Some skeptics might be tempted to write the Temptations off for the 21st century. After all, only one man from the original quintet's lineup is still standing.

And singing.

But that man, Otis Williams, says he's in firm quality control of one of classic Motown's most hallowed brand names, making sure it remains an R&B force to be reckoned with more than 45 years later.

"I always said I'd keep riding the horse until the hair came off," Williams laughs.

The horse, he notes, ain't bald yet.

So, to quote a classic Temptations hit, get ready … here they come.

The nag will be carrying Williams and the gang into the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts this weekend (6 p.m. Sunday), bringing with them a mix of Temp hits and holiday favorites, the latter a must, he says, for any concert this time of year.

The last time the Temps passed through Bloomington-Normal - November 1999 - they were riding high on a surprise late-career renaissance.

"It was like a banner year for us," Williams agrees.

First came the chart and sales success of their "Phoenix Rising" album, which sold more than two million copies - a major coup for a group of such '60s vintage

"Practically unheard of," he agrees.

Then came the critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning NBC miniseries on the Temptations' life and times, "The Temptations" which, Williams says, has been airing periodically ever since, most recently on VH-1.

Even so, he's never been able to sit through it - not because it's terrible, but because it hits an emotional nerve he's not ready to deal with, particularly regarding the tragic early deaths of four of the five original members, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Melvin Franklin and Paul Williams (no relation).

"I was there when they were shooting the scene where Melvin and myself come to Ruffin to tell him to straighten up or we'll let him go," Williams recalls of the infamous moment involving the drug- and alcohol-addicted member.

"They were getting the lighting and the set ready. Then the director said 'action!' and the camera started rolling … and the actors were saying the same things we said."

Williams said he agreed to do the miniseries "while the emotions were still there," something he quickly learned could be both a blessing and a curse.

The feelings were running so strong that day on the set that he said himself, "OK, I won't be able to deal with this because the emotions are still there."

Quickly, "I found myself welling up with tears." He wasn't alone: others watching the scene, too, "started crying."

To this day, Williams hasn't seen "The Temptations," which was based on the biography he wrote with former manager Shelley Berger. He was played in the film by Charles Malik Whitfield, and gives the actor high marks for his performance (or at least the snippets he's allowed himself to see).

"Some day," Williams says, "I'll get myself a box of Kleenex and sit down and watch it."

Until then, he'll accept the assessment of others who've told him the movie got the story right - of how the group originally came together from the remnants of several groups that had been a part of the Detroit music scene since the late 1950s.

The earliest incarnation was the Distants, featuring Williams and Franklin. In 1960, Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams replaced two members, resulting in the short-lived group, the Elgins.

When David Ruffin joined Otis Williams, Franklin, Kendricks and Paul Williams, the "classic 5" Temptations architecture was in place.

By 1964, the group's breakthrough year, there was a hit Temptations single on the chart: "The Way You Do the Things You Do," produced by Smokey Robinson.

With Kendricks' signature falsetto rising above the impeccable five-part harmony, supplemented on stage with dynamically athletic choreography, the group was on the road to Motown legendry. They batted out one chart-topping hit after another over the next four years: "My Girl" (Williams' personal favorite and candidate for THE Temptations song of all time), "Can't Get Next to You," "Get Ready," "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," "(I Know) I'm Losing You," "I Wish It Would Rain," "I Could Never Love Another," "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me."

As the '60s turned psychedelic, so, too, did the Motown sound, resulting in such summer-of-'69 scorchers as "Ball of Confusion" and "Psychedelic Shack," the closest the group ever came to matching the urban angst of today's rap/hip hop culture.

Of the decidedly anti-war "Ball of Confusion," Williams notes, with irony, that the group was merely "depicting what was happening in the world at the time, and now you listen to it more than 30 years later, and it still means the same thing. But then we only had Vietnam, where now we have North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Iran … it's an even more confusing world!"

As the '70s calmed down, so did the Temptations' sound, leading to such mellow classics as "Just My Imagination" and the spare but lyrically potent social commentary of "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" (1973).

There were defections along the way: first, David Ruffin, who split for a solo career in the late '60s, then Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams, both in the early '70s. Ruffin and Kendricks eventually returned for the 1982 "Reunion" album and tour, but wound up being fired at tour's end.

Death took no holiday as the years passed (Paul Williams, via suicide, 1973; Ruffin, from a drug overdose, 1991; Kendricks, from cancer, 1992; Franklin, 1995, from a brain seizure).

And the Temptations ranks were thinned to Otis Williams' current sobering status as the final survivor.

The current lineup, besides Williams (first and second tenor), features 25-year vet Ron Tyson (first tenor); 16-year member Terry Weeks (tenor-baritone) and newcomers G.C. Cameron and Joe Herndon, both on board since 2003.

Williams takes the ever-mutating membership in stride.

"I always tell people, to me talent is secondary," he says. "So I don't look so much at how they can sing, even though it naturally takes that to be a member. I always focus in on the makeup of the person, the heart and the head - can you take direction, can you be on time, can you function with a group of 14 to 18 guys who have to get up early each morning and don't care about being up partying all night? You can have all the talent in the world, but if you're (a bad person), that negates the talent."

