David Ruffin - David Unreleased LP & More - 2004

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.

David Ruffin - David Unreleased LP & More - 2004



01 - David Ruffin - Each Day Is A Lifetime.mp3
02 - David Ruffin - I Want You Back.mp3
03 - David Ruffin - Out In The Country.mp3
04 - David Ruffin - You Can Come Right Back To Me.mp3
05 - David Ruffin - I Can't Be Hurt Anymore.mp3
06 - David Ruffin - Rainy Night In Georgia.mp3
07 - David Ruffin - I've Got A Need For You.mp3
08 - David Ruffin - Anything That You Ask For.mp3
09 - David Ruffin - Let Somebody Love Me.mp3
10 - David Ruffin - For The Shelter Of Your Love.mp3
11 - David Ruffin - Dinah.mp3
12 - David Ruffin - Don't Stop Lovin' Me.mp3
13 - David Ruffin - It's Gonna Take A Whole Lot Of Doin'.mp3
14 - David Ruffin - I Want Her To Say It Again.mp3
15 - David Ruffin - Your Heartaches I Can Surely Heal.mp3
16 - David Ruffin - Get Away Heartbreak (Keep On Moving).mp3
17 - David Ruffin - You Make Me Do Things I Don't Want To Do.mp3
18 - David Ruffin - Mountain Of Memories.mp3
19 - David Ruffin - Heaven Help Us All.mp3
20 - David Ruffin - Each Day Is A Lifetime (mono).mp3
21 - David Ruffin - Don't Stop Lovin' Me (mono).mp3
22 - David Ruffin - You Can Right Back To Me (mono).mp3
23 - David Ruffin - Dinah (mono).mp3

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