David Ruffin: "David Ruffin" (Motown label 1973)

There are few stories in rock and R&B as tragic as David Ruffin’s.  Pegged as an impossible-to-work-with troublemaker in the Motown organization early on, unceremoniously fired from the Temptations at the height of his popularity within the group, a solo career of mixed results and success, a near-lifetime of on-again/off-again addiction, and then, in his final chapter, the victim of an overdose (thought by some to be an unsolved murder/robbery) at the age of fifty.  Given this history, it is an emotional experience to listen to Ruffin sing, riddled as his voice is with fervor, sadness and heartbreak.  This particular album of his focuses in on an everyman, working-class theme, quite literally with titles like “The Common Man,” “I’m Just A Mortal Man,” and “A Day In The Life Of A Working Man.”  It’s like Ruffin is going out of his way, over and over again, to explain that he is a flawed human being, turning what was already a bittersweet feeling for the listener into outright depression, and devastation.  Still, it’s a beautiful record in its own shattered way, with some of Ruffin’s all-time highlights, like his covers of “I Miss You” and “If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want To Be Right),” as well as the cynical, hard-edged funk of “Blood Donors Needed (Give All You Can).”  On this album, David Ruffin is a man broken but not yet destroyed, and though there would be a long, slow decline in the years to come, his talent and spirit shine brightly here.