Various Artists - BBC In Concert, Giants of Motown, NEC, Birmingham, Britain, 4-6-1992

Here's a pretty interesting BBC concert. It's from a Motown package tour in 1992. It features many of the big Motown names who were touring in 1992, though certainly not all. The first part stars Edwin Starr, the Marvelettes, the Supremes, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Then the second half features the Temptations and the Four Tops, performing separately and also doing some songs together.

Note that some key members were missing. A key missing person was Diana Ross, who sang the lead vocals on nearly all Supremes songs. So some other former members of the Supremes had to bill themselves as the "Former Ladies of the Supremes" for legal reasons. They were Jean Terrell, Scherrie Payne, and Lynda Laurence. Terrell was the lead singer who replaced Ross in 1970. The other two also were only members of that group after Ross left. 

So the Supremes were more like the 1970s version, which was practically a different group with the same name. They did have some big hits though, including "Up the Ladder to the Roof" and "Stoned Love," both of which were performed here, and were originally sung by Terrell.

 

However, most of the other groups fared better. There was personnel turnover, but key lead singers remained. For instance, Gladys Horton was the lead singer on all the Marvelettes records, and Martha Reeves was the lead singer for all the Vandellas records. The Four Tops were amazingly consistent, keeping the same four members from 1953 until 1997. 

The situation with the Temptations was more complicated, since that band had a lot of personnel turnover even during their most popular eras, including quite a few different lead singers. At the time of this concert, the band consisted of Ali-Ollie Woodson (lead tenor), Otis Williams (baritone), Ron Tyson (tenor), Richard Street (second tenor) and Melvin Franklin (bass). Williams and Franklin were original members.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this Giants of Motown "tour" may have just done these two concerts, in London and Birmingham. I can't find any references to any other concerts. So it's a lucky thing one of them was recorded by the BBC.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I do have "[Edit]" in the titles of a couple of songs, but it's been so long since I edited this that I forget why.  

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 25 Miles (Edwin Starr)
02 S.O.S. [Stop Her on Sight] (Edwin Starr)
03 War - I Heard It through the Grapevine (Edwin Starr)
04 H.A.P.P.Y. Radio (Edwin Starr)
05 Too Many Fish in the Sea (Gladys Horton & the Marvelettes)
06 talk (Gladys Horton & the Marvelettes)
07 When You're Young and in Love (Gladys Horton & the Marvelettes)
08 Please Mr. Postman [Edit] (Gladys Horton & the Marvelettes)
09 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Former Ladies of the Supremes)
10 Band Intros (Former Ladies of the Supremes)
11 Reflections (Former Ladies of the Supremes)
12 Where Did Our Love Go - Baby Love - My World Is Empty without You (Former Ladies of the Supremes)
13 Up the Ladder to the Roof (Former Ladies of the Supremes)
14 Stoned Love (Former Ladies of the Supremes)
15 talk (emcee)
16 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave - Nowhere to Run (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
17 Jimmy Mack (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
18 talk (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
19 Third Finger, Left Hand (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
20 talk (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
21 Dancing in the Street (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
22 Superstar [Remember How You Got Where You Are] (Temptations & the Four Tops)
23 Something about You (Temptations & the Four Tops)
24 Papa Was a Rolling Stone - Baby, I Need Your Loving (Temptations & the Four Tops)
25 talk (Temptations & the Four Tops)
26 7 Rooms of Gloom (Temptations & the Four Tops)
27 Girl [Why You Wanna Make Me Blue] (Temptations)
28 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Temptations)
29 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Temptations)
30 Ball of Confusion [That's What the World Is Today] (Temptations)
31 Just My Imagination (Temptations)
32 Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Temptations)
33 Get Ready (Temptations)
34 Treat Her like a Lady (Temptations)
35 My Girl (Temptations)
36 I Can't Get Next to You (Temptations)
37 Baby, I Need Your Loving (Four Tops)
38 When She Was My Girl (Four Tops)
39 Bernadette (Four Tops)
40 It's the Same Old Song (Four Tops)
41 Walk Away Renee (Four Tops)
42 Reach Out, I'll Be There - Standing in the Shadows of Love (Four Tops)
43 I Can't Help Myself [Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch] [Edit] (Four Tops)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NJBgHJ2c

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/amUebhRMAqADjoo/file

The cover photo is a promotional poster for this concert. It actually was meant to promote two concerts: this one, and one in Wembley Arena, in London, one day earlier. So I put a photo from this concert in the square that had the details about the London concert. The photo was very low-res, so it wouldn't have made a good cover on its own. This poster was pretty low res as well, but I was able to clean it up with the use of Photoshop and Krea AI.

