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"...

March 24, 2008 Earworm

Berry Gordy's decision to can Marvin Gaye's version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" may have paved the way for the career resurgence of Gladys Knight and The Pips' career, but it also gave credence to the detractors of Motown who claim that it was nothing but an assembly line.

Legend has it that Barrett Strong came up with the idea while walking down a street - "I heard people say it all the time (but) nobody wrote a song about it". Upon his return to the Motown fold, he began working with Norman Whitfield who took the idea in many different directions. The Isley Brothers claim that they were the first to get a crack at it but tapes of that recording remain undocumented and unavailable. It is confirmed that Whit a version of the song with Smokey Robinson and The Miracles but it was shelved after being deemed unworthy by the Quality Control Staff. Rethinking the setting, he took the song to Marvin Gaye who assisted in crafting the ominous arrangement that we know today. Once again, it was shot down by the Quality Control team who declared it too different when compared to the records currently residing in the top five of the charts. Berry Gordy, in particular, was not impressed with the dark turn Whitfield had in mind for the Prince of Motown and the recording was shelved while Holland - Dozier - Holland's eighteen month old production of "Your Unchanging Love" became Marvin's next single, peeking at #7 R&B and #33 pop.

Whitfield took the song to Gladys and Company who worked up a vocal arrangement and began testing it during their live performances before committing it to vinyl. Their version would reach #1 on the R&B chart, #2 pop, and become the company's biggest selling single of 1967. Now that the title had recognition value, Whitfield used Marvin's version to fill out Gaye's latest LP, "In The Groove". DJs began playing "Grapevine" off the album and the response was so strong that it became the number 1 song on Detroit radio and finally Gordy was forced to release it as a single. Two weeks later, it knocked Diana Ross and The Supremes' "Love Child" out of the top pop slot and settled in for a seven week stretch, finally unseated by "Crimson And Clover" in February of 1969. It also topped the R&B charts for the same amount of weeks and became Motown's biggest selling single ever until The Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" took that honor nearly two years later.

Marvin's vocal on "Grapevine" managed to convey not only the pain of being of left for another - check out the clipped whimper on "because you mean that much to me", but the embarrassment of having been left out of the loop while the whole world seemed to know what a fool he had been - check out just about anywhere else in the song. Meanwhile, insidious rhythms lead him down dark halls filled with venomous whispers and horror movie strings in a mono mix that puts the listener in a closet with nothing to do but peer through the keyhole.

Prior to "Grapevine", his 30th single to grace the pop chart in a six year span, Marvin had only reached the top ten eight times, four of which were duets with Tammi Terrell, and it was more than a long deserved number one. It marked the point where the man with Nat "King" Cole aspirations ceased to be the dangerously handsome pop star who made white woman wonder while they "hitch-hiked" with their boyfriends, and became the icon of modern soul that he is today.