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In an interview late last year with TSD, Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis, Jr., and Florence LaRue shared memories of their lifelong friend and co-founder of The 5th Dimension, LaMonte McLemore (1935-2026).  “He loved music and he was a very accomplished photographer,” remembered Marilyn.  “He knew Berry Gordy and did very well with his photography in Jet Magazine.  If you ever look up Jet’s Beauty of the Week, he was always featuring the young black girls in Los Angeles.  His work was good and Motown used him for some of their photography.  LaMonte was forever promoting the group: ‘You have to hear our group, we’re really good!’ He knew Marc Gordon, who was running the West Coast office of Motown.”  Billy continued, “LaMonte suggested, ‘Why don’t we make a demo?  We can take it to Detroit and to Berry Gordy.’”  McLemore made that journey, and while Gordy passed on the demo, it wasn’t long before Gordon brought it to Johnny Rivers, launching the career of one of pop and soul’s most remarkable vocal groups.

McCoo, Davis, and LaRue emphasized just how instrumental McLemore, already a minor league baseball pitcher and U.S. Navy veteran, was in creating the group that went on to score such indelible hits as “Up, Up, and Away,” “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” and “Wedding Bell Blues.”  He had known Davis and Ron Townson from their childhoods in St. Louis, Missouri, and had taken notice of both McCoo and LaRue while photographing the Los Angeles Miss Bronze pageant for African-American women.  (Both women won titles at the pageant.)  LaMonte and Marilyn sang together in The Hi-Fi’s, later known as The Vocals, before the familiar 5th Dimension lineup would coalesce.

LaRue credited McLemore with bringing her into the fold: “When LaMonte approached me, I didn’t want to join the group.  There were girls who could sing circles around me. I was really not the best singer, but I was the best performer because I had worked with a gentleman to help me [develop my talent].  I was in school getting my bachelor’s degree to teach and my mother told me to have something to fall back on.  I wanted to be in the movies. I never wanted to be a singer.  The only reason I sang was because we had to do something in the contest.  LaMonte kept bugging me and I said, ‘Okay!’  I was working and in college full time.”

“We had some beautiful, beautiful times on the road with Mac,” shared Davis.  “I used to marvel at Mac and how he would stop the bus and jump out because he seen a shot. We’d be traveling on the bus during the autumn…all those trees and the different colors. Mac got off with his camera and started taking pictures. He had a great eye.”

McLemore, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 90, was one of the group’s unsung heroes.  Rarely a lead singer, he nonetheless stepped into the spotlight to croon Laura Nyro’s memorable “Black Patch” lyric about “lipstick on her reefer, waiting for a match.”  It was a moment in concert that unfailingly drew applause.  So did his portrayal of The Preacher in the group’s inventive arrangement of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.”  The multi-talented McLemore co-wrote “A Love Like Ours” and “The Singer,” two of the group’s much-loved B-sides.

When Marilyn and Billy embarked on a career as a duo following the release of the group’s lone released ABC album, 1975’s Earthbound, LaMonte remained with the group he helped put together.  He joined Florence on both of The 5th Dimension’s subsequent Motown albums (1978’s Star Dancing and 1979’s High on Sunshine) as well as 1995’s In the House on Dick Clark’s Click Records label.  (Though Ron Townson was absent from the Motown LPs, he returned to the group shortly thereafter and can be heard on In the House.)  LaMonte’s presence, like Florence’s, led continuity to later lineups, and his warm, easygoing onstage manner and resonant bass vocals were familiar, comforting mainstays.  His enormous legacy, too, encompasses his empowerment of African-Americans through his striking photography for Jet, Ebony, Playboy, and People.

“The singer tells his story in the songs he’s singing/About a life he never leaves behind/The singer searches for the perfect meaning/In all the dreams that dance across his mind.”  So went the lyrics to “The Singer.” LaMonte McLemore embodied those words, telling his stories in music and photography, embracing life, and making dreams into reality.  “The singer makes you happy/Even in his sorrow/Knowing fame’s not promised him tomorrow/He sings his song as if it were the last song.”  Happily, LaMonte McLemore’s songs will live forever.