Spinnin' Out of Control

The Spinners Homecoming and reunion that took place at the Motown Museum in 2023 was the biggest media event for the group in at least thirty years. News of the group’s intention to donate its iconic stage uniforms made a splash in local news broadcasts across the country as well as major national news networks and publications, thanks to the Museum’s PR team, which operated like clockwork. I wanted the image of The Spinners family in front of the iconic Hitsville window emblazoned on the minds of fans, promoters, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame voters. I saw it as mission-critical for the current lineup’s long-term viability to be seen as the rightful torchbearers of the Spinners legacy — sharing the stage with one of the group’s iconic lead singers went a long way in terms of reinforcing that message.

After delivering such a clearcut victory to SPA, L.L.C., my colleagues understood my value to the team and I was treated with collegial respect thenceforth, right? Are you kidding? This is real life, not some saccharine fairytale. I had little time to rest on my laurels before devoting the bulk of my attention to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame campaign for the next several months. I saw the Motown Museum event as a massive reset that would galvanize The Spinners family ahead of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. My vision was expansive: I felt strongly that the current Spinners quartet should attend in addition to the three inductees — Fambrough, Cameron, and Edwards. We had the opportunity to do something groundbreaking in the realm of legacy soul groups. Instead of treating replacement members as an afterthought, what if we elevated them? After all, wasn’t it an honor of a lifetime to be handpicked by the likes of Otis Williams (The Temptations), Duke Fakir (The Four Tops), Henry Fambrough (The Spinners), Mary Wilson (The Supremes), Helen Scott (The Three Degrees), and countless others to continue the legacy of their respective vocal groups?

The image of the contemporary aggregation of Spinners standing shoulder to shoulder with the three remaining architects of the legacy at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony would prove a compelling closing argument cementing their legitimacy as torchbearers. I made the argument to Heather and Toby. Per usual, they failed to see the vision. To be fair, the expense of flying the current group of Spinners to New York City (the RRHOF Induction Ceremony was held at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn that year) and putting them up for the weekend was no cheap proposition. However, looking at the group’s sparse calendar these days (the group’s next gig isn’t until February 19, opening for the Commodores; their last gig was on January 9. Comparatively, the Temptations and the Four Tops just wrapped up a run of six dates in January; they’ll follow that up with four more dates in February, a sharp contrast to the Spinners one performance date across that same stretch of time), one wonders if the expenditure might have reaped dividends in the form of a fuller calendar.

I submitted the names of the group’s inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s team in alphabetical order: G.C. Cameron, John Edwards, Henry Fambrough, Billy Henderson, Pervis Jackson, Bobbie Smith, and Philippé Wynne. At the time, it didn’t feel particularly controversial to include G.C. in the mix — after all, he’d just come through for The Spinners in a major way when he agreed to confer some legitimacy upon the current group by sharing the stage with them at The Motown Museum without compensation. Without his participation, I’m not sure that the Motown event would have even come to fruition. He was the lead singer on the group’s biggest hit with the label. Excluding him from the Motown event would have been in poor taste. Heather was fond of repeating her mantra that “The Spinners are a class organization,” a position that rang hollow in light of her constant “let them eat cake” refusal to pay the entourage on time and troubling penchant for deploying triangulation as a strategy. The “classy” thing to do was to include G.C. as one of the group’s inductees, but class couldn’t catch up with Heather’s Sha’carri Richardson-style sprint away from it.

I advocated for as much in myriad emails and text messages to Heather and Toby, like the one I sent to Heather on September 5.

Heather’s exasperated, harried response to my reasonable inquiry was an out and out falsehood — there’s no other way to characterize it.

Contrary to Heather’s willfully misleading response, when the inductees are bands or vocal groups, latitude is given to the trademark owners to dictate what members of the group should be inducted. When the Spinners ultimately were named as Class of 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees, the initial lineup was the Core Four (Fambrough, Henderson, Jackson, and Smith) and Philippé Wynne. Neither G.C. Cameron nor John Edwards were contemplated for induction. However, SPA, L.L.C. advocated for Edwards’ inclusion, while my advocacy for G.C.’s induction was increasingly viewed as problematic by SPA’s leader. Even though I was the designated Spinners’ point of contact for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, my efforts were nevertheless stymied. The son of Spinners’ former manager Buddy Allen had somehow managed to insinuate himself into conversations with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Heather was duped into believing that he was working on behalf of the RRHOF, while the RRHOF had been misled into thinking that he was the current point of contact for the Spinners. By the time I reached out to anyone at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on behalf of the organization, the seeds of confusion had already been sown. As a result, I never really had a chance to more directly advocate for G.C.’s inclusion.

