I Heard It Through the Grapevine (1968)

"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" is a song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966. The first recording of the song to be released was produced by Whitfield for Gladys Knight & the Pips and released as a single in September 1967. It went to number one on the Billboard R&B Singles chart and number two on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and soon became the biggest selling Motown single up to that time.

The Miracles were the first to record the song in 1966, but their version was not released until August 1968 when it was included on their album Special Occasion. The Marvin Gaye version was the second to be recorded in the beginning of 1967 but the third to be released. It appeared on his 1968 album In the Groove a year and a half later where it gained the attention of radio disc jockeys. Motown founder Berry Gordy finally agreed to its release as a single on the Tamla subsidiary in October 1968; the record went to the top of the Billboard Pop Singles chart for seven weeks from December 1968 to January 1969, overtaking the Gladys Knight & the Pips version as the biggest hit single on the Motown family of labels up to that point.

The Gaye recording has since become an acclaimed soul classic. In 1998 the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "historical, artistic and significant" value. In 2004, it was placed 80th on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, then re-ranked at 81 in 2010. In 2021, it was ranked 119. On the commemorative fortieth anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 issue of Billboard magazine in June 2008, Gaye's "Grapevine" was ranked sixty-fifth. In 2018, the Gladys Knight & the Pips version was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In addition to being released several times by Motown artists, the song has been recorded by a range of musicians including Creedence Clearwater Revival, who made an eleven-minute interpretation for their 1970 album, Cosmo's Factory.

Composition

The song is composed in E-flat minor. The lyrics tell the story in the first person of the singer's feelings of betrayal and disbelief when he hears of his girlfriend's infidelity only indirectly "through the 'grapevine'".

By 1966, Barrett Strong, the singer on Motown Records' breakthrough hit, "Money (That's What I Want)", had the basics of a song he had started to write in Chicago, where the idea had come to him while walking down Michigan Avenue that people were always saying "I heard it through the grapevine". The phrase is associated with black slaves during the Civil War, who had their form of telegraph: the human grapevine. Producer Norman Whitfield worked with Strong on the song, adding lyrics to Strong's basic Ray Charles-influenced gospel tune and the single chorus line of "I heard it through the grapevine". This was to be the first of a number of successful collaborations between Strong and Whitfield.

Motown recordings

Producer Norman Whitfield recorded "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" with various Motown artists.