Showing posts with label Motown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motown. Show all posts

Friday, November 30, 2012

"It's what's in the grooves that counts" - David Ruffin - "Walk Away From Love" -only one of my favorite 10 songs ever; ABBA - "S.O.S."; Ruffin's version of "I Want You Back"



sevensman YouTube Channel: David Ruffin - "Walk Away From Love" on "Soul Train" with Don Cornelius. (1975) Uploaded July 20, 2010. http://youtu.be/APlXHfhbiVw

Truly, a perfect three-minute song.
So much immense talent, so much towering ego, so many inner demons...  and that crazy amazing emotive voice that never failed to get your attention.
That June day in 1991 that I heard on the radio that David Ruffin had died, I actually cried.

As for the video at the top of this post, I remember the Saturday morning that I first saw him performing this song on Soul Train in 1975, when I was fourteen-years old.
That was back when the show aired in South Florida on the then-independent Channel 6, WCIX-TV, down on Brickell Avenue, back when, pre-Radio Mambi, WAQI, that street also was the home of Storer Broadcasting's WGBS-AM 710, the then-number one sports radio station in South Florida, with its 50,000 Watts booming from that beautiful brick building on the corner known as the 710 Building.
  
As ridiculous as some of Soul Train's conventions could sometimes be, especially its not always so well-disguised lip-syncing, I watched that show religiously every Saturday morning.
Some posts on Miami TV and Radio of that era will be forthcoming in the new year

Below, David Ruffin as he appeared and sang the song on ABC-TV's American Bandstand with Dick Clark on the November 16, 1975 telecast:


David Ruffin - Walk Away From Love (Amer by sagelion13


Also appearing on that show - a band from Sweden that you may've heard of.
ABBA did a killer version of "S.O.S" as you can see from Shay's video.


2Shaymcn YouTube Channel: ABBA - "S.O.S." on ABC-TV's "American Bandstand " with Dick Clark, November 1975. Uploaded January 20, 2012. http://youtu.be/6OOrleE6wfc



MrManuel822 YouTube Channel video: David Ruffin - I want You Back (1971). Uploaded on February 13, 2012. http://youtu.be/WGBdb8ganDY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ruffin

http://www.pbase.com/donboyd/memories_music_radio_new