The Spinners get a hero's welcome at Motown Museum while donating nearly 400 stage outfits

Through all the years of fame and success, through the spectacular run of hits in the '70s, the Spinners remained faithfully based in Detroit. But on Friday, the group headed down West Grand Boulevard to truly go home.

It was Spinners Day at the Motown Museum, where key figures from the group — including co-founder Henry Fambrough and onetime lead vocalist G.C. Cameron — were celebrated as returning heroes, complete with a newly installed tribute on Hitsville’s famous picture window.

“Welcome home,” museum CEO and chairwoman Robin Terry told the entourage, which included three members of the current Spinners lineup. “We’re honoring you and thanking you for continuing this legacy.”

The love was reciprocal: The Spinners team revealed it is donating more than 375 stage outfits and 200 pairs of shoes to the Motown Museum, a key gift as the institution continues to expand its collection amid a $65 million expansion.

“Motown is the zenith of Black American music and entertainment,” said Spinners brand chief Tanisha Jackson, explaining the group’s decision to donate the memorabilia, which had been housed for decades in a Southfield storage facility.

Four of the splashy outfits were displayed Friday in the museum’s new Hitsville Next building — offering a retro, eye-catching trip back in time for gathered media and Motown alumni. As cameras snapped, Fambrough, Cameron and Jackson signed a deed of gift, formally transferring the apparel to the Motown Museum.

“Mr. (Berry) Gordy knew the uniforms he dressed his artists in would a have great effect, magnetically, on the people,” Cameron said.

The museum event was part of a high-flying May that included word that the Spinners are bound for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, part of a 2023 class of inductees to be honored in November. On Saturday, the group will headline Detroit’s Music Hall with fellow ‘70s hitmakers the Stylistics.

The Spinners were one of the biggest R&B successes of that era, racking up reams of crossover R&B hits with Atlantic Records and Philadelphia producer Thom Bell. For a decade, the group was invincible, the smashes coming one after another: “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love,” “One of a Kind (Love Affair),” “Then Came You,” “Games People Play,” “The Rubberband Man,” “Working My Way Back to You” and more.

But the foundation had been Motown, the Ferndale-bred group’s musical home and training ground from 1963 to 1970 following Berry Gordy’s acquisition of Tri-Phi Records.

The Spinners’ time there was spotty. The group cracked the R&B Top 10 just twice, most notably with the Stevie Wonder-penned “It’s a Shame,” and members were often drafted into other jobs around the company. Pervis Jackson worked in the shipping department, for instance, and Bobby Smith was a driver. (Label legend has it that he picked up the Jackson 5 at Detroit Metro Airport when the young group came for its Motown audition.)

Still, Fambrough and Cameron saluted Motown’s role in shaping the Spinners’ style and identity. On Friday, stepping into Hitsville for the first time in years, they got a personalized tour from Terry and a museum docent, sharing memories and insights as they made their way through the familiar old house.

Cameron recounted his frantic scramble when he was invited to join the Spinners in 1967.

“The Spinners were the cutting edge of class, quality and precision,” he said. “And that’s what I had to learn in a week.”

Asked what the Hitsville house evoked in his mind back in the ‘60s, Fambrough said: “Gotta go to work.”

For Cameron, it represented aspiration: “The machine was so well-oiled. When I saw that house, I saw success.”

Fambrough has affectionate memories of the company’s Motortown Revue tours — recalling that his mom insisted he phone regularly from the road — while Cameron paid tribute to dance tutor Cholly Atkins.

Cameron, who went on to join the Temptations in the 2000s, insists that the famed smooth move known as the “Temptations Walk” was in fact created by Atkins for the Spinners.

“Being a Spinner and a Temptation, I know they stole it from the Spinners,” he said with a laugh.

Friday was a family affair, with Claudreen Jackson, widow of late bass singer Pervis Jackson, among those on hand.

"Oh my goodness, velvet voice," Jackson told Fambrough as she greeted him with a hug in Motown's cozy office lobby.

Inside Hitsville’s Studio A, Fambrough and Cameron met with assembled media, introducing three of the group members who make up the current incarnation of the group: Jessie Peck, Ronnie Moss and Marvin Taylor.

The five delighted onlookers with an impromptu, a cappella rendition of “It’s a Shame,” with 77-year-old Cameron deftly re-creating the lead vocal he laid down in the same studio 53 years ago.

Fambrough, the Spinners’ lone surviving original member, retired from the group earlier this year and moved to Virginia with his wife, Norma Fambrough.

The charismatic Peck, a bass vocalist, said he feels a deep responsibility in taking on the Spinners’ mantle. And he applauded Fambrough and Cameron for the trails they blazed.

“This is something enormous,” said Peck, a Detroit native and Cody High School graduate. “I wish everybody could be part of something bigger than themselves.”

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or [email protected].

The Spinners and the Stylistics

8 p.m. Sat.

Music Hall

350 Madison, Detroit

$40-$55

musichall.org

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The Spinners get hero's welcome at Motown Museum, donate 375 outfits