Oroville Mercury-Register

Barrett Strong, `Money' Motown artist, dies at 81

- By Hillel Italie

Barrett Strong, one of Motown's founding artists and most gifted songwriter­s who sang lead on the company's breakthrou­gh single “Money (That's What I Want)” and later collaborat­ed with Norman Whitfield on such classics as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War” and “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone,” has died. He was 81.

His death was announced Sunday on social media by the Motown Museum, which did not immediatel­y provide further details.

“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,” Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement.

Strong had yet to turn 20 when he agreed to let his friend Gordy, in the early days of building a recording empire in Detroit, manage him and release his music. Within a year, he was a part of history as the piano player and vocalist for “Money,” a million-seller released early in 1960 and Motown's first major hit. Strong never again approached the success of “Money” on his own, and decades later fought for acknowledg­ement that he helped write it. But, with Whitfield, he formed a productive and eclectic songwritin­g team.

While Gordy's “Sound of Young America” was criticized for being too slick and repetitive, the Whitfield-Strong team turned out hard-hitting and topical works, along with such timeless ballads as “I Wish It Would Rain” and “Just My Imaginatio­n (Running Away with Me).” With “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” they provided an up-tempo, call-and-response hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a dark, hypnotic ballad for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 version one of Motown's alltime sellers.

As Motown became more politicall­y conscious late in the decade, Barrett-Whitfield turned out “Cloud Nine” and “Psychedeli­c Shack” for the Temptation­s and for Edwin Starr the protest anthem “War” and its widely quoted refrain, “War! What is it good for? Absolutely ... nothing!”

“With `War,' I had a cousin who was a paratroope­r that got hurt pretty bad in Vietnam,” Strong told LA Weekly in 1999. “I also knew a guy who used to sing with (Motown songwriter) Lamont Dozier that got hit by shrapnel and was crippled for life. You talk about these things with your families when you're sitting at home, and it inspires you to say something about it.”

Whitfield-Strong's other hits, mostly for the Temptation­s, included “I Can't Get Next to You,” “That's the Way Love Is” and the Grammywinn­ing chart-topper “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone” (Sometimes spelled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”). Artists covering their songs ranged 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”).

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