I Heard it Through the Grapevine
Written by Barrett Strong & Norman Whitfield
Chart - UK No.1, US No.1

The story goes back to 1967 and the offices of Motown Records in Detroit, the hugely successful soul label that was based in the motor city and was justified in calling itself “the sound of young America”. Given the sheer size of Motown’s output in the later half of the 1960’s it’s perhaps unsurprising that the company had quite a number of staff writers on their books. One of those writers was song-smith and performer Barrett Strong, the man who wrote and performed the very first single on the label, the brilliant Money that was later covered by the Beatles and thousands of others down the years. By 1967 however he found himself mostly penning songs for other artists working on a $40 piano which only had 10 working keys, he was hammering out two basic rhythm tracks but almost gave up on them when he was told by the management that they really didn’t fit the Motown house style as laid down by the owner Berry Gordy.

Luckily just before he gave up on the songs Barrett Strong bumped into an old school friend called Norman Whitfield who was now an ambitious junior producer at the company. Barrett played the two songs to him and basically Whitfield flipped, he liked the first song which was a pretty little piano ballad but he really loved the second song, which was bluesy and reminded him of Ray Charles. The only words Barrett Strong had written down were “heard it through the grapevine” which he kept singing over the chorus.

That line was all that Strong needed to hear, he went off and composed the rest of the words to complete a dark, moody song of deception and gossip, he knew he had a winner but now he had to find someone to sing it.

He first recorded it with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, then he tried the Isley Brothers, neither version tickled the songwriters fancy. Finally they approached one of Motown’s most respected and experienced vocalists Marvin Gaye, it wasn’t an easy experience for Gaye though and he recalled years later that “Norman and I came to within a fraction of an inch of fighting”….he added that “he made me sing in keys much higher than I was used to…he had me reaching for notes that caused my throat veins to bulge”. Despite this friction or perhaps because of it Marvin and Norman created a truly unique vocal take.

The real irony is we almost never got to hear Marvin’s impassioned take of the song because the powers that be at Motown hated it! They replaced it with a pretty insipid song called your unchanging love as Marvin’s new single, Whitfield was furious but refused to take the bosses verdict on board, he immediately cut another version of Grapevine this time with the great Gladys Knight and the Pips, casting Gladys as almost an Aretha figure singing Respect.

Gladys Knight’s version of Grapevine went to number two in the charts, still despite being proven right about the quality of the song Whitfield still campaigned furiously for the version by Marvin Gaye. Barrett strong recalls that Motown boss Berry Gordy once famously screamed at Whitfield in the middle of a song writing meeting “get out of my face”. Mention that f***ing record again and you’re fired”.

The whole unpleasant atmosphere created by the fuss over who should record the song clearly affected Marvin Gaye who felt that Gladys Knight should not have released the first version and certainly felt her version wasn’t the best!

As a compromise the song was thrown into Marvin’s 1968 album ‘In the Groove’ as a filler, it was rescued from being a mere album track by a Chicago DJ whose phone lines lit up when he played it on his show in November 1968, from this small regional exposure other stations across America began to pick up this great obscure track and the song was finally released as a single and went on to become the biggest selling single in Motown’s history.

From there Gaye went on to record some of the greatest soul records ever from ‘What’s Going On’ to ‘Let’s Get it On’. I would argue he never bettered this track, the amazing ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ from 1968, a number one on both sides of the Atlantic and a track that still sounds as cool as the day it was cut.

Written by Ralph McLean