September 18, 2008 Earworm

It's impossible to represent Norman Whitfield's impact with just one song suggestion. To do so would most likely lead to Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through It The Grapevine", an easy choice due to familiarity as much as to it's brilliance. But "Grapevine" has already been a topic so I offer up "The End of Our Road", Gladys Knight & The Pips' follow up to their version of "Grapevine", and The Temptations' "I Wish It Would Rain".

"The End Of Our Road" has often been accused of being little more than a retread of Gladys' version of "Grapevine" but it doesn't sound as though she feels that way - she sings as if she's on her way to catch a train that may have left five minutes ago while attempting to empty her soul of too many years of bullshit. She may have heard it through the grapevine but now that she's done tearing it, and probably everything this jerk owned, to pieces, she's got some news of her own. With each verse, her intensity increases to the point that you can feel her fighting against an anger that threatens to lift her off the floor, but only so that she can continue to poke this asshole with a talon that has had years of his coarse treatment to guarantee its accuracy. Girls may be finding their empowerment through Beyonce these days but "To da left, to da left" has nothing on "time and again I've begged ya to slow down so I'm giving you the lowdown: we've come to the end of our road".

Of course, "I Wish It Would Rain" is a completely different set of emotions. Masquerading as the tale of a victim of a broken heart, it's really a story of a man who can't face reality. So beautifully crafted to accent a theme of solitary confinement - check out the echo on David Ruffin's vocal on the mono mix, the mix that mattered - that it's not until the fade-out and "I'm a man and I've got my pride, until it rains I'm gonna stay inside" allows the truth to come out. By then, you feel so sorry for the sap that it seems cruel to make note of it. Maybe some one at Motown should have because the co-lyricist of both these records, Roger Penzabene, killed himself just a few days after "I Wish It Would Rain" was released. Unable to reconcile himself to his own wife's infidelity nor to give her the lowdown, he took the easy way out.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the work of Norman Whitfield, along with frequent collaborators Penzabene and Barrett Strong, forced Motown to grow up and away from the sweet and simple and prepared it for the complexities of the end of the sixties when "he loves me, he loves me not" ceased to be their audiences' primary concern. Without Whitfield's influence, and his work with The Temptations in particular, it's hard to imagine how Marvin would have been able to ask "What's Going On" or how Stevie would have found higher ground.

And then there's "Car Wash"...