I was gobsmacked. No way did this man perform for free, lending his imprimatur and status to SPA only for the organization to leave him out in the cold. I felt awful. I’d given G.C. my word that he was being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. When I took the position as the group’s publicist, I had taken for granted that Mrs. Fambrough Williams would defer to my expertise where matters of public relations were concerned the same way she was deferential to the point of undue obsequiousness to Toby as manager. I’d spent that summer mentoring her stepdaughter. She and her husband both noted a marked increase in her confidence and acumen after spending six weeks with me — clearly I’d done something right. No good deed goes unpunished, so of course Heather doubled down on her weird, ongoing, surreptitious attempts to clip my wings. It pained me to have to call G.C. to tell him that, unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with his musical brothers after all. That telephone call remains a professional nadir for me. G.C. was understanding enough not to hold me responsible for a decision that was above my paygrade, but I felt like a failure.

Meanwhile, Paul Mathis couldn’t resist living up to his recurring role as unhelpful interloper. He was always lurking in the shadows, lying in wait for an opportunity to create dissension among the ranks. I’d since blocked him — I found him to be irascible, abusive, and wholly committed to devilment. I could see no productive reason to maintain contact with him. So when he sent me a nasty email, with a copy to Heather and Toby on September 22, 2023, I didn’t see it. Heather’s apologetic text message was my only notification that her ill-tempered cousin had sent yet another harassing email with me in his obsessive crosshairs.

I asked that Toby or Heather forward me this “nasty-gram” that Paul sent, apparently to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, disparaging me. Heather conveyed in her text message that she did not approve of my effort to advocate for G.C.’s inclusion as an inductee. Gee, I thought, it would have been great had she made this clear before I asked him to perform for free with The Spinners at the Motown event in May. Whatever Paul articulated in that email is unknown to me, but apparently it was so awful that Heather refused to forward it to me.

I felt awful about G.C., but my hands were tied. As the group’s publicist, I was the lone soldier on the frontlines and in the trenches, bearing the brunt of the incoming. A wave of bad publicity ensued, including a brutal piece published in The Detroit News on November 1, 2023. In that article, which you can read here, Amanda Pecsenye (Director of Curatorial Affairs for the Rock Hall) is quoted as explaining: “when a group is nominated, the Hall of Fame Foundation works with the founding member(s) of the group to decide which members, past and present, will be included. Sometimes the choices are challenging and not in keeping with all members’ or the fans’ wishes.”

Pecsenye’s statement directly contravenes Fambrough Williams’ assertion in her September 6 email that “The Spinners cannot tell the RRHOF who they can and cannot induct.” The facts were beginning to emerge, and it was looking like Paul and Heather’s cruel and ahistorical agenda to diminish G.C. Cameron’s legacy would carry the day. I was waiting in vain for the day when Williams’ oft-repeated sentiment “The Spinners are a class act,” would reflect in her stewardship of the group.

I shuddered to think what this snub would look like to the team at the Motown Museum. They’d gone to great lengths to roll out the Motown blue carpet for the Spinners. For the vast majority of 2023 into the early days of 2024, The Spinners had pride of place in the window at Hitsville U.S.A. The surge of good publicity that followed the Spinners Founders Day Weekend appearance in Detroit was unquantifiable. Reaping the benefit of Motown’s prestige only to turn around and diminish the label’s contribution to the group’s success struck me as gauche and transactional. Founders Day Weekend heralded the beginning of a much-needed rapprochement for the Spinners family — amongst each other and with Motown — but Heather seemed more interested in using her position to punish G.C. Cameron for daring to believe himself a rightful stakeholder in the Spinners legacy.

Post-Induction: A Mad Man’s Mission

October 2, 2024: Almost there, I thought. In just a few more days, we will shoot the video for “After Hours,” and I can put this Godforsaken album to bed. Since Paul Mathis was the executive producer of the Spinners lackluster Full Circle album, I unblocked him with the intention of implementing my embargo against him once the music video was in the rearview mirror. He was one of the many people on the email chains between Reservoir Media and SPA regarding the video, I decided to limit my communication with him to the bare minimum. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around “I want you in every position” as a Spinners lyric, but After Hours was the strongest of the lackluster, 1990s-era ditties that comprised this most unfortunate entry into the Spinners otherwise mighty musical canon. My reservations aside, I was in the midst of handling preproduction tasks and packing ahead of the video shoot that was scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on October 7 when, at 11:39 AM, Paul Mathis’ name besmirched my inbox.

