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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsMy Girl’ — 50 Years And Counting
My Girl 50 Years And Counting
Leonard Pitts, Jr
There are sounds it feels like youve known forever, sounds that have been in your ear so long, its hard to believe they were ever new. One of those sounds is this:
James Jamerson thumps a heartbeat on the bass. Robert Whites guitar corkscrews out in reply. And the immortal David Ruffin sings, in a voice of sweetness shadowed by sorrow, Ive got sunshine on a cloudy day.
Hard to believe that sound was ever new, but it was. Released four days before Christmas in 1964, My Girl by the Temptations reached the top of the pop charts in the first week of March 50 years ago this week. Maybe you remember hearing it during that portentous late winter when Malcolm X had just been killed, and Martin Luther Kings forces were gathering on a bridge in a town called Selma.
If so, you are probably humming it right now, recalling the airtight harmonies and the way the horns and strings danced elegant pirouettes of sound.
Or maybe you were born years later, during the energy crisis, or around the time of the Challenger disaster or even in that more recent era when Bryant Gumbel found it necessary to ask Katie Couric, What is Internet, anyway? Doesnt matter. Youre humming it, too.
My Girl by the Temptations is one of those songs everybody knows. It is the most perfect thing ever recorded.
You may disagree, of course, and thats fine. You have the right to be wrong and to celebrate whatever song suits your fancy in your newspaper column. Here on this piece of real estate, however, the judgment stands.
That said, were not here to celebrate the greatness of the song, nor even its endurance, but rather, the simple fact that you can sing it, that it is a song everybody knows. Songs like that are fewer and further between now. The phenomenal success of Pharrell Williams Happy last summer is the exception that proves the point. Yes, you knew that song, Grandma knew that song, kindergarteners knew that song.
But how many songs of the last 10 years can you say that about? How many from the last 20?
One of the fascinating, albeit unintended, byproducts of the tech revolution is that what used to be called the mainstream of American popular culture has fractured into near obsolescence. This is particularly obvious with television. The mediums biggest new sensation Empire on Fox drew 13 million viewers for its Feb. 18 episode. In 1952, I Love Lucy averaged 10 million viewers more in a nation with less than half the current population.
There are more options now, more than three networks, more than a handful of radio stations, more demands on our time and attention. So there are fewer television programs everybody watches, fewer songs everybody knows, fewer things that bring us all together. As a result, its easier now to ensconce ourselves in bunkers of individual interest, so that sometimes, it feels as if there is no larger us. Which makes you value all the more those remnants from a distant era that still bind Americans across generations, skin color, religious affiliation, party lines.
One of them is a deceptively simple song Smokey Robinson and Ronald White wrote about a boy and girl in love. Most of the men who sang it are long gone. Paul Williams died in 1973, David Ruffin in 1991, Eddie Kendrick in 1992, and Melvin Franklin in 1995.
And right this moment, somewhere in the world, 73-year-old Otis Williams, the last of the men who sang that song, is probably getting ready to go onstage with four other men one of them not yet born in 1965 to sing it once again. Its hard to imagine that anyone in the house wont be singing along.
Fifty years and counting. And still, were talkin about My Girl.
Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL, 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/my-girl-50-years-and-counting/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=MM_frequency_six&utm_campaign=Morning%20Memo%20-%202015-03-02
Wounded Bear
(58,656 posts)I was like pre-teen in '64.
Yes, an unforgettable tune.
hopemountain
(3,919 posts)my sisters and i and our neighbor friends would blast the 45's and jump on the beds to lip sync all of the songs - ah, such memories of innocence
CanSocDem
(3,286 posts)trof
(54,256 posts)Such a show.
dolphinsandtuna
(231 posts)especially from that time period, when music was music, not screaming.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)But I have a hard time believing it was 50 years ago..even longer for the tunes of the 50s that I remember.
Sigh.
Jetboy
(792 posts)If I listen to something recorded after 1965, it's usually not by my choice.
'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' is another song everybody loves and sings along to.
Tobin S.
(10,418 posts)Personally, I think it's better that we now have more choices for information and entertainment. If you're stuck in the 60s, well, that's still out there for you. If you want the latest thing, that's not hard to find either.
olddots
(10,237 posts)Yesterday I asked my wife if she would love me when I'm old and ugly ....she said " I do "
an old joke but a goody .
Ron Obvious
(6,261 posts)My young nephews listen to the music from that era from before they were born too. I've often wondered what music from today could possibly be remembered even a year later, but I attributed that to being an old fart. Apparently not entirely as at least some young people agree with me.
Frosty1
(1,823 posts)onethatcares
(16,168 posts)had to be there. Because otherwise, ya just ain't gonna understand it.
I harken back to the friday night dances at St. Margarets Catholic School, with the nuns seperating
dancers, with Smokie and the Miracles or Chubby Checker playing on the record player.
I kinda miss those days of the dirty twist and Harlem Nocturn. Yes, I really do, jeez, i'm gettin old.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)K&R