I used to tell my mother, 'I'm going to have to get a real job one day.' You keep saying this will end one day, but people still call us up and ask us to sing. It's truly amazing.Collection: Amazing
I had a mother who prayed for me, and prayer changes everything.
I'd like to thank God for giving me the opportunity to sing with the greatest group in the world.
Marvin Gaye was a friend of mine, and he used to say, 'Man, I wish I could sing like you - if I could have that growl in my voice.' And I said, 'Man, are you kidding me? I want to sing like you. Everybody wants to sing like you.'
When The Temptations began, we wanted to be visual. So we did our own choreography and developed our own uniforms.
We never do two shows the same way. The audience has a lot to do with that spontaneity, and it's our job to satisfy them.
The secret to The Temptations is the music: simple music about a man loving a woman. We talk about the lady when we need her, when we want her to be there; we talk about ain't too proud to beg. It's simple, you know? You can't go wrong.
I like to think I was just lucky. I didn't think I was better than anybody else, but I could sing everybody's songs.
I had some good Alabama raising. You might do something wrong, but you wouldn't do it but once.
When you're doing something you love to do, when you have a gift, it's the most rewarding thing.
Country life is different from city life, but I think it was good for me. Working on the farm, I got a balance in my life.
The thrill of standing on the stage and hearing the crowd, it's the greatest feeling in the world. It's a blessed feeling.
There were a lot of great acts at Motown, and some of them were hard to get along with.
A singer knows how he wants the song to go, and a writer visualizes how he wants the song to go.
When I first got to Motown, Smokey was already a fixture there. To me, he is one of the greatest songwriters and poets, so anything they ask me to do for Smokey is going to get a yes.
Every Motown act dressed classy, and we were clean-cut. Whenever you saw a Motown act, they were polished, and they knew how to treat people.
My whole life, I've been a Temptation.
We have a portion of our show where we ask everybody to get up and do the Temptation Walk. People 8 to 80 know how to do that Temptation Walk.
Sam Cooke was a gospel singer like myself, and when he crossed over and started singing rock n' roll, it kind of gave me the green light to go ahead and do it.
Singing rock n' roll - they called it singing for the devil. But we all wanted an opportunity to compete in the music industry, and that was the opportunity.
We always felt that there was some hanky-panky going on with our money. We were the No. 1 group in the world, but we weren't paid like that.
I'm not an original member, though I'm sort of an original member. I've been on a lot of records and took them to great heights. For them to make me the sixth Temptation is quite an honor.
St. Louis is the best thing that ever happened to me. I needed that peace in my life. And I've always been a semi-country boy.