The Temptations - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-27-1975

Here's another album from the motherlode of "Midnight Special" TV show episodes I recently discovered. This is a concert by the Temptations in 1975.

As I explained in my previous Sly and the Family Stone post, each episode of this TV lasted an hour and a half, and typically featured a handful of different musical acts. For each episode, one of those acts was considered the host, and got to play more songs than the other acts. The Temptations were the host of this episode. The other acts were Ace, Jessi Colter, Leo Sayer, and Rose Banks. I've stripped the episode down to just the Temptations parts, and connected songs by adding more audience cheering between them, to make it sound as if it was one continuous concert by just this one act.

I'm happy to post this, because concert recordings of the Temptations from their peak years in the 1960s and early 1970s are very rare. 1975 is a particularly good time for a concert, because it turned out to be the last of their peak years. From 1964 to 1975, they had a steady stream of hit singles, and Gold rated albums (meaning sales of 500,000 or more in the U.S.). "Happy People" was a Number One hit on the U.S. R&B singles chart in 1974, and then "Shakey Ground" also was a Number One on that chart in 1975. But those would be the band's last number ones (although they occasionally would get close in later years). 

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I converted a YouTube video to audio, then broke it into mp3s. 

This album is 29 minutes long. 

01 Midnight Special (Temptations)
02 Cloud Nine - My Girl - Get Ready [Instrumental Version] (Temptations)
03 Glasshouse (Temptations)
04 Welcome to Our Show (Temptations)
05 The Way You Do the Things You Do - Girl [Why You Wanna Make Me Blue] - My Girl - Get Ready (Temptations)
06 Ain't Too Proud to Beg - Cloud Nine - I Can't Get Next to You (Temptations)
07 Just My Imagination [Running Away with Me] - Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Temptations)
08 Memories - Firefly (Temptations)
09 talk (Temptations)
10 A Song for You (Temptations)
11 Shakey Ground (Temptations)
12 Happy People (Temptations) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mPWkSr8B

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/CPrTrCOgLyjCtkp/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. The image was rather blurry, but I used the Krea AI program to add detail. 

The Temptations - BBC In Concert, Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara, CA, 12-1984

Here's an album of the Temptations performing in concert for the BBC. It's the only BBC album of theirs I could find, though something else could pop up in the future. For instance, I saw mention of a BBC concert at Portsmouth in 1993, but I can't find it.

This one went to the top of my "albums to be posted" pile because I recently got help from musical associate MZ on it. I could tell there was something wrong, but it was beyond my limited abilities to fix it. MZ reduced the bass in some frequencies and boosted the tremble in others, though the high tremble was completely missing so there was nothing to be done about that.

It's too bad this concert isn't from a couple of years earlier. In 1982 and 1983, most of the original Temptations reunited for a reunion tour and album, including former lead singers Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin. However, Kendricks' voice was weakened due to chain smoking, and Ruffin was addicted to drugs, and there were all sorts of personality clashes and problems. So Kendricks and Ruffin were let go at the end of the tour. 

By the time of this concert, there were a couple more personnel changes. A key one was the addition of a brand new member, Ali-Ollie Woodson. His involvement brought new success, because he co-wrote the song "Treat Her like a Lady" with long-time band member Otis Williams, and sang lead vocals on it. Released as a single in 1984, it was the band's biggest hit since 1975, reaching Number Two on the R&B charts, and almost reaching the Top Ten in Britain. It also turned out to be the band's last big hit.

So naturally this concert includes "Treat Her like a Lady," as well a couple of other then-recent songs, "Sail Away," "My Love Is True (Truly for You)," and a little bit of "Standing on the Top." Otherwise, the band made sure to do most of their biggest classic hits. Interestingly though, they finished off the concert with three covers of then-recent huge hits that they'd had nothing to do with: "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang, "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson, and "All Night Long" by Lionel Richie.

