The 5th Dimension

The 5th Dimension is an American popular music vocal group, whose repertoire includes pop, R&B, soul, jazz, light opera and Broadway – a melange referred to as "champagne soul".
Formed as the Versatiles in late 1965, the group changed its name to "the 5th Dimension" by 1966. Between 1967 and 1973 they charted with 19 Top 40 hits on "Billboard"s Hot 100, two of which – "Up – Up and Away" (No. 7, 1967) and the 1969 number one "Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)" — won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Other big hits include "Stoned Soul Picnic" (No. 3), "Wedding Bell Blues" (No. 1), "One Less Bell to Answer" (No. 2), a cover of "Never My Love" (pop No. 12/Easy Listening No. 1), "(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All" (No. 8) and "If I Could Reach You" (pop No. 10/Easy Listening No. 1). Three of their records reached the Top Ten of "Billboard"'s Rhythm & Blues/Soul chart. Five of their 19 Top 20 hits on the Easy Listening chart reached number one.
The five original members were Billy Davis Jr., Florence La Rue, Marilyn McCoo, Lamonte McLemore, and Ronald Townson. They have recorded for several labels over their careers. Their first work appeared on the Soul City label, which was started by Imperial Records/United Artists Records recording artist Johnny Rivers. The group later recorded for Bell/Arista Records, ABC Records, and Motown Records.
Some of the songwriters popularized by the 5th Dimension went on to careers of their own, especially Ashford & Simpson, who wrote "California Soul". The group is also notable for having more success with the songs of Laura Nyro than Nyro did herself, particularly with "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Sweet Blindness", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Blowin' Away" and "Save the Country". The group also recorded songs by well-known songwriters such as "One Less Bell to Answer", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and the songs and music of Jimmy Webb, who wrote their hit "Up – Up and Away". The group's 1967 LP "The Magic Garden" features all but one song composed by Webb.
The 5th Dimension's producer Bones Howe used Bob Alcivar as the singers' vocal arranger, as well as instrumental backing by the Wrecking Crew for their recording sessions.
Career.
Formation.
In the early 1960s, Lamonte McLemore and Marilyn McCoo got together with three friends from Los Angeles—Harry Elston, Lawrence Summers. and Fritz Baskett—to form a group called 'the Hi-Fis' (which later became 'the Vocals'). In 1963, they sang at local clubs while taking lessons from a vocal coach. In 1964, they came to the attention of Ray Charles, who took them on tour with him the following year. He produced a single by the group, "Lonesome Mood", a jazz-type song that gained local attention. However, internal disagreements caused Elston to go his own way, eventually leading to his forming the Friends of Distinction, with latter day Hi-Fis member, Floyd Butler.
McLemore sought to form another group and started looking for members to join him and McCoo. McCoo, who had studied with the respected vocal coach Eddie Beal, had appeared in high school and college musical productions and was known for her ability to do torch songs. McLemore found Florence LaRue, who had received training in singing, dancing, and violin; and who won the talent portion at the Miss Bronze California contest, which McLemore was assigned to photograph. (McCoo had won the contest the prior year.) About the same time LaRue was approached to join the group, McLemore recruited an old friend, Ronald Townson, who at age six was singing in choirs and gospel groups in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. His grandmother fostered his career by arranging for private voice and acting lessons as he grew up. In his teens, he toured with Dorothy Dandridge and Nat King Cole, joined the Wings Over Jordan Choir, and played a small part in the film "Porgy and Bess". He demonstrated his skill as a classical artist by placing third in the Metropolitan Opera auditions held in St. Louis. After finishing high school, he worked his way through Lincoln University by conducting the school and church choir. After graduating, he organized his own 25-member gospel choir.
Another of McLemore's friends from St. Louis days, Billy Davis Jr., started singing in gospel choirs at an early age. He later saved enough money to buy a cocktail lounge in St. Louis, which he used as a base for experimenting with musical groups. When asked to join McLemore's new group, he agreed, while hoping for a solo contract from Motown.
