Norman Whitfield: death of a soul icon

Like Isaac Hayes, Norman Whitfield, who died earlier this week, was one of the Motown pioneers of epic soul

Until yesterday I was still holding out the slenderest hope of somehow securing an interview with Norman Whitfield, the reclusive genius of psychedelic soul. I knew that this was extremely unlikely given his ongoing struggles with a) illness and b) the IRS, not to mention a longstanding reluctance to talk to the press. In 2005, he was sentenced to six months house arrest for tax evasion, avoiding imprisonment only because of diabetes and other health problems. He spent the last few months at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. Yesterday I heard through the grapevine that he passed away on Tuesday afternoon.
Following the death of Isaac Hayes last month, it's been a bad year for fans of heavily orchestrated, epic soul. Hayes and Whitfield were two of my heroes for the way they redrew the boundaries of soul, letting songs thunder and swirl far beyond the traditional pop song format. But while Hayes was a famously charming and outgoing character – hence those frustratingly reductive obits that mentioned Shaft and South Park and left it at that – Whitfield was always a mystery.
He was born in Harlem in 1943. In his memoir To Be Loved, Motown founder Berry Gordy remembers the young Whitfield as a tall, shy man who earned a living in his teens as a hotshot pool player. A junior figure at Hitsville, hungry for his big break, he hung around the studio watching more established producers such as Holland-Dozier-Holland at work. After writing hits for Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes and the Velvelettes, he wrested creative control of the Temptations from Smokey Robinson in 1966 with the success of Ain't Too Proud to Beg.
Whitfield's big chance came when Holland-Dozier-Holland stormed out of Motown in early 1968 in a row over profit-sharing. Inspired by Sly and the Family Stone's wild arrangements, he wrote the hard-driving, socially aware Cloud Nine with lyricist Barrett Strong (who is himself currently recovering from a stroke) for the Temptations. Despite Gordy's reservations over its perceived pro-drug message, it changed Motown overnight. Suddenly, topical comment and audacious psychedelic arrangements were on the agenda, and Whitfield-Strong were on a roll: Ball of Confusion, Papa Was a Rollin' Stone, War and Smilin' Faces Sometimes all smouldered with tension and paranoia befitting the era of Vietnam, Nixon and the Black Panthers. War actually sounds like war; Ball of Confusion is indeed a ball of confusion.
Whitfield's rise was down to a cocktail of talent, ego, luck and, most of all, persistence. If he thought something was a hit, he would keep pushing until it was. Gordy refused to release versions of I Heard It Through the Grapevine by the Miracles, the Isley Brothers and Marvin Gaye. Undeterred,
Whitfield gave the song to Gladys Knight and the Pips, who made it Motown's best-selling single to date. The following year, Gordy finally succumbed and Gaye's version was even bigger. This was a classic Whitfield strategy. War was recorded by the Temptations before Edwin Starr, and Papa Was a Rollin' Stone was tried out on Whitfield's pet group the Undisputed Truth prior to the Temptations.

But success corrupted the once-shy outsider. A demanding egotist in the studio, he worked the Temptations into the ground. On the cover of their last album together, 1973's Masterpiece, his own picture loomed larger than the band's. That year he left Motown to set up Whitfield Records but his only subsequent major success was Rose Royce, who released the likes of Car Wash and Wishing on a Star, and he retired from music in the early 80s.

Whitfield's motives are still unclear - was he truly passionate about social change or just a canny hitmaker who sensed the mood of the times and catered to it? Either way, he changed the landscape of soul. Thanks to him, songs could pass the 10-minute mark, use every studio trick available and speak to the concerns of a tougher, angrier black America. He paved the way for classics such as What Going On and Innervisions within Motown, plus hard-hitting political statements by the likes of the O'Jays and the Isley Brothers outside of it.

The critic Greil Marcus remembers friends who pulled their cars over the first time they heard Papa Was a Rollin' Stone and sat "waiting, shivering, as the song crept out of the box and filled up the night". I'll be doing something similar tonight.

Contributor

Dorian Lynskey

The GuardianTramp

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