I read the subject line: G.C. Cameron’s Violation of THE SPINNERS Order of Permanent Federal Injunction. I could feel the blood coursing through my constricted veins, I could feel the beat of my heart intensify, threatening to burst through the dermal layers that encased it. The joy he derived in disturbing my peace seemed downright sociopathic, obsessive even. I began to fear for my safety, in all honesty because why does this 70 year old dude with grandchildren have it out for me so bad? When I opened the body of the email, I was mortified. This impudent troublemaker had copied Heather, Toby, Will, all four Spinners principals, and Fred Adams (The Spinners late, legendary road manager, who died on December 10) in an email that read as though it was fired off by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy himself, had email existed during the Red Scare. The second sentence sent a chill down my spine: We know you have a relationship/familiarity with him and accordingly place you on notice, to inform him, although I am sure he, as of last week is aware, we shut him down, for his violation of Federal Law. I felt like I was being surveilled and monitored. I was. His reckless misuse of commas added insult to injury — his blind rage precluded his ability to proofread, I gathered.

His stated reason for sending this communiqué was a mere cover for his true intentions: his latest and most bold-faced attempt yet to isolate, intimidate, harass, and embarrass me before my colleagues. Knowing he had taken advantage of his proximity to Henry by allegedly extracting a signature from his older cousin who had little more than a month left on earth, I had little patience and no respect for Attorney Mathis. His screed was so unhinged and seething with rage that I could see him frothing at the mouth in my mind’s eye. Was he really threatening to send G.C. Cameron to the penitentiary for — rigorously checking my notes here — seeking to benefit from a group he’s poured into?

If the second sentence of his bombshell email sent a chill down my spine, his careening run-on of a final sentence alerted me to the full scope of Paul’s derangement where his cousin’s group was concerned. Was he really suggesting that the current lineup, the ones who perform G.C. Cameron’s signature song on a nightly basis (or once monthly basis, if we are going with the reality of the group’s early 2026 concert schedule) were “real Spinners,” as opposed to the man whose vocal performance they emulate? Moreover, I was looking for something — anything — up to and including a quagmire, to finally move beyond Full Circle, which I regarded as more of a Paul Mathis vanity project than a true Spinners album. I was growing weary of the calls from friends and colleagues who questioned my reputed excellent musical taste before I reassured them that, no, I did not cosign the release of this monstrosity of a Spinners album.

Conflicts of Interest

Back in 2022 when I interviewed for the position, I thought mentioning my acquaintance with G.C. to Heather would help my chances. Whether it helped or hurt was moot, because I got the position. However, if Heather had misgivings about my affiliation with G.C., her decision to hire me without making me aware of her hostility toward him effectively served as a conflicts waiver. For those unfamiliar with the term, a conflict of interest arises when an employee, vendor, or attorney for one party has connections with a third party whose interests stand in opposition to the first party. A conflicts waiver occurs when, upon revealing a connection with an adversarial party to a potential employer, they hire you anyway. For the first several months of my tenure with SPA, I was unaware of the conflict between Cameron and the organization. Heather’s objection to his participation at the Motown event served as my initial notice as to SPA’s hostile position toward the man who, through his advocacy and voice, helped chart the course for the group’s lasting success.

Within law firms, corporations, and other entities, conflicts are usually addressed by “quarantining” the member of the organization with whom the conflict resides from matters pertaining to the hostile third party. In the case of Spinners Performing Arts, L.L.C. and G.C. Cameron, there was little that needed to be done to “quarantine” me from matters related to G.C. As the group’s publicist, my work was focused on keeping the current group in the public eye while also celebrating the legacy. The only way a conflict could have arisen during my tenure is if I had sought it out. For example, had I produced a show with G.C. billing him and his background singers as The Spinners, my actions would have posed an obvious conflict of interest. It was not lost on me that Paul was the pot to my kettle; for his own position within SPA, L.L.C. was fraught with multiple conflicts. As the group’s legal counsel and one member’s cousin, he was obviously conflicted. The fact that he was a former manager of the group, and yet permitted to remain in a position to repeatedly frustrate the efforts of the current management team was still another conflict. Forcing the release of an album he executive produced (he allegedly spent $50,000 of his own money to produce this throwaway album) over the stated objections of the group’s current manager was an actual conflict. Yet here he was, unwelcome in my inbox, attacking me for a theoretical conflict.

Paul’s October 2 email came with three PDF files attached — an Order of Permanent Injunction dated October 30, 2013, a letter from Rufflow Entertainment+ TV dated September 25, 2024 acknowledging receipt of a Cease and Desist letter from Paul’s law firm, and another grammatically and syntactically painful Cease and Desist letter dated September 22, 2024 from Paul to Oakley Lindsey Center, a venue for one of G.C.’s dates he’d booked. In the latter correspondence, Paul states in part that a few contemplated shows with “The Spinners Revue featuring GC Cameron” as the top-billed act “violate, THE SPINNERS® rights under federal law, the Lanham Act, 15 USC § 1051, et seq., and the State, false advertising statutes, “Truth in Music Advertising Act”, etc.” A footnote within the cease and desist letter explains: The Act provides that it is unlawful to advertise or conduct a live musical performance through the use of a false, deceptive or misleading affiliation, connection or association between a performing group and a recording group.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Paul had successfully used his position as The Spinners legal counsel to contort U.S. Trademark Law in an effort to rob a pioneering member of The Spinners of his right to benefit from the name he poured into. It was shocking to witness the injustice of one man who contributed nothing to the Spinners story having the power to rob an actual member of the ability to work. Paul’s legal crusade against G.C. reminded me that injustice can often be perpetrated through lawful means — a sobering reminder in these early days of 2026.

