Flashback, November 1968: Temptations, Supremes Join in ‘I’m Gonna Make You Love Me’

Few songs fill me with the kind of elation I hear in every note of “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” released as a single 50 years ago this week. This collaboration between male and female singing colossi—The Temptations and The Supremes, respectively—could have been merely an example of Motown mogul Berry Gordy Jr.’s matchless sense of the musical mainstream of the Sixties. 

But producers Frank Wilson and Nick Ashford crafted what the London Independent called a “shivers-down-the-spine remake” of a song by 25-year-old Philadelphia-based composer Kenny Gamble and his mentor Jerry Ross. In the process, Wilson and Ashford coaxed some of the most inspired performances from two groups that, at close to their commercial zenith, were integral to the success of “Hitsville, U.S.A.” 

The genesis of the hit began with the 20 minutes it took Gamble and Ross to write it at the piano in 1966. In the next two years, versions of it became middling hits for Dee Dee Warwick (Dionne Warwicke's sister) and Madeline Bell (Dusty Springfield’s friend and backup singer), and Jerry Butler also recorded a very fine cover. 

But now, Motown, in having The Supremes join forces with The Temptations, was reaching beyond its own music factory for a not-terribly-well-known product (Warwick’s take had been released by Mercury Records). The studio had succeeded only once before with a similar move, with the Four Tops' cover of "If I Were a Carpenter" the year before.

Maybe it took Ashford, who had sung backup on Warwick’s single, to find the key to unlocking the song’s full commercial potential. Having joined Motown, with writing-producing partner Valerie Simpson, after working on the original single, he was now in a position to do something about it. 

What also can’t be discounted was Gordy’s decision to magnify a highly successful studio formula. He had seen how duets with Tami Terrell had nudged the diffident Marvin Gaye away from more traditional jazz vocalizing and towards powerhouse rhythm and blues. Gordy especially loved the opportunity that duets afforded to double an album’s customer base. That, though, was with two voices. When Gordy gave the green light to Diana Ross and the Supremes Join the Temptations, he was putting eight in the studio mix: three female, five male.

Those eight voices had been increasingly clamorous of late. The year before, the Supremes’ Florence Ballard had been kicked out of the group. Gordy yielded to Ross’ demand that her frontwoman status be formally in the group’s new name—“Diana Ross and the Supremes”—altering the dynamics between the lead and fellow singers Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong.

Turbulence was also the order of the day with The Temptations. Heavy drug use and resulting erratic behavior by Dennis Ruffin led to the painful decision to part ways with this powerful lead singer and replace him in July 1968 with Dennis Edwards. 

Though the addition of Edwards continued The Temptations’ string of hits with the psychedelic “Cloud Nine,” a smash upon release in October, Gordy may have felt the group could use, in effect, an insurance policy. The combination with The Supremes seemed the best route to go.

Diana Ross and the Supremes Join the Temptations was meant to reinforce a splashy prime-time TV special, TCB, set to air during the 1968 holiday season. The climax of that production, “The Impossible Dream,” was intended to be the single, with “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” a seeming afterthought. 

Those careful plans were hastily put aside when radio DJs, once they got hold of advance copies of the album, started to play “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” instead. It’s easy to see why. 

The production contrasted the moods and styles of the leads—Ross, arch and playful (“I'm gonna use every trick in the book/I'll try my best to get you hooked”) and the Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks, tender and yearning in his falsetto (“Every minute, every hour/I'm gonna shower you with love and affection”). It was all supported by Motown’s ace background musicians, including “Ready” Freddy Washington, who managed to sight-read the tune’s complex bass chart on the first take.

Unexpectedly hearing the Temptations-Supremes version of his song on the radio while out driving, Gamble had to pull over to avoid crashing. “That was unbelievable, hearing them play that song. This was my favorite group, the Temptations.”

After that, a string of hits followed (notably, Jerry Butler’s “Only the Strong Survive”), and, as Gamble recalled in an interview for the Grammy Awards Web site, “Everything was busting wide open. It was a musical explosion.” 

Gordy offered him and partner Leon Huff jobs at Motown, but the two decided to strike out on their own. By 1971, they had enough of a track record to launch Philadelphia International Records, later home of such million-sellers as "Love Train" (the O'Jays), "Me And Mrs. Jones" (Billy Paul), and "If You Don't Know Me By Now" (Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes).

As for the song that gave birth to it all: The Temptations played “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” by themselves live in concert in their heyday (e.g., this audio recording, from YouTube, at a 1970 London appearance), but they never did so live with Diana Ross and The Supremes. (Ms. Ross had a flirtatious duet with Steven Wonder on The Hollywood Palace a year later.) 

More’s the pity: Though Gordy merged the male and female voices for entirely commercial reasons, the meshing of the two different sounds made this an artistic triumph, too. 

You will find upteen covers of the song between YouTube and the likes of Spotify (including by Lou Christie, and, inevitably, an “American Idol” version featuring contestants Candice Glover, Amber Holcomb, and Angie Miller). But I can’t hear any other version in my mind than the one by The Temptations and The Supremes. It carries everything before it, like the love they hail so exultantly.