This album is unreleased. It also was very hard to find. I was only able to find a stream of it on the Internet, and then I converted it to individual mp3s.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Introduction (Temptations)
02 Get Ready (Temptations)
03 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Temptations)
04 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Temptations)
05 I Wish It Would Rain (Temptations)
06 Treat Her like a Lady (Temptations)
07 talk (Temptations)
08 My Love Is True [Truly for You] (Temptations)
09 talk (Temptations)
10 Sail Away (Temptations)
11 My Girl (Temptations)
12 Can't Get Next to You - Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Temptations)
13 Band Introductions - Standing on the Top (Temptations)
14 talk (Temptations)
15 Celebration - Billie Jean (Temptations)
16 All Night Long (Temptations)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/A5eSCHSE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/J5TBnjn27lNP3wT/file

The cover photo shows that band in concert at something called the "Super Night of Rock n' Roll" in 1984. The photo shows Melvin Franklin, Ali-Ollie Woodson, Otis Williams, Ron Tyson, and Richard Street.

Live Aid - JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, 7-13-1985, Part 7: Hall & Oates with Eddie Kendricks & David Ruffin, Mick Jagger & Tina Turner, and Bob Dylan with Keith Richards & Ronnie Wood

I was hoping to post this at the same time as the others, but I got too busy. Anyway, this is the final part of the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid. The London portion will soon follow.

The biggest acts were saved for the end of the concert. First up was Hall and Oates, who were probably at the peak of their popularity in 1985. But more than half of their set was dominated by their guests, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, both former lead singers for the Temptations. (The actual Temptations were still in existence and even had a big comeback hit in 1985 with "Treat Her like a Lady," so I wonder if they were passed over in favor of Ruffin and Kendricks.) Either Ruffin or Kendricks sang lead vocals on the last four songs, which were all Temptations classics from the 1960s. Note that Hall and Oates had started touring with Ruffin and Kendricks earlier in the year, and put out a live album with them later in the year.

Next up was Mick Jagger, lead vocalist for the Rolling Stones. In my opinion, he was clearly a substitute for having all of the Rolling Stones play. But around this time the Rolling Stones were having a rough patch, and almost broke up. Apparently, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, the guitarists for the Stones, didn't want to miss out on Live Aid entirely. So they backed Bob Dylan instead. It's telling how badly the Rolling Stones must have been getting on with each other that they didn't even make a guest appearance for Jagger's set, but played on the one immediately after instead.

Jagger had just put out his first proper solo album earlier in the year, "She's the Boss." It's unfortunate in my opinion that he performed a couple of songs from that during his set, "Lonely at the Top" and "Just Another Night." They're decent songs, but they don't seem worthy of the second to last act for the US version of Live Aid. At least he did play one Rolling Stone classic, "Miss You." Then he was joined by soul singer Tina Turner. They did "State of Shock," which is a song Jagger had done the year before with Michael Jackson and the rest of the Jacksons. Then they did another Stones classic, "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)." Jagger rarely dueted with Turner, and I think these two songs by them may have been unique to this concert.

The last act was Bob Dylan. I'm glad they gave him the respect he deserved by giving him the most prestigious time slot, even though I'm sure his 1980s record sales were smaller than many of the acts that went on before him. It's interesting that the first two of the three songs he played were lesser known ones from his deep discography. But both obviously were selected with the Live Aid theme of helping the Ethiopian famine in mind. The first song, "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," was especially apt, as it told of a 1930s Midwest farmer that face crop failure and disaster. He finished with a crowd pleaser and all time classic, "Blowin' in the Wind." Unfortunately, while Dylan performed well, Richards and Wood didn't add much, mostly just strumming their guitars, probably with little to no practice beforehand.

Dylan caused some controversy, due to a comment he made between songs. He said: "I hope that some of the money... maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe... one or two million, maybe ... and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks." 

This pissed off organizer Bob Geldof, who later said: "He displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid. ... Live Aid was about people losing their lives. There is a radical difference between losing your livelihood and losing your life. It did instigate Farm Aid, which was a good thing in itself, but it was a crass, stupid, and nationalistic thing to say." 

