October 30: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” Was Released By Marvin Gaye in 1967

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]I Heard It Through the Grapevine” isn’t a plea to save a love affair; it’s Marvin Gaye’s essay on salvaging the human spirit. The record distills four hundred years of paranoia and talking drum gossip into three minutes and fifteen seconds of anguished soul-searching.
~Dave Marsh (The Heart of Rock & Soul)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

 

Wikipedia:

Released October 30, 1968
Recorded April 10, 1967
Hitsville USA (Studio A), (Detroit, Michigan)
Genre Psychedelic soul
Length 3:16
Label Tamla
Writer(s) Norman Whitfield
Barrett Strong
Producer Norman Whitfield

I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966, and made famous by Marvin Gaye in a single released in October 1968 on Motown’s Tamla label.

Originally recorded by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles in 1966, that version was rejected by Motown owner Berry Gordy, who told Whitfield and Strong to make it stronger. After recording the song with Marvin Gaye in 1967, which Gordy also rejected, Whitfield produced a version with Gladys Knight & the Pips, which Gordy agreed to release as a single in September 1967, and which went to number two in the Billboard chart. The Marvin Gaye version was placed on his 1968 album In the Groove, where it gained the attention of radio disc jockeys, and Gordy finally agreed to its release as a single in October 1968, when it went to the top of the Billboard Pop Singles chart for seven weeks from December 1968 to January 1969 and became for a time the biggest hit single on the Motown label. The Gaye recording has since become acclaimed a soul classic:

  • in 2004, it was placed on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
  • On the commemorative 50th Anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 issue of Billboard magazine in June 2008, Marvin Gaye’s “Grapevine” was ranked 65th
  • It was also inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame for “historical, artistic and significant” value

Marvin gaye I Heard It Through The Grapevine2

Live at Montreux, 1980:

Whitfield recorded the song with Marvin Gaye over five sessions, the first on February 3, 1967, and the final one on April 10, 1967. Recordings of this version took more than a month due to Whitfield overdubbing Gaye’s vocals with that of the Andantes’ background vocals, mixing in several tracks featuring the Funk Brothers on the rhythm track, and adding the string section from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with an arrangement by Paul Riser. The session featuring Gaye led to an argument between the producer and singer. Whitfield wanted Gaye to perform the song in a higher key than his normal range, a move that had worked on David Ruffin during the recording of the Temptations’ hit, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”. The mixture of Gaye’s raspy vocals and the Andantes’ sweeter harmonies, made Whitfield confident that he had a hit; however, despite approval from Motown’s Quality Control Department, Gordy blocked the release.

norman whitfieldNorman Whitfield

Personnel

  • Lead vocals by Marvin Gaye
  • Background vocals by The Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow and Louvain Demps
  • Instrumentation by the Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
    • Organ by Earl Van Dyke
    • Drums by Richard “Pistol” Allen
    • String arrangement by Paul Riser

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-Egil

August 28: Marvin Gaye released “Let’s Get It On” in 1973

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Post-Al Green What’s Going On, which means it’s about fucking rather than the human condition, thank the wholly holey. Gaye is still basically a singles artist, and the title track, as much a masterpiece as “Inner City Blues,” dominates in a way “I’m Still in Love with You,” say, doesn’t. Then again, it’s an even better song, and this album prolongs its seductive groove to an appropriate thirty minutes plus
~Robert Christgau (Consumer Guide Reviews)

On this album, Gaye meditated on the gap between sex and love and how to reconcile them – an adult version of the Motown tunes he had built his career on. It’s some of the most gorgeous music he ever made, resplendent with sweet strings and his clear-throated crooning.
~rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Let’s Get It On:

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1968: 20 Songs Released in 1968 You Must Hear

My rules:

  • Only one song per artist/group
  • The song must be released that specific year
  • Songs from live albums not allowed
  • Restricted to only 20 songs

A shitload of great music was released in 1968, here are my 20 chosen songs.

  • Madame George – Van Morrison

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Madame George is the album’s whirlpool. Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I’ll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too.
    -Lester Bangs[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

    A song from the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. It was recorded during the first Astral Weeks session that took place on September 25, 1968 at Century Sound Studios in New York City with Lewis Merenstein as producer.

    In 1974, after he had recorded eight albums, Morrison told Ritchie Yorke when he asked him what he considered his finest single track and the one that he enjoyed the most that it was: “Definitely ‘Madame George’, definitely. I’m just starting to realize it more and more. It just seems to get at you… it just lays right in there, that whole track. The vocals and the instruments and the whole thing. I like that one.”

    Down on Cyprus Avenue
    With a childlike vision leaping into view
    Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe
    Ford and Fitzroy, Madame George
    Marching with the soldier boy behind
    He’s much older now with hat on drinking wine
    And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
    The cool night air like Shalimar




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Jan 18: The late David Ruffin was born in 1941

His voice was so powerful — like a foghorn on the Queen Mary… It jumped out of the speakers and ravished my soul..
~Rod Stewart

One of the greatest lead singers the Motown stable ever had
~John Lowe (allmusic.com)

One of the greatest “Motown voices”.. and thus one of the greatest voices in recorded american music history.

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Dec 9: Meet The Supremes was released in 1962

Meet the Supremes is the debut studio album by The Supremes, released in late 1962 on Motown. The LP includes the group’s earliest singles: “I Want a Guy”, “Buttered Popcorn”, “Your Heart Belongs to Me” and “Let Me Go the Right Way”. The earliest recordings on this album, done between fall 1960 and fall 1961, feature the Supremes as a quartet composed of teenagers Diane Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, and Barbara Martin. Martin left the group in early 1962 to start a family, and the other three girls continued as a trio. Martin is not pictured on the album because of her departure earlier in the year; although her vocals are present on the majority of the recordings on the album (as well as other recordings made during that period), she never received any royalties from album sales. She does have a spoken interlude line (as do the other group members) on the bridge of the song “(He’s) Seventeen”, and also sings lead on “After All”, a song recorded for but not originally included on the album. Along with these songs, Ballard and Wilson are heard out front on other songs as well. Wilson sings lead on “The Tears” (another former non-album track) and “Baby Don’t Go”; Ballard has leads on a handful of songs as well (see below), including “Buttered Popcorn” and the short intro line to “Let Me Go the Right Way”.

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