O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Ex-Temptations Can Still Move the Emotions

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO â€”  In one of their best songs, the Temptations gave the world an indelible melody and a good piece of advice: walk and don’t look back.

Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin and Dennis Edwards, the three most prominent lead singers to emerge from the classic Motown vocal group, looked back anyway in a tuneful reunion Friday night at the Coach House, but two of the voices were walking with a limp.

The most diminished of the former Temptations was Kendricks, who turns 50 this week. His creamy tenor falsetto soared effortlessly during the ‘60s and early ‘70s on such songs as “Just My Imagination� and “Get Ready,� but it was earthbound and labored during the early show at the Coach House. With Kendricks struggling for pitch and control, the best thing a listener could do was to put the ear on pause and let the mind replay fonder memories of the way he used to do the things he’d do.

Edwards, 46, had no such problem. Taking the first of three solo turns in the spotlight after an opening trio number, he quickly showed that his forceful, raspy voice is as hale as ever with some ardent balladry and fiery funk.

But Edwards was the junior partner in this gathering, not only in age but in historical rank on the Temptations’ totem pole. While Edwards played an important part in a long list of hits after joining the group in 1968 as Ruffin’s replacement, Ruffin and Kendricks will always be remembered as one of soul music’s best vocal combinations, the voices who fronted the Temptations at their peak. When the three singers teamed together for a concluding, 30-minute run of Temptations classics (the solo spots had focused mainly on songs from their solo careers), Edwards played a secondary role on everything except “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.�

It was Ruffin, the tall, thin singer with the trademark oversize eyeglasses, who gave the 85-minute show an element of fascination. Ruffin’s voice is substantially diminished from the wonderfully rich and flexible baritone that it once was. But, like an aging athlete who gets by on smarts after his natural skills have eroded, Ruffin was able to rely on sheer professionalism and that intangible quality called soul to make the most of what remains.

Ruffin made concessions to time and abuse (he walked on stage taking big drags from a cigarette) as he missed some notes and clipped off others that he would have stretched in his prime. But he never stopped aiming for the grace notes that make for fine soul singing--the falsetto sustains, the husky shouts delivered for emotional effect--and he pulled off enough of them to make the packed house know that it had heard a classy soul singer at work.

Ruffin piled up most of his points during quieter passages, when he didn’t have to push quite so hard to compete with a well-drilled, 11-member ensemble that featured two backup singers and a nicely modulated five-piece horn section. In moments such as the sadly emotional passage at the end of “I Wish It Would Rain,� Ruffin still has the power to transcend matters of technique and sing pure feelings.

The most talkative ex-Tempt, Ruffin also projected sincerity and warmth between songs. “Sometimes life plays little games, little tricks with you,� said the singer, who of late has been in the news more for a 1988 cocaine possession conviction than for his music. “Through my career there’s always been ups and downs, but you’re always there.�

The old Temptations dance-flash wasn’t all there. The threesome got some rises out of the crowd with synchronized whirls and hand-rolls, but the steps were a little creaky at times. In the age of MTV dance pyrotechnics, it’s hard to get steamed up over comparatively sedate Motown moves. Then again, the likes of Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson only move their bodies. The Temptations songbook still moves the emotions and delights the ear, even when the singers aren’t all they used to be.