When contractual obligations strike: G.C. Cameron joined the Spinners just in time to sing the lead on “It’s a Shame”, the esteemed vocal group’s biggest hit of their Motown tenure. Released in 1970, that single (co-written by Stevie Wonder with Cameron in mind) ended a nearly half-decade losing streak for the group on the pop charts and set them up for the greater successes they would achieve in the 70s on the Atlantic label. But when the Spinners split from Motown in 1971, a contractual quirk forced Cameron to stay on at the label, which, at the beginning of its second decade was experiencing some serious growing pains, including the departures of some of the label’s signature talents like the Four Tops and the songwriting-producing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, who left to form their own Invictus label and were already scoring hits with the Honey Cone and Freda Payne often backed by moonlighting Motown session players. Cameron’s first solo single, released on Motown’s short-lived MoWest label, was this Willie Hutch-penned number which, amazingly, made its CD debut just two years ago on Hip-O Select’s The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 11B: 1971. Hutch went on to score a number of blaxploitation flicks, most notably The Mack. Cameron has recorded intermittently for various labels in the last 40 years (most notably doing the original version of “It’s So Hard to Say Good-bye to Yesterday” for the movie Cooley High, which Boyz II Men would cover to great effect in the early 90s). In the last 10 years, he briefly re-joined The Spinners, and later joined The Temptations.