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/15833574/CoveredWhitStng_1968-1970_Volum2_atse.zip.html

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.