However, as Geldof points out, Dylan's comment did inspire the Farm Aid concert, which took place later that year and directly benefited US farmers. Furthermore, Farm Aid has become a yearly concert that continues to this day (as I write this in 2023). Over time, all those Farm Aid concerts have raised way more money for charity than Live Aid ever did. So if Dylan's comment helped cause all that, then I say kudos to Dylan. 

After that, there was a big finale with all the stars on stage, like these kinds of shows usually end. And naturally, the song they sang was "We Are the World," the charity single from earlier in the year that helped inspire the concert in the first place. There were some problems with the microphones, so some of the lead vocals weren't heard early in the song. On the DVD release, this was fixed by patching in some vocals from the "We Are the World" single. But I've kept to the untampered version. I don't think it sounds bad, and the patched in vocals prominently featured some people (Kenny Rogers and James Ingram) who weren't actually at the concert.

This album is an hour and six minutes long.

149 talk (Bill Graham)
150 talk (Dionne Warwick)
151 Out of Touch (Hall & Oates)
152 talk (Hall & Oates)
153 Maneater (Hall & Oates)
154 talk (Hall & Oates)
155 Get Ready (Hall & Oates & Eddie Kendricks)
156 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Hall & Oates, Eddie Kendricks & David Ruffin)
157 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Hall & Oates, Eddie Kendricks & David Ruffin)
158 My Girl (Hall & Oates, Eddie Kendricks & David Ruffin)
159 talk (Bette Midler)
160 Lonely at the Top (Mick Jagger)
161 talk (Mick Jagger)
162 Just Another Night (Mick Jagger)
163 talk (Mick Jagger)
164 Miss You (Mick Jagger)
165 talk (Mick Jagger)
166 State of Shock (Mick Jagger & Tina Turner)
167 It's Only Rock 'n Roll [But I Like It] (Mick Jagger & Tina Turner)
168 talk (Bill Graham)
169 talk (Jack Nicholson)
170 talk (Bob Dylan)
171 The Ballad of Hollis Brown (Bob Dylan with Keith Richards & Ronnie Wood)
172 talk (Bob Dylan)
173 When the Ships Comes In (Bob Dylan with Keith Richards & Ronnie Wood)
174 talk (Bob Dylan)
175 Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan with Keith Richards & Ronnie Wood)
176 We Are the World (USA for Africa)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15699932/LveAidJFKStdiumPhladlphiaPA__7-13-1985_Part7.zip.html

As with most of the albums in this series, I have four pictures from the concert making up the cover. On the top left is Hall and Oates with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, on the top right is Tina Turner and Mick Jagger, on the bottom left is Ronnie Wood, Bob Dylan, and Keith Richard, and on the bottom right is a portion of the large group of people on stage for the finale. If you look closely, you can see Lionel Richie and Dionne Warwick, both of whom were not given their own sets earlier in the concert.

Various Artists - Covered: Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, Volume 3: 1970-1983

Here's the third and last album celebrating the songs of the songwriting team of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. 

As you can see from the song list below, during this time period, they continued their wildly successful hit-making ways through much of the 1970s. It's pretty incredible they wrote three all-time classics, "War," "Just My Imagination," and "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone," on top of all their other classics on the previous two volumes.

Most of their success was for the distinctive Motown record label. But as the 1970s went on, their fortunes declined, as was the case for many Motown related artists. Barrett Strong left Motown by the end of 1973, ending their songwriting collaboration. In retrospect, this clearly was a bad move. Strong tried resurrecting his singing career (he'd had a big hit with "Money (That's What I Want)" way back in 1959). but to very little success. I've included one of his minor solo hits here, "Stand Up and Cheer for the Preacher."

Norman Whitfield fared better for a few years, though he never consistently hit the heights he did while writing song with Strong. His biggest success in the late 1970s was the band "Rose Royce." He plucked them from obscurity and produced several big hits for them. One song he wrote, "Car Wash," was a Number One hit in the US. Some of the other hits, like "Wishing on a Star," were written by others, so they're not included here.