Major hits.
The members began rehearsing as the Versatiles in late 1965 and auditioned for Marc Gordon, who headed Motown's Los Angeles office. Although Motown rejected the group's demo tape, Gordon agreed to manage them and brought them to the attention of Johnny Rivers, who had just started his own label, Soul City Records. Their first Soul City single, released in November 1966 as the 5th Dimension, was "I'll Be Lovin' You Forever".
In 1965 the Mamas & the Papas' first single, lead member John Phillips' "Go Where You Wanna Go", failed to open the quartet's chart career. At the suggestion of Rivers and their manager Marc Gordon, the 5th Dimension covered the same song virtually note-for-note (except that the last verse of the 5th Dimension's version includes upward modulation), and their early 1967 version climbed into the top 20 on R&B and pop stations and peaked at No. 16 on the Hot 100, opening the quintet's chart career.
The budding songwriter Jimmy Webb supplied the group with their breakthrough hit, "Up – Up and Away", a mid-1967 No. 7 hit that won five Grammy Awards. The following year, the group scored major hit singles with Laura Nyro's songs "Stoned Soul Picnic" (U.S. No. 3) and "Sweet Blindness" (U.S. No. 13). The group received a gold record for their album "Stoned Soul Picnic".
That album included "California Soul", which peaked at No. 25 in February 1969. Weeks later the group's success broke wide open, with "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" from the musical "Hair" topping the Hot 100 for six straight weeks in April and May, and another Nyro song, "Wedding Bell Blues", doing the same for the first three full weeks in November. Their cover of Neil Sedaka's "Workin' On a Groovy Thing" went to No. 20 in between. Those four singles kept the group on the Hot 100 for all but four weeks in 1969. By some reckonings, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" was the biggest hit single for 1969.
Later top 20 hits included 1970's "One Less Bell to Answer" (U.S. No. 2), 1971's "Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes" (U.S. No. 19) and "Never My Love" (U.S. No. 12), 1972's "(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All" (U.S. No. 8) and "If I Could Reach You" (U.S. No. 10). The group had seven other top 40 hits, the last being 1973's "Living Together, Growing Together" (U.S. No. 32) from the film "Lost Horizon".
TV appearances.
The 5th Dimension performed "Sweet Blindness" on Frank Sinatra's 1968 TV special "Francis Albert Sinatra Does His Thing" and appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" twice in 1969. The group performed and sang "California Soul", and a medley consisting of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" and the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love", on February 23, 1969, and performed and sang "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" on May 18, 1969, the day after the medley fell from the Hot 100 summit. That same year the group appeared on the British show "This Is Tom Jones", singing "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" and "Got My Mojo Workin'".
The 5th Dimension were the featured act of a July 28, 1969, CBS broadcast of highlights from the Harlem Cultural Festival, the "Black Woodstock" gathering in Mount Morris Park that drew 300,000 festival attendees over six shows. The New York Times reported the 5th Dimension show drew 60,000 alone.
The group sang "Workin' On a Groovy Thing" and "Wedding Bell Blues" on Woody Allen's "The Woody Allen Special" in 1969. They introduced "Puppet Man" and "One Less Bell To Answer" as guests in the "It Takes a Thief" episode "To Sing a Song of Murder" in 1970. The latter song was used as a plot device in which its closing notes were to activate a bomb in an assassination attempt of the head of a fictitious country.
"The 5th Dimension: An Odyssey in the Cosmic Universe of Peter Max", a television special, aired on CBS on May 21, 1970.
During the last season of "The Ed Sullivan Show", Sullivan dedicated the entire February 21, 1971, episode to the fifth anniversary of the 5th Dimension. The group opened the show with "Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes" and later joined Connie Stevens for "Puppet Man". They came back for the last 15 minutes of the show and sang their hits "Up – Up and Away", "One Less Bell to Answer", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Wedding Bell Blues", and finished up with "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In". This appearance was the group's last on Sullivan.
