Now, departed: Jimmy Ruffin.
What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted is one of the most perfect records ever made, a nugget of starkly articulated loss and longing made palatable by the strident piano and drum rhythm, anthemic melody, lush denseness of the strings and ethereal uplift of soaring backing vocals. It is the essence of bittersweetness, the quality that empowered Motown's most soulful recordings, a ballad that physically moves rather than gathering in a maudlin puddle of self-pity, its terrible sadness stirring into a kind of majestic defiance, utterly bereft and yet still reaching out for the silver-lining of hope.Ruffin died yesterday at the age of 78.
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10 comments:
Leisure Suit!
I always liked that song without feeling the need to piggy-back on its greatness by trying to reduce it to a collection of adjectives.
Such a great song! I am sorry to say I never paid attention to who sang it. RIP Jimmy.
Fantastic cover version by Joan Osborne.
Great song and moving description of it by McCormick.
Jimmy Ruffin never did answer what becomes of the broken-hearted. Still searching.
I first read this, and thought "This guy has been dead for a while". I was confusing Jimmy Ruffin with his brother, David Ruffin. David was one of the Temptations, and died in 1991.
A lot of talent from the same family.
I am a complete and total punk rocker.
I love this song and I loved the Temptations. Not to diminish Jim Ruffin in any way.
@madAsHell: I did the same thing.
I always thought this song was by the Temptations Ruffin, never paying sufficiently close attention. And their voices are fraternally similar.
What becomes of the broken hearted?
Who had love until they farted?
Oh, did I get the lyric wrong again?
Can't find a cafe post so I'm sticking it here. Interesting tidbit: *The Great Gatsby* was initially panned in reviews and few copies were sold. It only became popular after the US War Dep't selected it for its paperback series for soldiers in WWII (called the "Armed Services Editions").
http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-paperback-books-helped-the-u-s-win-world-war-ii-1416520226?KEYWORDS=Paperbacks+world+war+Ii
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