is a soft-spoken man whose insights sneak up on you. He recalls with clarity Ruffin leaving the group’s classic lineup in spring of 1968, because he cut an entire album for him. “America loves David Ruffin,” he told the singer, hoping to empower Ruffin’s art and ego. But, he says with sadness, “David was volatile and in rebellion. He only showed for one song, ‘Everlasting Love.’”
Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol eventually corralled Ruffin into the studio for “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me).” It became a Top 10 hit across the board in the spring of ’69. The My Whole World Ended LP did well. By the end of the summer, Ruff had a second LP, Feelin’ Good, ready to go.
But the happiness was tempered by legal acrimony with Motown and romantic entanglements with long time girlfriend Genna Sapia-Ruffinand singer Tammi Terrell. “Politically, he was not on the best terms with the company,” says Clay McMurray, a confident staff producer who had been close with the 28-year-old Ruffin since they were teenagers.
McMurray remained supportive. “He was never a problem in the studio,” he says. “Never buzzed, always straight as a solider.” Clay brought Ruffin to Motown’s Snakepit on Wednesday night, August 27, 1969, to cut “It’s Gonna Take A Whole Lot of Doing” and “Anything That You Ask For” – inventive, intensely rhythmic tracks that pointed Ruffin in a new direction.
When Ruffin traveled up two octaves on “Anything That You Ask For,“ the producer pushed the talkback button to get right into Ruffin’s earphones. “Yes, David!” he exclaimed. Ruffin poured it on, punctuating the line “I’m so glad” with a laugh.
But the tracks were rejected. The singles from Feelin’ Good stalled. I Am My Brother’s Keeper, a duet album with his older brother Jimmy, produced one minor hit. Ruffin’s rocketing solo career was on pause.
“They wouldn’t promote my products,” Ruffin griped to Ritz in 1982. “I couldn’t get Berry Gordy’s attention. I also admit that I was going through some personal changes.”
“I knew all that stuff,” says McMurray. “But he never brought it to the studio. He was a pro. He was never buzzed, always came in straight as a soldier.”
Yet McMurray went back for three more tracks. Smokey Robinson, with Terry Johnson and Al Cleveland, Henry Cosby, Johnny Bristol, Duke Browner and Martin Coleman (née Cohen), McMurray’s writing partner, worked with Ruffin over an 18-month period. Stevie Wonder, feeling his independence, did as well. They inspired each other, sharpening the drama to produce some of the most inventive, fiery tracks to never come out of Motown.
“All David wanted to do was sing,” says Hunter. “He’d try to give you what you wanted. All you wanted was the unique thing that he possessed.”
Ruffin possessed an instantly recognizable timbre. He paid attention to articulation. He had fantastic range, from baritone to falsetto, from smooth to wildly passionate, often in the same song. In “Heaven Help Us All,” he builds from hushed reverence to gospel fervor. In the operatic opening to Hank Cosby’s “I Can’t Be Hurt Anymore,” Ruffin is alone yet determined; in the verses he is a calm story-teller. But a falsetto break in mid-word – “re-FLEC-tion” – signals there is more, and by the end he is screaming in emotional pain.
Ruffin’s arsenal of whoops, cries and moans decorate every track. “No one had the gymnastics he had,” says McMurray, who then was hot with Gladys Knight & The Pips’ “If I Were Your Woman.”
“David knew how to sell a song,” he adds. “No one pleads better. He would make you listen. Sometimes I would want to say to him, oh my God, David! Tell me, what can I do for you?”
“David was amazing in the way he could add lines without hurting the track,” says Pam Sawyer, a British-American who co-wrote “My Whole World Ended” and three songs from these sessions. “He could fit anything in. He had ideas, and they always improved a song.”
Ruffin had the tools to cover “Rainy Night In Georgia,” a huge hit at the time for Brook Benton, whose rendition seemed untouchable. Late one Saturday night in Studio A, McMurray implored Ruffin to get into character. “Give me a little more of that interior thing you do,” he told him. “I want you to be right there in that boxcar in Georgia.” David’s licks dance around a simple, haunting arrangement.
“David was a great interpreter,” says Hunter. “He really felt what he was singing. You can’t teach that.” Hunter hadn’t given up on Ruff after his initial tracks went in the can in ’68. His second chance was “Let Somebody Love Me,” an exquisite lover’s prayer he first cut with Chuck Jackson.
“David probably understood the anguish in that song as well as anybody,” Hunter says. “You’d think a guy like that wouldn’t have that problem. The girls were all over all him, some of the prettiest ones I’ve ever seen. But at the same time, that’s not fulfillment.”
Two singles from the sessions did not chart, or, were not promoted well enough to make a dent in mid-1971. Ruffin’s third solo album – sequenced, mastered, given a Motown catalog number – was put back into the tape library, marked with nothing but his name. Ruffin wouldn’t see an album release for another two years. It’s staggering to realize that none of these 19 songs were used to fill out subsequent releases. It’s additionally puzzling to these ears how some of the bonus tracks weren’t even slotted for the original LP.
“Motown had too much talent and not enough time,” says Sawyer. “It was like musical chairs: If you stood up, someone else got your seat. David, in his fashion, stood up, and Motown moved on.”
Until “Walk Away From Love,” a 1975 collaboration with Van McCoy, David Ruffin was away from the Top 10 for six years. He wouldn’t get there again.
Motown insiders feel the company obscured Ruffin’s talents with unfair punishment. Others maintain he was given advice on how to escape the dog house and straighten his sagging career, and accepted none of it. Ruff remained self-destructive until his death from a cocaine overdose at age 50, in 1991.
“He just got so far out there,” Hunter says with a sigh, “he couldn’t find his way back in.”
We found a way to bring this music out. David Ruffin’s great gifts deserve to be heard.

Stu Hackel & Harry Weinger

The above is a transcript from the sleevenotes of this recently released CD in the US. You can purchase this title, and other Motown titles in this series by clicking the picture at the top of this page.