"The 5th Dimension Traveling Sunshine Show", a television special, aired on August 18, 1971. The group also performed in "Burt Bacharach in Shangri-La," a 1973 special attempting to promote "Lost Horizon."
The 5th Dimension made appearances on "Soul Train", "American Bandstand", "The Flip Wilson Show", "The Mike Douglas Show", and "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson".
Regrouping.
In 1975, McCoo and Davis, who had married on 26 July 1969, left the group to do collective and individual projects. The duo had success with "Your Love" and the chart topper "You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show)", which won them their seventh Grammy award.
The remaining trio carried on with new members, and nearly had a hit in 1976 with the LaRue-sung "Love Hangover". However, Motown issued Diana Ross' original version shortly after the 5th Dimension's, and their version peaked much further down the charts than hers, which soared to the top. The group signed with Motown not long after, releasing two albums in 1978. R&B singer Lou Courtney was in the group briefly in 1978 and 1979, Joyce Wright joined in 1979, and Phyllis Battle joined in 1988.
McCoo served a lengthy 1980s stint as the host of the TV show "Solid Gold".
Reunion and departure.
The original quintet reunited in 1990 and 1991 for a tour. Townson left the group to try a solo career, but soon returned, as the group resigned itself to the nostalgia circuit. In 1995, the quintet of LaRue, Townson, McLemore, Battle, and Greg Walker recorded a new album, "In the House", for Click Records. In 1998, Willie Williams replaced Townson, who died in 2001 due to kidney failure. Battle departed in 2002, to be replaced by Van Jewell. McLemore left the group in March 2006.
Today.
, the group was actively touring as "the 5th Dimension featuring Florence LaRue", led by LaRue, with Willie Williams, Leonard Tucker, Patrice Morris, and Floyd Smith.
McCoo and Davis, who have been married for over 50 years, continue to tour as their own act titled "Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr." In October 2011, McCoo and Davis were featured on the Cliff Richard album "Soulicious", appearing live on stage in the tour of the same name, reprising several of their hits as well as dueting with Richard. In 2013, McCoo and Davis released their own double-CD project: "Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. Live".
On February 14, 2015, McLemore released an autobiographical memoir, "From Hobo Flats to The 5th Dimension: A Life Fulfilled in Baseball, Photography and Music".
On June 21, 2016, the 5th Dimension featuring Florence LaRue performed in The Villages, Florida, just days after the Orlando nightclub shooting. LaRue took the opportunity to share her thoughts on the tragedy: "We will not be terrorized. We know what's happening in the world, but this is a song about good health, love, peace and happiness. We still believe in those things today," she stated before the group performed "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In".
In November 2017, the 5th Dimension appeared for 18 performances at the Andy Williams Performing Arts Centre in Branson, Missouri, in the Andy Williams Christmas Extravaganza hosted by Jimmy Osmond.
On June 25, 2019, "The New York Times Magazine" listed the 5th Dimension among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Honors.
The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002.
They have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inducted August 9, 1991, and the St. Louis Walk of Fame, inducted on March 18, 2010.
Membership.
McCoo and Davis left the group in November 1975. Since then, other members have included:
Discography.
Singles.
US charts are from "Billboard". Canadian charts are taken from the weekly surveys of CHUM in Toronto.
Compilation albums.
There have been several compilations of the 5th Dimension issued in recent years. In 2004, Arista issued "Ultimate 5th Dimension", a single disc containing 20 hit singles plus a previously unreleased McCoo-led take on "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye". In 2011, Sony/Legacy reissued the two-CD "The Definitive Collection" as "The Essential 5th Dimension", with a few changes to the repertoire. Legacy issued, in 2014, the group's entry in their "Playlist" series of single disc releases, including the radio edit of "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" (which was issued on the 1970 "Greatest Hits" vinyl album) and a few mono single versions. Finally, in December 2016, Real Gone Music issued the three-disc set "The Complete Soul City/Bell Singles 1966–1975".