Rose Royce

Rose Royce were the brainchild of Norman Whitfield, one of the leading lights at Motown who had quit to branch out on his own. The various members of the group were essentially session singers and musicians who had teamed up after touring with Edwin Starr under the name Total Conception Limited. Starr introduced them to Whitfield, who signed them to his new label. Calling themselves Magic Wand, they worked with Yvonne Fair and The Undisputed Truth, but it was the addition of singer Gwen Dickey that transformed the collective into a commercial project in their own right. It happened when Whitfield was asked to write the soundtrack music for the 1976 movie Car Wash and he reinvented Magic Wand as Rose Royce behind Gwen Dickey to record it. The title track went to Number 1 all over the world, and the movie included two other major hits for Rose Royce, I Wanna Get Next To You and I'm Going Down. More successes followed, including the 1978 smash Love Don't Live Here Any More, but as the hits dried up they disbanded in 1980, although there have been subsequent reunions.