Satin, Silky, Sexy

They were sitting around at a rehearsal one night in 1967, the five of them, trying to think of ways to get their singing group off the ground. In wandered a young composer friend, who told them about a little song he had dashed off that afternoon in 20 minutes. It was all about a balloon ride. Just for kicks, they began working the song over. From the piano, the composer arranged it on the spot. "Billy, you do this line," he would say. "Marilyn, you sing this." It was fun, but as Marilyn said sadly, "it's too pretty to ever be a hit."

Which just goes to show that you never know where the next pop hit is coming from. The group was the 5th Dimension, and the song was Jimmy Webb's Up, Up and Away. No song title ever pointed to the future better than that one. The Dimension named their first LP after it, and it sold 450,000 copies. The single itself won four Grammy Awards last year. Now they are one of the hottest and most sought-after pop groups in show business. They have been almost everywhere on TV. Their nightclub fee is $30,000 a week, and they are booked solid until Christmas 1970. Last week their latest single, Aquarius--Let the Sunshine In, a medley from the musical Hair, was No. 1 on all the charts, and had sold 1,500,000 copies in only six weeks.

Clean Psychedelic. Aquarius is as good an example as any of what they can do. Their harmonies are striking, clean and progressive. The orchestral backing is colorful and full of big-band sweep. Best of all is their pulsating, straight-ahead beat.

As good as the group's records are, though, the 5th Dimension ought to be seen as well as heard. Attractive and easy to take, the quintet wears any one of a dozen matching sequined outfits that are psychedelic gear at its clean, scrubbed-up best. Their carefully worked-out choreography gives their live performances a satin, silky, sexy kind of happiness. Like such earlier pop groups as the Modernaires and the Mills Brothers, the 5th Dimension make no pretense at being anything but a slick, entertaining pop group. All five of them are Negroes, but even though they tap the wellspring of soul now and then, their sound transcends the color barrier. What they are interested in is good songs, ingenious arrangements and class delivery.

The three men grew up together in the tough midwestern section of St. Louis. When they take their fancy jackets off, their brawny forearms look like butchers' blocks, the result of many a ghetto gang fight. After some extraordinary career detours, they drifted to Los Angeles one by one. Ron Townson, 36, once an operatic tenor, hooked up with Nat "King" Cole's Merry Young Souls. Billy Davis, 29, who had studied singing since the age of seven, arrived to give show business one final try, although he confesses he half expected to have to go back to sheet-metal work in St. Louis.

Next came Lamonte McLemore, 30, who had played first base for a Los Angeles Dodgers farm club, dropped out of baseball in 1960 to become a fashion photographer. A drummer since his high school days, he soon had a professional jazz-rock combo going as well. It was Lamonte who met Marilyn Mc-Coo, 25, lanky, curvaceous daughter of a Los Angeles doctor, while photographing the 1962 Miss Bronze California Pageant. Marilyn won the talent contest. Finally, Florence LaRue, 26, then working her way through Cal State, won the same event the next year. Both girls could sing, both were good-looking, and it wasn't long before the boys had themselves a fivesome.

Talcing Off. Calling themselves The Versailles, they went over to the West Coast office of Motown Records, the inventor of the slick soul sound, for an audition. Motown turned them down, but the branch-office manager, Marc Gordon, quit to become their manager. He got them a contract with Soul City Records, changed their name to the 5th Dimension, brought Jimmy Webb onto the scene, and watched them take off.

At one point early in their career, the group decided to leave soul and rhythm and blues behind; they wanted a bigger audience than that. Last year at Valparaiso University in Indiana, the Black Students Union picketed their concert because it didn't think the 5th was black enough. Other than that, however, nobody seems to mind that they prefer joy to funky blues. Says Ron: "Music is an international language. It just means you're happy, and when you're really happy you should talk to everybody."

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