The Story Behind: The Spinners, “It’s a Shame”
Each month in “The Story Behind,” I’ll look at the history of a well-known Top 40 hit based on interviews I’ve conducted with individuals who performed some of the most familiar pop hits of the 1960s and ’70s. This month, I’ll look at the Spinners’ 1970 hit, “It’s a Shame.”
It’s easy to assume that the Spinners’ story began around 1972 when they kicked off a long string of nearly 30 charts hits on Atlantic Records, including “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love,” “The Rubberband Man,” “Then Came You” (with Dionne Warwick), and “One of a Kind (Love Affair).”
But the group didn’t just appear overnight, and in reality, by that time, they’d been recording for almost a decade in near anonymity on Motown. But “It’s a Shame” was their first Top-20 song and a portent of the mainstream popularity that was yet to come.
The Spinners got their start in Ferndale, Michigan, in 1954 as the Domingoes, and originally consisted of members Billy Henderson, Henry Fambrough, C.P. Spenser, Pervis Jackson, and James Edwards. Edwards was soon replaced by Bobbie Smith, and Spencer would leave and be replaced by George Dixon.
By 1961, they had renamed themselves after those spinning car hubcaps and had their first real shot at success on Tri-Phi with “That’s What Girls are Made For” which went to #27 on the charts. In 1963, Berry Gordy bought out Tri-Phi, so by 1964, the Spinners were part of Motown’s considerable array of talent. Despite the fact that they had a couple of brushes with chart success, including 1965’s “I’ll Always Love You” (#35) and 1966’s “Truly Yours” (#111), they were largely underutilized at Motown and frequently even served as chaperones and chauffeurs for other Motown acts.
Apparently, Motown thought one way to make the group more bankable was to bring in a more versatile lead singer, someone in the deep-gravelly voiced mold of the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs or the Temptations’ David Ruffin. As a result, G.C. Cameron joined the group in 1967, but still no tangible results in the form of hit records were forthcoming.
Soon, the group was relegated to the Motown subsidiary label VIP, and given the recognition factor this name conjures up compared to the other Gordy-owned labels such as Motown and Tamla, it would appear that the group was essentially being sent down to the minors to play out the remainder of their contract.
Oddly enough, their rescue came due to the assistance of Motown superstar Stevie Wonder. “After I signed with Motown and joined the group, Stevie and I became very good friends,” Cameron told me. “We’d hang out together, and he knew that because I’d been thrown in the midst of all these great Motown singers like Marvin Gaye, David Ruffin, Levi Stubbs, and Diana Ross, I needed to catch up.
“So one night we were out and he told me, ‘I wrote a song for you.’ I asked him what it was, and he had me take him to his house, and he started playing this song on his electric piano. The song was ‘It’s a Shame.’” After Wonder played the song for Cameron that night, “the next day Stevie went in and recorded the music, and three or four days later, I went into the studio with the rest of the Spinners to record the vocal track.”
Cameron sang “both leads” on the song, and as he explained, “That means that I not only sang the part when it says, ‘It’s a shame the way you mess around with your man,’ but the higher chorus when it says, ‘Why do you use me, try to confuse me’ and so on. We did the song in one take, and Stevie and everyone else was really excited. That’s how ‘It’s a Shame’ came about.”
But even Cameron was unprepared for the song’s success. “I didn’t think much of anything about ‘It’s a Shame’ being special when it came out,” he said. “There was too much music, too many hits. I felt like anything coming out of Motown had the chance to be a hit, but I wasn’t paying any particular attention to it. I just hoped at the time that we would have the opportunity to have a hit record like so many of the great acts at Motown.”
“It’s a Shame” was that hit, and as it raced to #14, it not only indicated the Spinners’ potential but as the first song Wonder produced for another group, it was an indication of his marketability as more than just a singer as well.
As we now know, “It’s a Shame” was just the beginning for the group. After finishing their contract at Motown, the Spinners signed with Atlantic, where they notched 27 subsequent Top 100 hits. They moved on without Cameron, however, who elected to stay with Motown, meaning “It’s a Shame” was his one and only Spinners hit.
But even as a solo act, “Today they won’t let me perform anywhere unless I sing that song, and I feel blessed to have it. It never gets old, it never sounds tired — it always sounds like the day we recorded it. Whenever you hear it on the radio it sounds like it’s a new record. It’s one of a kind.”
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George L
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John Evanich III