'temptations' singer dies at 58

Ali Ollie Woodson, who led the Motown quintet the Temptations in the 1980s and ’90s and helped restore it to hit-making glory with songs like “Treat Her Like a Lady,” died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 58.
The cause was cancer, said Billy Wilson, president of the Motown Alumni Association. He said Mr. Woodson’s wife, Juanita, told him about the death.

Mr. Woodson was not an original member of the group, which had several lineup changes since it started in the 1960s. But he played an integral part in keeping the Temptations from becoming just a nostalgia act.

By the early 1980s, the Temptations were no longer posting hit after hit as they had in the 1960s and ’70s with songs like “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” “My Girl,” and “I Wish It Would Rain.”

The group had lost original members, and Mr. Woodson was brought in to replace Dennis Edwards, whose voice had defined the group in the 1970s.

Mr. Woodson helped the Temptations notch the R&B hits “Treat Her Like a Lady,” which he wrote; “Sail Away”; and “Lady Soul.”

In a review of a concert featuring the Temptations and the Four Tops in 1985, Stephen Holden described Mr. Woodson in The New York Times as “a charismatic young pop-funk singer with a husky, agile voice that breaks into unexpected falsetto riffs.”

He added that he put his playful stamp on several Temptations’ standards as well as more recent material “with his tricky punctuation, sassy humor and inventive acrobatics.”