And the way they do the things they do?

"As the embodiment of consummate professionals, who feel very fortunate to still be doing the things they love to do."

At a glance

What: The Temptations Holiday Show

When: 6 p.m. Sunday

Where: Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts

Tickets: $34.50 to $49.50

Box office number: (866) 686-9541

---

Braden hosts Brickman's holiday show

By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

Easygoing piano man Jim Brickman has an intimate style that he agrees is made for intimate moments.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge?

Well, yes … occasionally.

"The other day I met a pregnant woman who said, 'I just wanted to introduce you to my child, who we're going to call Jim if he's a boy or Destiny (the name of Brickman's hit 1999 album) if she's a girl."

Why?

(Insert pregnant pause here.)

"You were there at the conception."

At such revelatory moments, the mild-mannered Brickman tries to both honor the intimacy and, "at the same time, look at it tongue in cheek."

Says he: "There's no other real reaction you can have except to kind of chuckle and act amused."

Such are the wages of the man whose music is meant to fan the flames of not only intimacy but also the warmth of special occasions, from Valentine's Day to Christmas.

"My music is very emotional," he says, "and it taps into those times of the year that are inherently emotional celebrations, like Christmas. And there's also the lifestyle use, where people wake up to me on the clock radio or put the kids to sleep to my music."

In short, "My music tends to seep into a very intimate part of people's lives."

The way it seeps into the holidays, of course, is the reason he's bringing his annual Christmas show to Illinois State University's Braden Auditorium Tuesday for an evening of intimate seasonal cheer (8 p.m.; tickets are still available).

Joining Brickman will be Oprah Winfrey-championed singer Jake Simpson, acoustic violinist David Klinkenberg and longtime vocal collaborator Anne Cochran.

Expect to mellow out. Flamboyance and extroversion are words that don't exist in his personal vocabulary.

"I love their music," he notes of Elton John and Billy Joel. "But neither suits my style."

He says his sympathies lie with performers he calls "core pop songwriters," such as Carole King, Burt Bacharach, James Taylor and Quincy Jones.

"What I do is very personal music," says Brickman, 44. "And I keep it very personal by maintaining a relationship with the audience and knowing who they are and building a following by communicating with them directly, which is why a Web presence is really important to me."

The camera-ready bachelor, whose many female groupies call themselves "Brickheads," has also been known to randomly fire off an e-mail to his fans, Brickhead and otherwise.

It takes time and extra effort, he agrees. But it pays off in the rewarding dividend of a sustained career.

"You need to build loyalties," he says.

Once crowned "The Cornerstone of Adult Contemporary Radio" by Billboard magazine, Brickman didn't set out to build himself a musical empire based on keyboard intimacy.

Until he was 32, he'd spent his professional life as a businessman - a Cleveland marketing major who merged art and commerce as a commercial jingle writer.

In 1988, he moved his own marketing firm to Los Angeles, where he assembled a national clientele. After making the move, he booked time in an L.A. recording studio, cut a six-song demo tape of his own non-jingle work and landed a label deal with New Age overlord Windham Hill.

The first release, 1994's "No Words" (a reference to the instrumental-only nature of the enterprise), spawned the first solo-piano hit in adult contemporary chart annals, "Rocket to the Moon."

A 1997 duet with Martina McBride, "Valentine," pushed him into the headliner realm by going No. 1on the A/C charts.

The accompanying album, "Picture This," became one of the few Windham Hill albums ever to crack the Top 30 album chart.

A subsequent Christmas album, "The Gift," featuring duets with Collin Raye, was also one of the label's biggest sellers of all time.

Meanwhile, an ongoing, and, yes, intimate syndicated radio show, "Your Weekend with Jim Brickman," airs on adult contemporary stations around America, featuring A-list guests like Tom Cruise, Jim Carrey and John Travolta.

With his two current albums - the non-seasonal "Escape" (featuring duets with Sara Evans, Gerald Levert and others) and the holiday-specific "Christmas Romance" - Brickman has split with Windham Hill after 12 years.

The reason: The former boutique label was absorbed into the BMG-Sony conglomerate and "the whole tone of the label became very corporate and much less boutique."

As he has with so much of his career, Brickman was motivated to take matters into his own hands: He became partners in his own record company, working out special marketing deals like the current exclusive with Target for "Christmas Romance."

While Brickman's simple performance style can make him a sitting duck for serious music critics, he has no qualms whatsoever about his middle-road approach or middle-road appeal.

"People come to hear me play the piano, and I play it well, and it sounds like what the record sounds like. Any critic would have a hard time saying I'm reducing music to a simplified form, though they might think my stage persona is a little too 'aw, shucks.'"

At the end of the day, and the concert, he says, "I just want to come off like anyone who grew up and learned to play piano … and maybe he's just a guy who worked a little harder at it."

At a glance

What: The Jim Brickman Holiday Show

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Illinois State University Braden Auditorium

Tickets: $27 to $32.50

Box office number: (309) 438-5444