Just My Imagination: A Shelved 1969 Ballad, Marimba and Strings at Dawn

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By late 1970 the Temptations had spent years in Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong's psychedelic soul phase, with fuzz guitars and social themes on records like Runaway Child, Running Wild, Psychedelic Shack and Cloud Nine. Fans, as Eddie Kendricks recalled, were screaming bloody murder for the old sound, and when the world-peace single Ungena Za Ulimwengu (Unite the World) failed to reach the top 30, Whitfield pulled out a ballad he and Strong had shelved in 1969 and recorded it that same day. The Funk Brothers laid down the track with Jack Ashford on marimba and Jack Brokenshaw on timpani, and arranger Jerry Long, who had scored films in Paris, conducted members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

The group was breaking apart during the sessions. Kendricks, singing lead, was not speaking to Otis Williams, and David Ruffin was urging him to go solo, yet Kendricks stayed alone in the studio after the others left at 6 a.m. to perfect his vocal. Paul Williams, ill with sickle cell disease, sang only the first line of the bridge. Released on the Gordy label in January 1971, the song hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 for two weeks, topped the R&B chart for three and went platinum, even as Kendricks walked out during a Copacabana run that same week.

• The lyric builds a daydream of a country house and children before revealing the woman does not know the narrator exists.
• Otis Williams later called the vocal Kendricks' finest performance despite their feud.
• On The Ed Sullivan Show on January 31, 1971, Kendricks was staged sitting apart from the rest of the group.
• The Rolling Stones covered the song on their 1978 album Some Girls.
• Whitfield then steered the group back to psychedelic soul, including Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are), reportedly aimed at Kendricks and Ruffin.