It’s the great David Ruffin in his prime, with Motown’s Funk Brothers band in full flower and the company’s producers and arrangers on their game – left behind, until now.

It’s late 1969. David Ruffin is having a good year, following a bad one. His album and single, “My Whole World Ended,” are smash hits, with a second album, appropriately titled Feeling Good, hitting stores. The slender “Ruff” seems to have overcome the nastiness of the year before, when he’d had a volatile split with the Temptations, for whom he’d sung memorable leads on timeless songs like “My Girl” and “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.”

Ruffin, 28 years old, begins work on a third album, with Motown producers Clay McMurray, Johnny Bristol, Henry Cosby, Ivy Jo Hunter, Smokey Robinson and Duke Browner lining up with hot tracks: originals like “Each Day Is A Lifetime,” the proposed album’s first single; the dramatic “I Can’t Be Hurt Anymore”; the upbeat “Anything That You Ask For”; the mournful “Let Somebody Love Me”; the intensely exciting “It’s Gonna Take A Whole Lot Of Doing”; and stunning covers of recent hits, “I Want You Back,” “Rainy Night In Georgia” and, with a swaying choir, “Heaven Help Us All.”

Ruffin is simultaneously recording duet tracks with his brother, Jimmy, for the eventual 1970 LP release, I Am My Brother’s Keeper. Jimmy’s solo album, Groove Governor, is released in the fall of 1970. Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin’s high tenor counterpart in the Temptations, is planning to leave the group, just as their hit, “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me,” featuring his near-perfect lead, hits #1. Eddie’s solo album All By Myself, and the Temptations’ Sky’s The Limit, are released April 1971. David’s album David is scheduled for release a few months later. “Don’t Stop Lovin’ Me,” Browner’s B-side to Cosby’s “Each Day Is A Lifetime,” hits the lower rung of the Pop charts. You Can Come Right Back To Me” b/w “Dinah,” both Smokey co-productions, are issued as a second single.

In a move that ranks high among the many Motown mysteries, the album is never released. The performances, many of them new compositions, are never heard again, not even as filler for future albums. David Ruffin’s next solo album is released in 1973, meaning he had four years between official LP releases.

But the tapes survived. The stories remain fresh. The sound of David Ruffin at the height of his powers can now be heard, 33 years later. The packaging faithfully reproduces artwork of the era, including rare photographs, an essay detailing the sessions and the moment, and full track annotations.

DID YOU KNOW? Stevie Wonder wanted to produce David Ruffin, and even did demos for a Ruffin album, but ultimately turned his attention to Syreeta's debut (also on Hip-O Select) and his own Music of My Mind.