Barrett Strong, one of Motown’s founding artists and most gifted songwriters who sang the company’s breakthrough single “Money (That’s What I Want)” and later collaborated with Norman Whitfield on classics such as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, “War” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”, died. He was 81 years old.
His death was announced Sunday on social media by the Motown Museum, which did not immediately provide further details.
“Barrett was not only a great singer and pianist, but he, along with his writing partner Norman Whitfield, created an incredible body of work,” Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement.
Strong was not yet 20 when he agreed to let his friend Gordy, in the early stages of building a recording empire in Detroit, manage it and release his music. In less than a year, he made history as the pianist and singer of “Money,” a million seller released in early 1960 and Motown’s first big hit. Strong never approached the success of “Money” on his own again, and decades later fought for recognition that he helped write it. But, with Whitfield, he formed a productive and eclectic team of songwriters.
While Gordy’s ‘Sound of Young America’ was criticized for being too slick and repetitive, Whitfield-Strong’s team produced hard-hitting and topical works, as well as timeless ballads such as ‘I Wish It Would Rain’ and “Just My Imagination (Run away with me). With “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”, they provided a fast, fast hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a dark, hypnotic ballad for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 version one of Motown’s all-time bestsellers.
As Motown grew more politically aware at the end of the decade, Barrett-Whitfield released “Cloud Nine” and “Psychedelic Shack” for the Temptations and for Edwin Starr’s protest anthem “War” and its widely quoted refrain, ” War! What’s the point? Absolutely nothing!”
“With ‘War,’ I had a cousin who was a paratrooper who was pretty badly injured in Vietnam,” Strong told LA Weekly in 1999. “I also knew a guy who used to sing with (the Motown songwriter) Lamont Dozier who was hit by shrapnel and crippled for life. You talk about these things with your families when you sit at home, and it inspires you to say something about them. thing.
Whitfield-Strong’s other hits, mostly for the Temptations, included “I Can’t Get Next to You”, “That’s the Way Love Is”, and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (sometimes spelled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone “). Artists covering their songs ranged from the Rolling Stones (“Just My Imagination”) and Aretha Franklin (“I Wish It Would Rain”) to Bruce Springsteen (“War”) and Al Green (“I Can’t Get Next to You” ).
Strong spent part of the 1960s recording for other labels, leaving Motown again in the early 1970s and releasing a handful of solo albums, including “Stronghold” and “Love is You”. In 2004, he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which cited him as “a pivotal figure in Motown’s formative years”.
Whitfield died in 2008.
Music by Strong and other Motown writers was later featured in the Broadway hit “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.”
Strong was born in West Point, Mississippi and moved to Detroit a few years later. He was a self-taught musician who learned the piano without the need for lessons and together with his sisters formed a local gospel group, the Strong Singers. As a teenager, he met artists such as Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Gordy, who was impressed with his songwriting and piano playing. “Money”, with its opening cry, “The best things in life are free/But you can give them to the birds and the bees”, ironically would lead to a fight – for the money.
Strong was initially listed among the writers, and he often spoke of finding the pounding piano riff while playing Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” in the studio. But it wouldn’t be until decades later that he would learn that Motown had since dropped his name from the credits, costing him royalties for a popular standard covered by the Beatles, Rolling Stones and many others and a memento on the John Lennon’s home jukebox. Strong’s legal case was weakened because he had taken so long to ask for his name to be reinstated. (Gordy is one of the song’s credited writers, and his lawyers argued that Strong’s name only appeared because of a clerical error).
“Songs survive people,” Strong told The New York Times in 2013. “The real reason Motown worked was publishing. Records were just a vehicle to get songs out to the public. The real money is in publishing, and if you’ve got publishing, then hang in there. That’s the whole story. If you give it, you give your life, your legacy. Once you’re gone, these songs will carry on player.
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