11/30/2022 0 Comments Cloud nine temptations![]() While most of the 10 songs on Cloud Nine hover around the three-minute mark, "Runaway Child, Running Wild" came barreling out the gate at just over nine-and-a-half minutes. "Cloud Nine" grabbed the GRAMMY, but it was another song from the album that would truly impact the course of the group's career. You can think however you want to think about ‘Cloud Nine’ and getting high, but Norman Whitfield and Barry Strong didn’t do drugs.” But there’s no real origin other than the expression has been around a long time and they just turned it into a song of expression. ![]() And I guess that’s how it really came about, they just got together and decided to call the song ‘Cloud Nine’ and when they presented it to us we went into the studio and did the best we could do with it. But cloud nine is something that’s been around a long time. Those guys, they didn't get high, they were just writing from what they felt and it turned out to be a great song. "Cloud nine is a saying that’s been around for eons. "It came about through Norman Whitfield and Barry Strong," he explains. With the lyrics, "Depressed and downhearted, I took to Cloud Nine/I'm doin' fine, up here on Cloud Nine," "Cloud Nine" the song has always invited comparisons to getting high, but Williams says it came from a sober place. So we went out of town and came back to Detroit and Norman had recorded 'Cloud Nine,' and the rest is history." "I went back to Detroit and I asked Norman Whitfield, who was our producer at the time, if he had heard Sly and the Family Stone and he said, ‘No, I haven’t heard.’ I said, ‘Well they have a sound I like, we should probably try that,’ because we were going from David Ruffin to Dennis Edwards. "The Temps were in New York City at the time,” he explains, "and Kenny Gamble of Gamble and Huff - he and I were good friends - we were talking one day in the hotel room and we heard Sly and the Family Stone with 'Dance to the Music.' And when they did that little breakdown and started doing that, I said, ‘Wow, that’s pretty slick!' Williams credits that "quantum leap" from balladry to psychedelic soul to being inspired in part by Sly and the Family Stone. So to come from ‘Please Return Your Love’ to psychedelic soul was a quantum leap." " Cloud Nine was a departure from the songs that we had been recording before, because the previous hit was 'Please Return Your Love to Me,' which is a beautiful ballad. "It was a surprise,"" Williams recalls of the win. ![]() The album's title track earned the group - and Motown - their first GRAMMY Award, for Best Rhythm & Blues Performance by a Duo or Group, Vocal or Instrumental. The frontman and only original surviving member of The Temptations is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of the legendary Motown group's ninth album, Cloud Nine, on Feb. 17. ![]() ![]() "Time flies when you’re having fun!" says Otis Williams. ![]()
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