Spinners - Cupid
I wanna catch up to the deaths of late, which are coming fast and furious... we're already down to no original Spinners and one, lonely keyboard player from Can, and it's only Valentine's Day.
Ah, what better group to cover on such a day than The Spinners, as powerhouse a hitmaking machine that ever existed, with damn near every tune standing in the shadows of l-o-v-e.
A week ago, we sadly lost the last of the original guys from that group, which was formed in 1954.
Which is only six years younger than the State of Israel. The Spinners didn't ethnically cleanse anyone though, to my knowledge.
They did, however, light up the charts in the 1970s with what seemed like dozens of huge hit songs.
Henry Fambrough wrote and sang a bunch of 'em, having been instrumental in forming the band back when color television was still 10 years away.
When he died last Wednesday, I started thinking about how, as a kid, my parents would leave me in the car with the radio on when they went shopping, and how there was a time in around 1976 where you could tune across the dial and every song was a Spinners song.
I was sitting here lamenting how there are no Spinners bootlegs, when a visit to Mr. WD 18TB revealed that there is indeed one, and it's a damn good one to... well, boot.
A few days in the remasterizzation rinse, and the pre-broadcast LP is here and sounding as fresh as the day, in 1982, when this tremendous concert happened. Cupid! Draw back your bow, I say.
Spinners
Academic-Athletic Center
Morehead State University
Morehead, Kentucky USA
3.30.1982
01 Could It Be I'm Falling In Love
02 Yesterday Once More
03 Cupid
04 Now That You're Mine Again
05 Love Connection
06 Spinners Golden Medley: Then Came You/I'll Be Around/One of a Kind (Love Affair)/Games People Play
07 Rubberband Man
08 Lady
09 Working My Way Back to You
10 Mighty Love/FM outro
Total time: 51:56
Henry Fambrough - baritone vocals
Billy Henderson - tenor vocals
Bobby Smith - tenor vocals
Pervis Jackson - bass vocals
Jonathan Edwards - vocals
with The Spinners Orchestra under the direction of Maurice King
preFM LP from the Westwood One "Budweiser Concert Hour," digitized & declicked by draftervoi in 2021
somewhat remastered -- with irritating announcer mostly removed -- by EN, February 2024
first broadcast 5.7.1982
319 MB FLAC/direct link
This circulates widely as May 7, 1982 but that was the date it was first broadcast over Westwood One.
I'll be working my way back to you this weekend, with yet more Black History Month fare, and once March comes I will make sure Damo Suzuki (rest in eternal peace) and everyone else are properly memorialized.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, I've always wanted to cover The Spinners, even if it took a sad occasion to make it happen.
So Happy Valentine's Day and farewell to Henry Fambrough, who nurtured this great and timeless group through many decades of excellence and who brought so many people -- even little kids in cars, waiting for their parents to leave Korvette's -- so much love and joy in asking if it could be that they were falling in love.--J.
5.10.1938 - 2.7.2024