The Monitors - The Tears Of A Clown

This is the version of "Tears Of A Clown" that we cut on our album by The Monitors, released in 1990. To my mind, it seemed the perfect song to showcase the amazing harmony abilities of this wonderful Motown group. The original line up of The Monitors at Motown consisted of Richard Street as lead singer, with Warren Harris, Maurice Fagin, Sandra Fagin, and Hershel Hunter. When we got them reformed for Motorcity, Richard Street was with The Temptations, and Sandra Fagin had passed away, but we succeeded in getting the other three back together. They brought in Smokey Robinson's nephew, Darryl Littlejohn, as lead singer and added a girl singer called Cathy, who was a Detroit policewoman. One of my treasured memories was getting Wanda Rogers of The Marvelettes back to performing live, at the Pontchartrain concert in Detroit, with the Monitors backing her up, all dressed in sharp white tuxedos. This is, of course, a part of the huge Motorcity Reunion that I put together between 1987 and 1992, recording 108 former artists of Motown across a massive eight hundred and fifty songs.