The Motown Series - 1

And to kick this series off, I have chosen a song that is a revelation to me. I have chosen Marvin Gaye’s “I heard it through the grapevine”. It’s a revelation to me because in the course of doing research on the song, I discovered that it was actually originally released by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Imagine that!

The song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong who I mentioned in the previous post about the label and the tune created by The Funk Brothers. The Gladys Knight version was released in 1967 and hit number 2 on the US charts. Marvin Gaye’s version was released just a year later and became even more successful than the original. But then again, this is Marvin Gaye we are talking about. The man could sing about butter and it would become a hit.

This song became Marvin’s first number one hit and Motown’s most successful record of the 60’s. Its also number 80 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Another fascinating thing about this song, is that after it was written by the duo, the vocals were recorded by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. During one of the quality control meetings that I mentioned in the previous post, it failed to make the cut. The song was then re-recorded by the Isley Brothers and their version failed to make the cut as well.

Norman and Barrett were so sure that they had a hit on their hands, they recorded it a third time with a few changes. The song was slowed down a bit and the background vocals recorded by The Andantes (who I have never heard of but I will be looking up) and The Funk Brothers reworking the instrumental track.

Marvin Gaye recorded this song in 2 months. A fascinating fact about this song – Norman Whitfied arranged the vocals for this track and ensured that Marvin’s lead vocal was arranged above his actual register (music people will understand this). Imagine you sing in a particular range that you are comfortable with. Then imagine being made to sing it lower or higher than you are used to. That’s what that means. Anyway, what this achieved was that Marvin Gaye had to struggle vocally to hit the high notes. The result was a rawer, raspier Marvin Gaye which complemented the very very soft vocals of The Andantes. I swear, a lot of these young cats need to go back in time and be schooled by the masters.

In another twist on this song, Marvin recorded his version before The Pips. Whitfield recorded a fourth version using a gospel style just in case. While it became a hit, he had fallen in love with the Marvin Gaye version and won Berry Gordy’s approval to release the Gaye version.
A huge reason I love the Motown era is the fact that each song is about something. So this song is about a guy who hears through the grapevine (from other people) that his girl is going to leave him for her ex. Heartless I tell you.

This song has been covered by a lot of artists from Michael McDonald to Roger Troutman of Zapp & Roger fame.

I cant find this song on esnips as I would have loved to have it playing on my blog….Hopefully, I will have better success with the other songs….