Well, not 100% Soul Train, but close.  I saw The Spinners perform last night, and it was an excellent show I must say.  Let me back up a little – The Spinners were an R&B group that started in the 1950’s, but had their greatest sucess in the 70’s.  To be honest, the group I saw last night was more of a clone, since there is only one surviving member of the original group.  However, they performed all the group’s hit songs faithfully, and they are all excellent showmen in their own right.  I will try to post some video later if I can figure out how to do it, meanwhile you’ll have to be content with these YouTube videos of the original group.  Most of these are from the 1970s TV show Soul Train, hence the title of this post.  The Soul Train performances were really just lip synching, but I imagine a live performance over the TV using 1970s technology would sound terrible, so at least the songs sound OK.  The show we saw last night was performed 100% LIVE, no lip synching, and it was terriffic.  OK, on to the music.

The Spinners had little success in the 1960s, though they did have steady work under MoTown management.  This song was written for them by Stevie Wonder, charted at #14 that year and got the ball rolling for them:

The group switched record labels in 1972 and released the next song on Atlantic Records and it was their first top 10 single.  Ironically, it was a “B” side:

The next song was the folow up single in 1973 and cemented the band’s reputation:

This song charted for the group in 1980:

I think it’s fair to say that the 1970s were definitely the best of times for The Spinners.  But the music lives on, and is being performed faithfully by a new generation, a well deserved legacy for five guys from Detroit.