[citation needed] Kendricks and his family moved to the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, where he met and began singing with his best friend Paul Williams in their church choir in the late 1940s.

In 1955, Kendricks, Williams, as well as their friends Kell Osborne and Willy Waller, formed a doo-wop group called the Cavaliers and they began performing around Birmingham.

[6] Under Jenkins' management, the Primes were successful in the Detroit area, eventually creating a female spin-off group called the Primettes (later becoming the Supremes).

[6] Among the Temptations songs, Kendricks sang lead on were "Dream Come True" (1962), the group's first charting single; "The Way You Do the Things You Do" (1964),[6] the group's first US Top 20 hit; "I'll Be in Trouble" (1964); "The Girl's Alright With Me" (1964), a popular B-side that Kendricks co-wrote; "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)" (1964); "Get Ready" (1966);[6] "Please Return Your Love to Me" (1968); and "Just My Imagination" (1971).

He shared lead vocal duty on other records, including "You're My Everything" (1967) (shared with David Ruffin), and a long string of Norman Whitfield produced psychedelic soul records where all five Temptations sang lead, such as the Grammy winner "Cloud Nine" (1968), "I Can't Get Next to You" (1969), and "Ball of Confusion" (1970).

He also leads on "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" (1968), a popular duet with Diana Ross and the Supremes, and on the Temptations' version of the Christmas classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1968).

According to Otis Williams, Kendricks romantically pursued Diana Ross, lead singer of the Supremes, and he was said to have been close friends with Martha Reeves of the Vandellas.

Kendricks remained in the group through the rest of the decade, but a number of issues began to push him away from it in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

He was uncomfortable with singing the psychedelic style that Whitfield was now crafting for the group as opposed to the romantic ballads they had sung under the direction of Smokey Robinson,[6] his friend Paul Williams was often too ill to perform with the group, and Kendricks often found himself at odds with bandmates Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin.

[citation needed] In a 1991 interview with a Chicago television series called Urban Street, Kendricks said he had actually considered leaving the group as early as 1965, even though that was when the band was finally starting to take off, because of things that "weren't quite proper."

After one final altercation with Williams and Franklin during a run at the Copacabana nightclub in November 1970, Kendricks walked off after the first night and did not return, and it was mutually decided he would leave the group.

Hold On (recorded with his touring group, the Young Senators, composed of Jimi Dougans, Frank Hooker, LeRoy Fleming, Wornell Jones, David Lecraft, James Drummer Johnson, and John Engram) was a cornerstone of DJ playlists in downtown New York's nascent disco scene.

The expansive, eight-minute take on "Girl You Need a Change of Mind", which peaked at number 13 on the soul chart,[8] was a particular favorite at David Mancuso's Loft.

[6] By this time, his popularity had waned, and Kendricks was also gradually losing his upper range as a result of chain smoking.

[10] The group, then a seven-piece act, also recorded a reunion album, and enjoyed a hit with the Rick James-written-and-produced "Standing on the Top".

In late 1991 Kendricks, by now living in his native Birmingham, Alabama underwent surgery to have one of his lungs removed in the hope of preventing the spread of cancer.

A funeral service was held at the First Baptist Church in Ensley, Alabama and Kendricks was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Birmingham.

Performers including Bobby Womack, Chaka Khan, Mary Wilson, and Vesta Willams sang Temptations songs, as well as some of their own.