Random Music - Marvin Gaye - Heard It Through the Grapevine (Acapella)
Song of the Day - “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”
55 Years Ago Today, on December 14th, 1968, Marvin Gaye’s cover of the Norman Whitfield-Barrett Strong song “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” hit #1 on both the Billboard R&B Chart and the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, where it would reign for seven weeks!
When the duo wrote it, Motown had several of their star artists record it - Smokey’s Miracles, the Isley Brothers, and Marvin Gaye.
But the boss, Berry Gordy, didn’t any of these versions. Whitfield had Gladys Knight and the Pips do it, and it was a smash hit.
After this hit, somehow Gordy got talked into releasing Marvin Gaye’s version almost a year later, on one of Gaye’s albums.
Deejays heard the track and began spinning it. It started to spark. So, Motown quickly cut a single.
Marvin had had 30 singles make the charts, but this was his very first #1.
It became Motown’s biggest selling single to date, and has since been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Free advice for any frustrated Republican voters in Iowa or New Hampshire who are unhappy with the array of neo-fascists they have to choose from in the forthcoming caucus and primary:
Perhaps the only surprising thing about the death today of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former Putin ally who headed the Wagner paramilitary group and led the brief insurrection in Russia earlier this year, is that he died in a plane crash/shoot down rather than “accidentally “ falling out of a window.