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)

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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.