Dennis Edwards, singer for the Temptations, dies at 74

Dennis Edwards, the Detroit singer whose gritty, electric vocals led the Temptations into a new phase of their career, died Thursday night in a Chicago hospital. He was 74. Edwards, who joined the iconic Motown group in 1968 in the wake of David Ruffin's firing, was the prominent voice on enduring Temptations hits such as "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone," "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World is Today)" and "Cloud Nine." He remained a staple of the core group through the 1980s, and in the '90s formed a splinter act that eventually toured as the Temptations Review Featuring Dennis Edwards.

In later years, Edwards said he was appreciative of the audiences that kept him performing regularly, and he looked back fondly on his glory years with the Temptations.
A Motown Museum representative and others close to Edwards confirmed his death. Edwards, a graduate of Detroit's Eastern High School (now Martin Luther King High), mostly recently lived in the St. Louis area, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that he died of complications from meningitis, for which he was initially hospitalized last spring.