{"id":1021,"date":"2010-11-09T11:22:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T16:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/funky16corners.lunarpages.net\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2012-08-03T15:29:13","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T20:29:13","slug":"the-temptations-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/?p=1021","title":{"rendered":"The Temptations – Masterpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong>
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\nThe Temptations (above), Norman Whitfield in the studio (below)<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong>
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<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Listen\/Download – The Temptations – Masterpiece<\/span> <\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Greetings all. <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

The middle of the week is here, and despite nagging fatigue, I have returned.<\/p>\n

This is no doubt an indicator of advancing age, but whenever daylight savings time comes in, or out, I always get knocked for a loop. Maybe my circadian rhythms are especially delicate (probably the only delicate thing about me), but it takes me a week to get my shit together, i.e. feeling sleepy when I\u2019m supposed to, and not sleepy the rest of the time instead of all bombanootz <\/em>(my own misspelling of my mother-in-law\u2019s Italian slang, which roughly translates to life akimbo) which is how I feel now.<\/p>\n

In spite of that fact, I hunkered down on Monday and got a stack of rekkids digi-ma-tized for the blog, including a couple of hot new finds, one of which I\u2019m itching to drop, but I have to do some more research on it before I do.<\/p>\n

The tune I bring you today is yet another mile marker on the long journey that is my Norman Whitfield<\/strong> obsession.<\/p>\n

A while back, while digging in what turned out to be a largely non-rewarding location (with a few marked exceptions, including today\u2019s selection), I happened upon the Temptations <\/strong>1973 LP \u2018Masterpiece\u2019.<\/p>\n

As soon as I got it home and dropped the needle into the grooves on the title cut, I knew I\u2019d heard the song before, but until I played the whole thing I had no idea what I\u2019d been missing.<\/p>\n

As has been said elsewhere, \u2018Masterpiece\u2019 marks the onset of an artistic period where the group itself had almost become incidental to Whitfield\u2019s creative process. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d go quite that far, since Whitfield clearly enjoyed creating music with\/for the Temps, but once you give \u2018Masterpiece\u2019 (the song) a listen, it becomes clear that at least in this case the group were secondary to the recording.<\/p>\n

If the music itself didn\u2019t make this clear, take a look sometime at the back cover of the album where the Temps are dwarfed by a huge, godlike\u00a0 picture of Whitfield\u2019s head, looming over them.<\/p>\n

The group isn\u2019t heard from until the four minute mark, and then only sporadically for the next two minutes, after which they disappear into the background again.<\/p>\n

What you\u2019re getting is a whole lot (about 13 and a half minutes worth) of Whitfield atmosphere, but what atmosphere it is<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are dark washes of strings, subtle lead guitar, echoed trumpet (shades of \u2018Papa Was a Rolling Stone\u2019) and electric piano snakes in and out of the arrangement.<\/p>\n

The effect is cinematic, without sounding entirely like a blaxploitation soundtrack.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the divide that came from Whitfield overpowering the group caused the pairing that had made so much great music to split. The Temps did one more LP with Whitfield, after which he left Motown and had success with Rose Royce.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That all said, \u2018Masterpiece\u2019 is a very groovy, late-night bit of \u2018head\u2019 music and I dig it a lot.<\/p>\n

I hope you do too, and I\u2019ll see you all on Friday.<\/p>\n

Peace<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Larry<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n


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Check out the Funky16Corners Store at Cafe Press<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

PS Head over to Iron Leg
\n<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Temptations (above), Norman Whitfield in the studio (below) Listen\/Download – The Temptations – Masterpiece   Greetings all. The middle of the week is here, and despite nagging fatigue, I have returned. This is no doubt an indicator of advancing age, but whenever daylight savings time comes in, or out, I always get knocked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,14,30,76,12],"tags":[163,166,164],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funk","category-funky16corners","category-lp-tracks","category-norman-whitfield","category-soul","tag-funk","tag-funky16corners","tag-soul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMKgo-gt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3005,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/3005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}