However, the end came quickly for Whitfield. The hits dried up around 1978. A few years after that, he seems to have retired from producing and songwriting. The last song here, "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)," was a huge hit for Paul Young in 1983, reaching Number One in Britain. But it actually was written by Barrett and Whitfield (and Marvin Gaye) back in 1962.

Whifield died in 2008 at the age of 68. Strong lived all the way until January 2023, dying at the age of 81.

01 War (Edwin Starr)
02 Just My Imagination [Running Away with Me] (Temptations)
03 You Need Love Like I Do [Don't You] (Clydie King)
04 Superstar [Remember How You Got Where You Are] (Temptations)
05 Smiling Faces Sometimes (Undisputed Truth)
06 Papa Was a Rollin' Stone (Temptations)
07 Take a Look Around (Temptations)
08 It Should Have Been Me (Yvonne Fair)
09 Masterpiece (Temptations)
10 Stand Up and Cheer for the Preacher (Barrett Strong)
11 Car Wash (Rose Royce)
12 Theme Song from 'Which Way Is Up' (Stargard)
13 I Wanna Get Next to You (Rose Royce)
14 Wherever I Lay My Hat [That's My Home] (Paul Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181196/COVRDWhtfildStrng1970-1983Volum3_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/M8jxDgF1

Again, I had a hard time finding good photos of them for the cover. I wound up using different photos and then putting them together. The photo of Strong is from 2004. He's in the front. I don't know what year the photo of Whitfield was taken.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, Volume 2: 1968-1970

This is Volume 2 of the Covered series, focusing on the songwriting team of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. This is the time period where their collaboration reached full flower and they had hit after hit after hit.

Barry Gordy, the owner and leader of Motown Records, was known to be very conservative in his decision making. He didn't like being on the cutting edge musically, because that's not what was most commercially successful. But around 1968, Norman Whitfield, as the producer for a few big Motown groups, especially the Temptations, helped innovate what was dubbed "psychedelic soul." It took parts of psychedelic music popular in rock and roll in 1967 and applied it to soul music, expanding the possibilities of what soul music could be. Some of this was influenced by Sly and the Family Stone, which was doing a similar thing at the same time, but much of the innovation was original. This resulted in many more hit songs, all written by Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and a surge of popularity for the Temptations in particular.

I just have a few comments on the songs here. I included a version of "I Heard It through the Grapevine," even though there's a version of that song by Gladys Knight and the Pips on Volume One. Both versions were big hits, and different from each other, so I couldn't pick just one.

I picked the extended (album) version of "Runaway Child, Running Wild" to show off more of Whitfield's "psychedelic soul" production. The single version was five minutes long, but this one is nine and a half minutes long.

All of the songs were hits at the time for Motown artists, except one. That exception is "I Can't Get Next to You." That was a Number One hit in the US by the Temptations in 1969. But since I have a bunch of Temptations songs here, I chose the 1970 version by Al Green, which also was a hit.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 The End of Our Road (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Marvin Gaye)
03 Cloud Nine (Temptations)
04 Friendship Train (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 That's the Way Love Is (Marvin Gaye)
06 Runaway Child, Running Wild [Extended Version] (Temptations)
07 Gonna Give Her All the Love I've Got (Marvin Gaye)
08 Don't Let the Joneses Get You Down (Temptations)
09 Too Busy Thinking about My Baby (Marvin Gaye)
10 Psychedelic Shack (Temptations)
11 I Can't Get Next to You (Al Green)
12 Message from a Black Man (Derrick Harriott)
13 Ball of Confusion [That's What the World Is Today] (Temptations)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181193/COVRDWhtfildStrng1968-1970Volum2_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W7Syoqpr

As with Volume 1, I had a hard time finding material for the cover image. I found a good color photo of Whitfield from 1972, so I used that. He's the one on the right with the big, wide afro hairdo. For Strong, I found a photo of him from 1970 that was in black and white, so I colorized it.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, Volume 1: 1960-1967

The Covered series rises from the dead again. Singer and songwriter Barrett Strong died over a month ago as I write this in March 2023. He died on January 28, 2023. He was 81 years old. I got a request in the comments section to include him in the Covered series. I thought that was a good idea, except he mostly wrote songs with producer Norman Whitfield, so this features songs by either or both of them, though most often both.

