C.P. Spencer; tenor in The Originals
Hyfler/Rosner
By Susan Whitall / The Detroit News
C.P. Spencer, whose soaring tenor voice led the hit song
"Baby I'm For Real," by Motown group the Originals, died
Wednesday of a heart attack. The Oak Park resident was 65.
Born Crathman P. Spencer, the Detroiter started singing with
the Voicemasters, a group that also included David Ruffin
and Melvin Franklin.
Along with Freddie Gorman, Hank Dixon and Walter Gaines,
Spencer was signed to Motown in 1964 by producer Lamont
Dozier. While cutting some sides on their own, they sang
backup on sessions from 1965 to 1969.
The Originals scored their first big hit on their own with
"Baby, I'm For Real," in 1969, a song written and produced
by Marvin Gaye.
It was Ed Love, then a disc jockey on jazz station WCHD, who
first played "Baby I'm For Real" in Detroit at the request
of Gorman, who worked with Love at the post office.
It wasn't intended to be the single, but the group liked it,
and listeners went crazy for the song, and Spencer's lead
vocal.
"He was a wonderful singer. Beautiful voice. A natural first
tenor," Gorman said.
Viewing is from 2-8 p.m. Monday at the Pye Funeral Home in
Detroit. The funeral is at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Word of
Faith Church, in Southfield.
Hyfler/Rosner
Motown singer
10 December 2004
Crathman Plato Spencer, singer, songwriter and producer:
born Detroit, Michigan 13 January 1938; married; died Oak
Park, Michigan 20 October 2004.
Connoisseurs of the Detroit record label Tamla Motown often
pick the vocal group the Originals as the best exponents of
the Sound of Young America. C. P. Spencer was the soaring
lead tenor on their gorgeous ballad "Baby I'm For Real", a
US Top Twenty single in 1969. The song was written by Marvin
Gaye and his wife Anna (the younger sister of Motown supremo
Berry Gordy), who both had a hand in the group's even more
successful follow-up, "The Bells" (1970).
Born in 1938 in Detroit, Crathman Plato Spencer first sang
doo-wop on street corners as a teenager with his friend
Walter Gaines, a baritone. They both joined the 5 Jets, the
group which evolved into the 5 Stars for a single on the
Mark-X label in 1958. Things began looking up when they
teamed up with Ty Hunter, Lamont Dozier and David Ruffin as
the Voicemasters.
The quintet attracted the attention of Gwen Gordy, another
sister of Berry Gordy, who released "Hope and Pray" as the
first single - catalogue number Anna 101 - on her Anna label
in 1960. The group had a local hit with the ballad "Needed
(For Lovers Only)" and released further singles, but without
making much headway.
By 1964, Ruffin had established himself with the Temptations
and Hunter had signed to Chess; Dozier was concentrating on
songwriting, but he introduced C.P. Spencer, Gaines and
their longtime friend and second tenor Hank Dixon to Freddie
Gorman, a bass singer and songwriter, and they became the
Originals.
In 1966 the Originals cut a cover of the Leadbelly song
"Goodnight Irene" with Joe Stubbs (brother of the Four Tops
lead vocalist Levi Stubbs). Following Stubbs's departure,
they carried on as a four-piece, recording the singles
"We've Got a Way Out of Love" and "Green Grow the Lilacs"
for Soul, the most appropriately named Motown offshoot, and
providing backing vocals for everyone from Jimmy Ruffin to
Stevie Wonder via Marvin Gaye.
Keen to help, Gaye suggested they should record "Baby I'm
For Real" and took great care over producing the track.
While most vocal groups feature one or two singers backed by
the other members, the Originals all sang some of the lead
parts on their 1969 million-seller.
The following year, they repeated the feat with "The Bells",
again built around a Marvin Gaye melody and produced by the
Motown star, and the single reached No 12 in the United
States. Further singles, "We Can Make It Baby" and "God
Bless Whoever Sent You", struggled in the lower reaches of
the charts and Spencer left the group in 1972, having
contributed to four of the eight albums the Originals issued
on Soul/Motown. The group went through a disco phase and
Spencer returned in 1978 for two albums on Fantasy; three
years later they cut Yesterday and Today (1981), dedicated
to Ty Hunter, who died that year.
Often described as Motown's best-kept secret, the Originals
later worked with the British producer and soul aficionado
Ian Levine on his label Motorcity and made their belated UK
live début in Manchester in 2002.
Pierre Perrone