Passing the Torch
THE PRIDE OF A NEW MOTOWN GENERATION
“Sagnasty is in the house!”
Harrell Holmes Jr. will forever remember Stevie Wonder shouting those words – with the nickname of Saginaw, the Michigan city where both were born – during one night in May. The occasion, 15 years ago, was a birthday party for the Motown superstar, to which Holmes had been invited. And it proved to be a turning point for the youngster’s career.
Today, Holmes is a Temptation – or, more accurately, starring as one in the national touring company of Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Some seven months into its run, the roadshow has just finished two weeks at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, and is currently playing Cleveland; soon comes Detroit. Holmes is cast as the mighty group’s Melvin Franklin, and blessed with what one Minnesota newspaper called a “wake-the-devil” bass baritone.
“Dream Come True,” as the song goes
He had wanted to be a singer since childhood, and the Temptations became his idols after seeing their NBC-TV miniseries in 1998. Naturally, he started his own group, named…the Little Temptations. Six years later, Holmes performed “Get Ready” on television’s Star Search talent show, then moved with his family to Los Angeles to pursue seriously a career in music and acting.
“I was attending a school called the Hollywood Pop Academy,” Holmes told me recently, “There were these showcases where we would perform for industry executives.” At one such session, he sang Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed” – “and afterwards, this lady in the audience came up to me, saying, ‘Oh my God, it’s so great to hear you sing this, and so well.’ ”
More importantly, she claimed to know Wonder personally, and invited Holmes to sing at a birthday party being held for the musician. “We got to this small apartment in West Hollywood, we’re there for literally five hours, and Stevie did not show up at that point.” By the sixth hour, the number of guests had dwindled – but then Wonder arrived, and Holmes delivered “Overjoyed.”
“Stevie gave me the nod of approval,” Holmes recalls, “and that neck movement that he does, and started singing with me. It was incredible.” Better still, the occasion led to the Hollywood Pop Academy gaining Wonder’s support in 2007 for its teaching programmes. “They made a scholarship in his name, there were five winners [of it], and I was one of those.” The $30,000 gift ensured Holmes’ continuing education. “It was an intensive programme which covered singing, dancing and songwriting. That’s where a lot of my professional training started.”
SCHOLARSHIPS, IN LOVING MEMORY
Wonder was not the first in the Motown circle to underwrite the education of the young. As far back as 1968, the record company inaugurated a series of grants to would-be college students, in memory of Berry Gordy’s late sister, Loucye Wakefield. The instigator was another of his sisters, Esther Edwards, and scores of recipients benefitted from the programme over the years. One, Brenda Boyce, went on to work for the Motown Records chairman himself – to this very day.
In part, the scholarships were funded by the so-called Sterling Ball, held annually at the Gordy mansion in Detroit, to which the city’s great and good were invited. The 1971 edition, for example, netted $40,000 (worth $280,000 today) to send inner-city students to Wayne State University. (Sterling Ball guests also received a copy of the Motown album created to commemorate Wakefield, In Loving Memory.)
Twenty years later, that honourable tradition was upheld through the efforts of one of Motown’s first employees, songwriter Janie Bradford, when she inaugurated the Heroes & Legends (HAL) Awards dinner in Los Angeles in 1990. “Over our 30-year history, we have awarded 150-plus scholarships,” she reports. This year’s event will be held over the weekend of September 23-25, culminating in the main awards being presented at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Harrell Holmes Jr. receives his Stevie Wonder scholarship from the man himself in 2007 (photo: Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
And who was the recipient of not one, but two HAL-funded scholarships? None other than Harrell Holmes Jr. “This was when I was about to attend AMDA [the American Musical and Dramatic Academy] in Los Angeles,” he says, “so I applied online. Basically, you have to submit an original song, and if you were chosen, it would give you money towards your education. I won one of those – and it was a Motown scholarship.”
It was 2011, and Holmes attended that year’s HAL Awards at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I got to meet Otis Williams and Dennis Edwards. I literally cried when I got the chance to meet them. They were probably freaking out, thinking, ‘Why is this 18-year-old crying?’ My voice had dropped by then, and Otis actually said, ‘With that voice, you might end up being a bassist for me one day.’ ”
Holmes’ self-described fairytale career continued when, three years ago, he earned an opportunity to audition for the touring version of Ain’t Too Proud. The musical’s first productions took place in 2017, followed by a successful Broadway run. The show was then shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, resuming in October 2021, and finally closing on Broadway this past January.
Like many of his peers, Holmes’ career was temporarily derailed by COVID-19. “Last year, if I’m honest,” he says, “I was working security during the week, singing in a cover band on the weekend, just trying to pay the bills, but still keeping that flexibility so I could audition for things during the day.” When Ain’t Too Proud was reinstated on a touring schedule, he was called back – and secured the part. “The show is over 30 songs, and we had a month to learn them all, as well as the acting and the staging. So there was a lot of pressure, a lot of sleepless nights for me.”
Holmes is clear that he found Melvin Franklin to be inspirational. “I could see that we had a lot in common. We both loved our moms, and mine was a strong, hard woman. He had to ask his mom for permission to join the group, so I could relate to that: my mom was very protective of me. Also, you could tell that being a Temptation was the absolute joy of his life, so I was able to use that and bring myself to the character. A Temptation is all I really wanted to be when growing up.”
And Holmes will be back in his home state when Ain’t Too Proud plays Detroit’s Opera House in August. “I get chills just thinking about that,” he concludes. “It’s like the Temptations are coming home. I’m expecting people to show up and go crazy, to know every single song. Plus, I have a lot of family coming.”
Sagnasty in the house, once more.
Music notes: the wake-the-devil tones of Melvin Franklin underpinned the Temptations from their very beginning – before that, even – and so he can be heard, to one degree or another, throughout their recorded legacy, until his death in 1995. In liner notes for the group’s For Lovers Only album that year, Otis Williams paid tribute to his brother-in-song. “The current that we flow on,” he wrote, “is your spirit carrying us.” He added, “What we started long ago, will outlive us all.” In his own way, Harrell Holmes Jr. is maintaining that spirit. “Melvin wanted to be a Temptation more than anything,” he says, “to the point where he sacrificed his own health. Doctors told him that it wasn’t healthy for him to continue performing. He did it anyway.” And to close, here’s a link to a playlist featuring some of Franklin’s best-known music moments, beginning with his audible voice in 1959’s “Come On” by Otis Williams & the Distants, predating the Temptations.