He
sang the label's first major hit, Money (That's What I Want), in 1959,
and went on to co-write classic songs like I Heard It Through the
Grapevine, War and Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.Those
hits were "revolutionary in sound and captured the spirit of the
times", Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a written tribute to the
musician. No cause of death has been disclosed. "Barrett
has left his indelible stamp... on music history," said Temptations
founder Otis Williams in a statement. "Our Motown family has lost a
beloved brother and extraordinary songwriter."Gordy
added: "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. "Barrett is an original member of the Motown Family and will be missed by all of us." Strong
was born in Mississippi and grew up in Detroit, where he sang and
played piano with his four sisters in The Strong Sisters, a gospel
group.While touring local churches, they befriended soul stars such as Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke."My
sisters were very pretty girls, so when all the singers would come to
town, all the guys would stop by my house," he later recalled. "I'd play
the piano and we'd have a jam session."He was just 18 when he agreed to let Gordy manage him and release his music.Within
a year, he had a million-selling single, "Money", which was subsequently
covered by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Flying Lizards.According
to Strong, the song began with its infectious piano riff, which he
dreamed up during a spontaneous recording session at Motown's Hitsville
headquarters."I just happened to be sitting there playing the piano," he told the new york Times in 2013 "I was playing What'd I Say, by Ray Charles, and the groove spun off of that."Everybody said, 'What was that?!'" he recalled. "They said, 'Let's write some lyrics,' and we had a song."With its opening refrain, "The best things in life are free/But you can give them to the birds and bees", Money was an instant hit, shooting to number two on the US R&B chart and number 23 on the Hot 100.The
success provided Gordy with vital capital to expand his operation, and
Motown went on to transform US music, breaking down racial barriers as
it went. However,
Strong spent years fighting the label for his share of the song's
royalties, after they removed his name from the credits. (Gordy claimed
he had written the song, and that Barrett's credit was a "clerical
error")...Yea right berry, we belive you, you greedy man!Money was Strong's only hit as a vocalist, albeit one that kept him on the radio for more than 60 years.He later said he was happy to retreat behind the scenes."I never felt comfortable with myself as a recording artist," the father of six told Billboard magazine."I
had to work to support my family. I'm not looking for the spotlight and
all the glamour and stuff like that. I just like to work in my studio
and see what we can come up with."In
Motown's back rooms, he teamed up with producer Norman Whitfield, with
whom he wrote some of the label's most cherished singles, including Ball
of Confusion, Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me), I Wish It
Would Rain and Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home).Many
of their songs had roots in political activism. Edwin Starr's War, for
example, was inspired by Strong's cousin, a paratrooper who was badly
injured in Vietnam.I
Heard It Through The Grapevine, meanwhile, took its title from the days
of the US Civil War, when the "grapevine telegraph" was a system of
communication used by slaves.Strong
heard the phrase on the streets of Chicago and took it to Whitfield.
Together, they worked it into a song of epic romantic betrayal.Smokey
Robinson's Miracles recorded it first, in 1966, but Gordy decided not
to release it. A year later, Marvin Gaye cut his own version, but it was
also vetoed. It
was only when Gladys Knight & The Pips sped the song up, putting a
lighter spin on its aching melody, that it got the seal of approval.Their
version reached number two in the US in 1967; and Gaye's dark, hypnotic
reading of the track was buried as an album track - until E Rodney
Jones, a DJ at Chicago's WVON radio station put it on air. After
the song aired for the first time, Jones told Motown marketing man Phil
Jones that "the phones lit up". It was released 11 months after the
Pips' version and became Motown's biggest-selling single, going to
number one on both sides of the Atlantic."They
didn't think it was a hit record," Strong later recalled. "You know how
it goes: They say, 'We don't like that,' but when it's a hit, everybody
takes credit.".In
the 1970s, Strong and Whitfield pushed Motown towards more experimental
sounds, notably on the psychedelic soul classics Cloud Nine and
Psychedelic Shack, both by The Temptations."Looking
back on that whole period, I would say that the album I most felt proud
of was the Temptations' Solid Rock [1972]", he told Blues & Soul
magazine in 1975. "At the time, Norman and I were really into that sound
and we were first to really capture it."Of
the songs I've written, I'd say that Grapevine and Papa Was A Rolling
Stone are my personal pride. Papa earned us a Grammy so we were
especially proud of it at the time."In
addition to the Grammy, Strong was also honoured with a Lifetime
Achievement Award from the National Association of Songwriters in 1990
and a Songwriters Hall of Fame induction in 2004.He
left Motown in the 1970s and made a handful of solo albums. In 2010, he
released Stronghold II, his first album for 30 years, while his music
can still be heard on London's West End in Motown: The Musical.After
suffering a stroke in 2009, he moved to a retirement home in Detroit,
where a jukebox often played his songs in the recreational area.True to his signature song, he said life as a musician "means more than money"."Money
has its place. But you've got to do more than just have money. When you
go to bed at night, you've got to live with yourself," he told the
Detroit Free Press in 2019."I did something. I did my part, what I was put on this Earth to do."I made people smile. I made people have babies. I made people do a lot of things. So I contributed something to my being here."...I will be posting an album up tomorrow..Another legend passed sadly.
AMM
