Here's another one for all of the detractors of punk as a valid musical genre. As with the previously shared 'Walk On By' post, The Slits' treatment of 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' is yet more evidence that punk bands dared to cover songs that even back in the late '70s were considered to be classics. The status of such songs, particularly if the work of such influential labels such as Motown, effectively rendered them uncoverable. Record at your peril!
Such dogmatic thinking did not sit well with the original Riot Grrrl band, The Slits, who recorded and released 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' as the B-side of their debut single 'Typical Girls'. Needless to say version by The Slits is very different from any of the versions that emerged from the Motown stable. This bass driven slice of British post-punk has become something of a classic in its own right. Yet another example of a band reshaping someone else's song to such a radical extent that they can rightly claim a degree of ownership of it.
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-Gb4CJ1SLr4nOwxCn
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-qBDQdsDrDj065DBK
As for the original version, well that is a little complicated, a case of who did what first. Motown had a number of writers who wrote the arrangements and lyrics to songs that were then provided to the label, at which point it was decided who or which group among the label's talented roster would record a given song.
The song is a Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong composition that they presented the Motown label with in 1966. The Miracles were the first act to record the song in the same year in which it was written but their version did not see the light of day until August 1968 when it was released on their second album, 'Special Occasion'. In the meantime, Gladys Knight and The Pips recorded the song in September 1967. Knight's version was released and reached number 2 in the Billboard chart, making it Motown's biggest selling single at that point. Marvin Gaye's version of the song was the second to be recorded in early 1967, but it became the third version to be released appearing as it did on Gaye's 'In the Groove' album of August 1968. Although the last version to see release, Marvin Gaye's version became the most successful, overtaking the Gladys Knight version to become Motown's biggest selling single at that time.
Marvin Gaye's 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' is now the definitive version of a song that has become one of the best known songs ever written. The song (and specifically the Marvin Gaye version) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a work having "historical, artistic and significant" value. In 2008, the song was ranked at No. 65 in a chart marking the 50th anniversary of the Billboards Hot 100.
The version presented here is not a patch on the 1968 'original'. This 1983 version had none of the subtle arrangements sitting behind it. It is rather brash and lacks the charm of the original. Recorded in the summer of 1983, in just nine months time Marvin Gaye would be dead having been shot by his father on 1st April 1984 - apparently someone once wrote a song about it!