Strong is probably best known as the singer on the classic 1959 hit "Money (That's What I Want)." It was a very pivotal record because it was the very first hit for the soon to be legendary record company Motown Records. Rolling Stone Magazine has listed it as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Technically, the song was only written by Barry Gordy (the founder of Motown) and Janie Bradford. However, Strong has always claimed he had a role in writing it, and his name was on the credits as late as 1968. Given his later track record of songwriting success, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in having a role.

Strong had a strange career because he had that big hit, and he clearly was a talented singer. But he soon retired from singing and releasing records in favor of being a professional songwriter for the Motown label. (Yet in the 1970s he would briefly resurrect his singing career, as I will explain another time.) 

Whitfield and Strong soon began writing songs together, because they co-wrote "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)," which was a minor hit for Marvin Gaye in 1962. I'm not including it here because it was a Number One hit for Paul Young in the 1980s, so I will be including that version. But I guess it took time for their songwriting partnership to jell, because most of the songs on this volume were written by Whitfield or Strong with others, not with each other. They would hit their stride as a songwriting team with "I Heard It through the Grapevine" in 1967, one of the most popular songs of all time (and of course also on that Rolling Stone Magazine list), and almost always wrote together after that.

Whitfield began as a songwriter for Motown in the early 1960s at the tender age of 19. He was fairly successful, co-writing songs like "Too Many Fish in the Sea" and "Needle in a Haystack." But he slowly moved into production, most crucially taking over production of all records by the Temptations in 1966. He would do so well in that that his production work generally overshadowed his songwriting.

If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia page on Strong:

Barrett Strong - Wikipedia

And here's the page on Whitfield:

Norman Whitfield - Wikipedia 

Note that for different songwriters in the Covered series, I use different self-imposed rules. If an artist generally doesn't have a lot of hits, I usually pick the versions of the songs that I like the most, and try to keep it to one song for each artist. But with Whitfield and Strong, it's pretty much ALL hits in this collection, and enough for three volumes. I decided to usually go with the biggest hit versions, since those usually were also the best. Thus, there tends to be many songs by a small group of musical artists, because Strong and Whitfield typically were only assigned by Motown to those artists.

One oddity here is the song "Stay in My Corner," by the Dells. I believe it's the only song in this volume that wasn't done by a Motown artist. Strong was one of three co-writers on that, without Whitfield. It was first released by the Dells in 1965, but they had a Number One hit on the R&B charts in the US with it in 1968.

Generally speaking, the songs appear here in chronological order by year, though I moved a couple a little bit to limit the number of times there were two songs in a row by the same artist.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Money [That's What I Want] (Barrett Strong)
02 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
03 He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' (Velvelettes)
04 Girl [Why You Wanna Make Me Blue] (Temptations)
05 Needle in a Haystack (Velvelettes)
06 Too Many Fish in the Sea (Marvelettes)
07 Throw a Farewell Kiss (Velvelettes)
08 Can't You See [You're Losing Me] (Mary Wells)
09 A Bird in the Hand [Is Worth Two in the Bush] (Velvelettes)
10 Stay in My Corner (Dells)
11 Lonely, Lonely Girl Am I (Velvelettes)
12 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Temptations)
13 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Temptations)
14 [Stop Leading Me On] I Know How to Love Her (Jimmy Ruffin)
15 Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (Temptations)
16 Everybody Needs Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
17 I Wish It Would Rain (Temptations)
18 Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 You're My Everything (Temptations)
20 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181194/COVRDWhtfildStrng1959-1967Volum1_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZfJyBDgZ

I actually finished putting these Whitfield and Strong volumes together a couple of weeks ago. But I didn't post them because I couldn't figure out what to do for the cover art. The number of photos of Whitfield and Strong together is extremely small, and most of them are of low quality. I especially had trouble finding any for this time period, because they got famous. 

Eventually, I found this one, which is from 1969, probably at some awards ceremony because they're wearing tuxedos. It was black and white, naturally, and very small, but I did my best to enlarge it, colorize it, and make it look decent. Although it's from 1969, it was right before both of them got afros. From other, even worse pictures, usually of just one of them, I can saw they looked pretty much like this for most of the 1960s, with short haircuts and little facial hair.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.