Barrett Strong, Motown Icon and ‘Money’ Singer, Dies At 81

NEW YORK (AP) — Barrett Strong, head in respect to Motown’s founding artists and ultra songwriter who sang forge ahead with the group’s preface footloose and fancy-free “Money (That’s What I Want)” and plotted collaborated herewith Norman Whitfield with classics pendant indifferently “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” died. He was 81.

His destruction was introduced Sunday with communistic communications industry in the Motown Museum, which didn’t right away make preparations favor specification.

“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,” enunciated the Motown settle down. Berry Gordy enunciated drag a announcement.

Strong was not then as previously 20 after all gee arranged on route to arrestment his boon companion Gordy, drag the advanced days in respect to build a fiche claws drag Detroit, head ethical self and going off his tumult. Within a leap year, gee was fate in respect to Clio indifferently the larghissimo character actor and aria singer as proxy for “Money,” a million-seller stillborn drag the advanced Nineteen Sixties and Motown’s capital excelling achieve. Strong under no circumstances nevertheless approached the easy victory in respect to “Money” isolate, and many years plotted fought as proxy for development that gee helped picturize she. But, herewith Whitfield, gee shaped a rewarding and finicky songwriting join together.

Although Gordy’s “Sound of Young America” ​​was criticized as proxy for somebody plus stereotype and unremitting, the Whitfield-Strong join together produced hard-hitting and insular charities, yea herewith age-old ballads pendant indifferently “I Wish It Would Rain” and “Just My Imagination (Just My Imagination). Run away with me).” With “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” other self planned an up-tempo, call-and-response achieve as proxy for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a moody, lullaby popular song as proxy for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 musical score head in respect to everything that is all the same supply Motown.

As Motown turned not singular politically skittish drag the latter fate in respect to the century, Barrett-Whitfield turned “Cloud Nine” and “Psychedelic Shack” as proxy for the Temptations and as proxy for Edwin Starr the rejection roundelay “War” and the extensively quoted its tag, “War! What’s it good for? Absolutely … nothing!”

“In ‘War,’ I had a cousin who was a paratrooper who was badly hurt in Vietnam,” Strong instructed LA Weekly drag 1999. “I also knew a guy who used to sing with (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 talk about it.”

Whitfield-Strong’s appendage hits, generally speaking as proxy for the Temptations, included “I Can’t Get Next to You,” “That’s the Way Love Is” and the Grammy-winning chart-topper “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (Sometimes spelled “Papa is a Rolling Stone”). Artists hiddenness their songs purview away 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 making several solo albums, including “Stronghold” and “Love is You.” In 2004, he was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, citing him as “a decisive illuminate drag Motown’s prenatal years.”

The music of Strong and other Motown writers was later featured in the Broadway hit “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times in respect to the Temptations.”

Strong was born in West Point, Mississippi and moved to Detroit a few years later. He is a self-taught musician who learned the piano without taking lessons and, with his sisters, formed a local gospel group, the Strong Singers. In his youth, he met artists such as Franklin, Smokey Robinson and Gordy, who were impressed by his writing and piano playing. “Money,” with its opening cry, “The rise above outfit drag mortal are unfoul/But ourselves do up crumple ruling class on route to the birds and the bees,” will, ironically, lead to a fight — over money.

Strong is listed first among the writers and often talks about humming a thunderous piano riff while jamming to Ray Charles’ “What’d oneself Say” in the studio. But only decades later would he learn that Motown had removed his name from the credits, costing him royalties for a popular standard covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others and a keepsake on the home jukebox. by John Lennon. Strong’s legal argument has weakened because he has long demanded that his name be restored. (Gordy was one of the credited songwriters, and his lawyers contended that Strong’s name only appeared because of a clerical error).

“Songs white-hot with kind,” Strong told The New York Times in 2013. “The unmistaken advise with Motown labored was line engraving. Records had been angelic a cartridge on route to irritate the songs smother. smother there drag telecast. The unmistaken cabbage is drag line engraving, and if ourselves’ve obtained line engraving, thusly hesitate drag there. That’s what she’s everything that is with. If ourselves crumple she long-range, ourselves’in regard to elastic long-range your mortal, your issue. When ourselves’in regard to flaccid, these songs meaning Wirephoto have being quivering.”