[8] [9] The 5th Dimension recorded songs by a wide variety of artists, many of whom were well known in the music industry of the era: Harry Nilsson, John Phillips, Paul Anka, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Neil Sedaka, Paul Williams (composer) and Roger Nichols, as well as Lennon and McCartney, and George Harrison of The Beatles.

They recorded a small number of Burt Bacharach and Hal David-penned songs, most notably "One Less Bell to Answer" and "Living Together, Growing Together" (the CD rarity track, "As Long as There's an Apple Tree" was never released on album).

Jeffrey Comanor, an American singer-songwriter and actor, provided the group with at least seven of their more memorable album tracks and single B sides.

They also recorded a couple of songs by the celebrated British composer Tony Macaulay, one of which, "(Last Night) I Didn't Get to Sleep at All," was a major hit.

Some of the songwriters who worked with The 5th Dimension went on to establish successful performance careers of their own, notably Ashford & Simpson, who wrote the song "California Soul".

The same was true for Jimmy Webb, an American singer-songwriter and arranger who won far more accolades supplying songs to artists like Johnny Rivers, Glen Campbell, Judy Collins, Art Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Thelma Houston, and even Frank Sinatra and the actor Richard Harris, than he did for his own solo releases.

All but two of The 5th Dimension's original albums were produced by Bones Howe, who had been a sound engineer for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Mel Torme, Johnny Rivers and Phil Spector, before producing and engineering hits for a number of young, contemporary acts, including The Association, The Turtles and The Mamas & the Papas.

In the case of The 5th Dimension, there were no backing musicians for the vocal group so the Wrecking Crew became their defacto accompanists and instrumental arrangers.

Most other purely vocal groups of the time were stuck working with whoever got assigned to individual recording sessions - and didn't have much say in it.

In 1963, LaMonte McLemore and Marilyn McCoo got together with three fellow vocalists from Los Angeles—Harry Elston, Lawrence Summers, and Fritz Baskett—to form a Jazz-oriented vocal group called The Hi-Fi's.

Gordon brought them to the attention of popular singer Johnny Rivers, who had just started his own label, Soul City Records.

'"[18] [19] In November 1966, Soul City released their first single as The 5th Dimension, "I'll Be Lovin' You Forever", with a decidedly Motown-flavored arrangement.

The following year, the group scored major hit singles with Laura Nyro's songs "Stoned Soul Picnic" (U.S. No.

[32] On June 21, 2016, The 5th Dimension featuring Florence LaRue performed in The Villages, Florida just days after the Orlando nightclub shooting.

[34] David Brown:For a brief period in the late 1960s, the 5th Dimension fully realized the post-racial crossover success that [Motown's] Gordy had imagined for his stars, while raising the legitimate question of what it means to sound Black in music.

To listen to the 5th Dimension was to hear a mélange of middle-of-the road Pop, show-tunes, folk music, with flourishes of Jazz, Soul, and a tinge of Gospel.

[3]Mark Anthony Neal:But in a scenario that's nearly impossible to imagine for a modern act, the 5th Dimension also became victims of their own success.

In an extended Summer of Soul [film] segment, Davis and Marilyn McCoo, the group's most prominent female member, rewatch the footage with equal degrees pride and pain.

Those poignant moments recall similar put-downs that Whitney Houston endured two decades later, after she began pulling in both black and white audiences with her first two albums.

No matter; they couldn't undo what we would now call the reputational damage, despite the fact that one of the songs they played at the White House was "The Declaration", a powerful folk-pop appeal for racial unity.

[5] [The medley of "The Declaration / A Change Is Gonna Come / People Gotta Be Free" was recorded for the Portrait album.

Declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson is sung by the group before segueing into Sam Cooke's socially-conscious "A Change Is Gonna Come."

The recorded version by The 5th Dimension was refused play on Armed Forces radio during the Vietnam era "as they felt it depicted overthrowing the government".

This involved a Goodwill Tour of Eastern Europe, giving concerts and talks in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey, Bucharest and Ploesti, Romania, Warsaw and Katowice, Poland, and Ostrava, Bratislava and Prague in Czechoslovakia.