I responded to Paul’s email first by reaching out to Heather via email. I expressed my reservations about communicating with Paul — he had verbally abused and harassed me by phone and by email on previous occasions. Enduring his abuse was not a part of my job description, and it was clear that Heather lacked the gravitas or the fortitude to put a leash on her boorish cousin, and I told her as much in my response to her.

I sent a follow-up email to Heather expounding upon the troubling pattern I’d noticed in Paul’s relentless harassment — that anytime my endeavors on behalf of SPA, L.L.C. brought some success, Paul emerged from the sewer to kick up dust.

I hadn’t yet heard from Heather, and none of the other parties copied on the email dared enter the fray. It boggled my mind that Mathis, who has been barred since the 1970s, was making a public spectacle of a simple conflicts inquiry. His undue pomp and circumstance approach flew in the face of the recommended protocol — which would have been to email me one on one. The only other party who needed to be copied, if at all, would have been Heather. So when I responded to Paul’s offensive email, I responded to him with just Heather on copy. I was proud that I didn’t deploy any expletives in my response.

Insistent upon forcing his chest-thumping authority upon me, he responded by continuing to pressure me to cough up G.C.’s telephone number (huge violation of conflicts protocol), copying in all of the unnecessary parties to the email once more. I was incensed and taken aback by Mathis’ increasingly hostile and crazed correspondence. He was attempting to subject me to a purity test that he himself couldn’t pass. He was adamant about burning me at the stake before my peers for the crime of having a positive view about G.C. Cameron.

Heather did not respond to any of this until October 8. It’s as if she’d read some guide to leadership that recommended silence and inscrutability as Machiavellian power maneuvers. Her response contained no apology or explanation for Paul’s bullying, abusive messages to me. Instead, she informed me that she found it “personally offensive that we have had to take legal action against GC Cameron because he had his own Spinners group.” The email continued with that same solipsistic petulance that made her come across as “bratty” and “entitled” well into her 50s.

My sense of professionalism dictated that I set aside my personal disagreement, so I adhered to the terms she set forth in her October 8 email. She’d struck a reasonable middle ground that I could live with. As a practical matter, compliance wouldn’t be too difficult. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame snub, particularly after he had so generously conferred legitimacy upon the current iteration of the Spinners by sharing the stage with them at Hitsville, had left a bad taste in G.C.’s mouth. He hardly wanted his name associated with the group that had once been his respite from the horrors of war. The entire situation saddened me. Heather seemed more interested in using her position to exert dominion over others rather than taking up the important work of preserving a beloved classic soul legacy.

All Things Happen For A Reason

May 2024: I found myself in Detroit for Founders Day Weekend again in 2024. This time, I was there to be on-hand when my beloved Sandra Williams (an original member of the Monitors, one of Motown’s most underrated vocal groups) made her pilgrimage back to the house where so many of her dreams came true. I was thrilled to learn that he’d be one of the performers at a private event celebrating the Museum’s latest exhibit celebrating and magnifying the contributions of the ever-radiant First Lady of Motown, Claudette Robinson.

Sandra and G.C. had just missed each other back in the day at Hitsville. The Monitors were on their way out as G.C. was making his way in at Motown. It was an honor to introduce these two Motown founding alumni — that family bond is real and instantaneous. It wasn’t lost on me that The Monitors’ Vietnam era ballad, Greetings This Is Uncle Sam, spoke to the plight of young soldiers like G.C.

The evening ended with an exclusive mini-concert that felt more like a jam session in Studio A. G.C. was one of the featured performers. I was so gratified and relieved to witness him receive the full embrace by his Motown family, flowers so richly deserved for a lifetime of unheralded musical excellence. Paul Mathis’ federal statute and ‘nationwide’ legal injunction held no sway here — not in this hallowed building, not on this unforgettable night. G.C. Cameron, a Motown Spinner, serenaded a Miracle in with a song that emanates from and remains inextricably linked to his one-of-a-kind vocal genius. In the face of one miserable man’s determination to reshape a legacy to align with his ignominious agenda, I call that joy as a form of resistance.