{"id":28925,"date":"2023-01-30T13:33:39","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T13:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/uncategorized\/barrett-strong-motown-trailblazer-and-hitmaker-dies-at-81"},"modified":"2023-01-30T14:55:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T14:55:45","slug":"barrett-strong-motown-trailblazer-and-hitmaker-dies-at-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/barrett-strong-motown-trailblazer-and-hitmaker-dies-at-81","title":{"rendered":"Barrett Strong: Motown trailblazer and hitmaker, dies at 81"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. <\/strong><\/span><b>Barrett Strong, a pivotal figure in the history of Motown Records, has died at the age of 81.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>He sang the label&#8217;s first major hit, Money (That&#8217;s What I Want), in 1959, and went on to co-write classic songs like I Heard It Through the Grapevine, War and Papa Was a Rollin&#8217; Stone.<\/p>\n<p>Those hits were &#8220;revolutionary in sound and captured the spirit of the times&#8221;, Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a written tribute to the musician.<\/p>\n<p>No cause of death has been disclosed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Barrett has left his indelible stamp&#8230; on music history,&#8221; said Temptations founder Otis Williams in a statement. &#8220;Our Motown family has lost a beloved brother and extraordinary songwriter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gordy added: &#8220;Barrett was not only a great singer and piano player, but he, along with his writing partner Norman Whitfield, created an incredible body of work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Barrett is an original member of the Motown Family and will be missed by all of us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>Royalties fight<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Strong was born in Mississippi and grew up in Detroit, where he sang and played piano with his four sisters in The Strong Sisters, a gospel group.<\/p>\n<p>While touring local churches, they befriended soul stars such as Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My sisters were very pretty girls, so when all the singers would come to town, all the guys would stop by my house,&#8221; he later recalled. &#8220;I&#8217;d play the piano and we&#8217;d have a jam session.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He was just 18 when he agreed to let Gordy manage him and release his music.<\/p>\n<p>Within a year, he had a million-selling single, Money, which was subsequently covered by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Flying Lizards.<\/p>\n<p>According to Strong, the song began with its infectious piano riff, which he dreamed up during a spontaneous recording session at Motown&#8217;s Hitsville headquarters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just happened to be sitting there playing the piano,&#8221; he told the New York Times in 2013. &#8220;I was playing What&#8217;d I Say, by Ray Charles, and the groove spun off of that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everybody said, &#8216;What was that?!'&#8221; he recalled. &#8220;They said, &#8216;Let&#8217;s write some lyrics,&#8217; and we had a song.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With its opening refrain, &#8220;The best things in life are free\/But you can give them to the birds and bees&#8221;, Money was an instant hit, shooting to number two on the US R&amp;B chart and number 23 on the Hot 100.<\/p>\n<p>The success provided Gordy with vital capital to expand his operation, and Motown went on to transform US music, breaking down racial barriers as it went.<\/p>\n<p>However, Strong spent years fighting the label for his share of the song&#8217;s royalties, after they removed his name from the credits. (Gordy claimed he had written the song, and that Barrett&#8217;s credit was a &#8220;clerical error&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p><b>How Grapevine was buried<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Money was Strong&#8217;s only hit as a vocalist, albeit one that kept him on the radio for more than 60 years.<\/p>\n<p>He later said he was happy to retreat behind the scenes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never felt comfortable with myself as a recording artist,&#8221; the father of six told Billboard magazine.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had to work to support my family. I&#8217;m not looking for the spotlight and all the glamour and stuff like that. I just like to work in my studio and see what we can come up with.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In Motown&#8217;s back rooms, he teamed up with producer Norman Whitfield, with whom he wrote some of the label&#8217;s most cherished singles, including Ball of Confusion, Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me), I Wish It Would Rain and Wherever I Lay My Hat (That&#8217;s My Home).<\/p>\n<p>Many of their songs had roots in political activism. Edwin Starr&#8217;s War, for example, was inspired by Strong&#8217;s cousin, a paratrooper who was badly injured in Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p>I Heard It Through The Grapevine, meanwhile, took its title from the days of the US Civil War, when the &#8220;grapevine telegraph&#8221; was a system of communication used by slaves.<\/p>\n<p>Strong heard the phrase on the streets of Chicago and took it to Whitfield. Together, they worked it into a song of epic romantic betrayal.<\/p>\n<p>Smokey Robinson&#8217;s Miracles recorded it first, in 1966, but Gordy decided not to release it. A year later, Marvin Gaye cut his own version, but it was also vetoed.<\/p>\n<p>It was only when Gladys Knight &amp; The Pips sped the song up, putting a lighter spin on its aching melody, that it got the seal of approval.<\/p>\n<p>Their version reached number two in the US in 1967; and Gaye&#8217;s dark, hypnotic reading of the track was buried as an album track &#8211; until E Rodney Jones, a DJ at Chicago&#8217;s WVON radio station put it on air.<\/p>\n<p>After the song aired for the first time, Jones told Motown marketing man Phil Jones that &#8220;the phones lit up&#8221;. It was released 11 months after the Pips&#8217; version and became Motown&#8217;s biggest-selling single.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They didn&#8217;t think it was a hit record,&#8221; Strong later recalled. &#8220;You know how it goes: They say, &#8216;We don&#8217;t like that,&#8217; but when it&#8217;s a hit, everybody takes credit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the 1970s, Strong and Whitfield pushed Motown towards more experimental sounds, notably on the psychedelic soul classics Cloud Nine and Psychedelic Shack, both by The Temptations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Looking back on that whole period, I would say that the album I most felt proud of was the Temptations&#8217; Solid Rock [1972]&#8221;, he told Blues &amp; Soul magazine in 1975. &#8220;At the time, Norman and I were really into that sound and we were first to really capture it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of the songs I&#8217;ve written, I&#8217;d say that Grapevine and Papa Was A Rolling Stone are my personal pride. Papa earned us a Grammy so we were especially proud of it at the time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the Grammy, Strong was also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Songwriters in 1990 and a Songwriters Hall of Fame induction in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>He left Motown in the 1970s and made a handful of solo albums. In 2010, he released Stronghold II, his first album for 30 years, while his music can still be heard on London&#8217;s West End in Motown: The Musical.<\/p>\n<p>After suffering a stroke in 2009, he moved to a retirement home in Detroit, where a jukebox often played his songs in the recreational area.<\/p>\n<p>True to his signature song, he said life as a musician &#8220;means more than money&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Money has its place. But you&#8217;ve got to do more than just have money. When you go to bed at night, you&#8217;ve got to live with yourself,&#8221; he told the Detroit Free Press in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I did something. I did my part, what I was put on this Earth to do.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I made people smile. I made people have babies. I made people do a lot of things. So I contributed something to my being here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\">Gambia<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. Barrett Strong, a pivotal figure in the history of Motown Records, has died at the age of 81. He sang the label&#8217;s first major hit, Money (That&#8217;s What I Want), in 1959, and went on to co-write classic songs like I Heard It Through the Grapevine, War and Papa Was a Rollin&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":28924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[2355,2361,260],"class_list":["post-28925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-culture-and-art","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-gambia","tag-gambia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Barrett Strong: Motown trailblazer and hitmaker, dies at 81 - Gambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Barrett Strong, a pivotal figure in the history of Motown Records, has died at the age of 81. 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