| For The Record... |
| Born Norman Jesse Whitfield on May 12, 1940, in New York, NY; died September 16, 2008, in Los Angeles, CA, of complications from diabetes and kidney failure; children: four sons, one daughter. Signed to Motown label as quality control staffer, 1962; produced recordings by the Marvelettes and the Velvelettes, 1964; co-wrote and produced the Temptations song "I Know (I'm Losing You)," 1966; lead producer and arranger for the Temptations, 1966-73; formed Whitfield Records, 1974; wrote soundtrack for film Car Wash, featuring hit single by Rose Royce, 1976; produced the Temptations hit "Sail Away" for Motown, 1983. Awards: Grammy Award, Best Soundtrack Album, for Car Wash, 1977; Songwriters Hall of Fame, inducted 2004; Temptations won Grammy Award for Whitfield-produced song "Cloud Nine." |
Songwriter, producer, arranger
Songwriter, producer, and arranger Norman Whitfield was among the key members of the creative team that propelled the Detroit-based Motown label to international success in the 1960s and early 1970s. The composer or co-composer of such familiar Motown hits as "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," Whitfield was equally influential behind the producer's controls. With elaborate arrangements of songs with social and political content, he helped extend Motown's run of success after the national mood of the United States darkened in the late 1960s. "Of all the brilliant writer-producers that Motown has given to the world, I believe none was more brilliant than Norman Whitfield," Shelly Berger, the manager of the Temptations vocal group, told the Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger after Whitfield's death in 2008.
Norman Jesse Whitfield was born on May 12, 1940, in New York City, according to the classic division of the Motown label's Web site; other sources have given his birth year as 1941 or 1943. As a teenager he had few ambitions beyond improving his billiards skills, but he got interested in music after his family had car trouble and got stuck in Detroit, where he heard about work opportunities from a relative and decided to settle there. Whitfield had no musical training, but he noticed the early successes of musicians connected with the labels that coalesced into Motown. "When I saw Smokey Robinson driving in a Cadillac, to be absolutely point-blank, that's what inspired me. I actually ran up behind him and asked him: ‘How do you get started?,’" he was quoted as saying in London's Independent.
Joining a band called the Mohawks as a tambourine player and working at a service station, Whitfield began trying to get a job at Motown. After being turned down repeatedly and even chased off the premises by label founder Berry Gordy, he finally impressed Gordy with his persistence and musical smarts. In 1962 Whitfield was hired for $15 a week as a member of Motown's quality control team. His job was to listen to Motown demo recordings and critique them in a report for Gordy, who would select songs for release. Soon Whitfield was trying his hand at songwriting, teaming with Marvin Gaye on "Pride and Joy."
With singer and songwriter William "Smokey" Robinson established as the producer for Motown's top act, the Temptations, Gordy gave Whitfield production work with less prominent Motown groups like the Velvelettes and the Marvelettes. Co-writing with Motown staff songwriter Eddie Holland, Whitfield began to accumulate a catalog of hit songs like "He Was Really Sayin' Something," a moderate success for the Velvelettes in 1964 and again for the British female vocal group Bananarama in 1982. Whitfield got his shot with the Temptations themselves in 1966, and he rose to the occasion with "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," co-written with Holland and tailor-made for the gruff, passionate voice of Temptations vocalist David Ruffin. After the moder- ately disappointing chart performance of the Robinson-produced Temptations song "Get Ready," "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" was released as a single and gave Whitfield his first number one hit on the R&B charts.
Another rivalry—a romantic clash with songwriter Barrett Strong, who vied with Whitfield for the favors of various women—helped propel Whitfield to the top of the heap at Motown. The pair realized that tensions between them shouldn't get in the way of their obvious chemistry as songwriting partners. One of their first collaborations was "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." Whitfield was excited about the song and recorded versions of it with various groups, including the Miracles and the Isley Brothers, but it was a recording by Gladys Knight & the Pips that scored a hit with both R&B and pop audiences in 1967. Whitfield recorded the song again with Marvin Gaye in 1968, using the technique (as he had with Ruffin) of pushing the singer into the top notes of his range. Gaye's version was an even bigger hit, and the song eventually became a pop music standard.
Whitfield's technique of recording a song with several different artists, searching for just the right sonic landscape, was unusual, and it pointed toward the next phase of Whitfield's career. "Arguably the first black/African-American producer as auteur," noted the Independent, Whitfield began to create complex arrangements making use of synthesizers and rock guitars.
Whitfield admitted that he was inspired in part by the pioneering soul-rock fusions of Sly & the Family Stone, but he and Strong combined stylistic fusions with new political and social themes in their lyrics. By 1968 the Temptations' main producer, Whitfield created widely acclaimed hits like "Cloud Nine" (1968), which dealt with drug abuse, "Ball of Confusion" and "Psychedelic Shack" (1970), and the epic "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" (1972). A throwback to the romantic themes of earlier Motown music was the lush "Just My Imagination," from the 1971 Temptations LP Sky's the Limit.
Those songs helped extend Motown's run of popularity through the height of the Vietnam War era. One of the most political Strong and Whitfield compositions, "War (What Is It Good For?)," was recorded by the Temptations as an album track, but Gordy deemed it too political for a single release. Instead, Whitfield gave it to the little-known vocalist Edwin Starr, who scored a number one hit with it at the end of 1970. Another new Whitfield-produced group, the Undisputed Truth, got off to a strong start with the 1971 hit "Smiling Faces." In the early 1970s Whitfield's productions became more and more ambitious, culminating with the Temptations' sprawling Masterpiece album of 1973. By that time, however, the group had begun to feel that Whitfield's productions were overshadowing their own singing. In 1974, as part of the general upheaval surrounding Motown's move from Detroit to Los Angeles, Whitfield left the label in 1974 and formed his own label, Whitfield Records. Its "W" logo was close to a simple inversion of Motown's "M."
The new label notched several hits with releases by the Undisputed Truth, but its biggest success came with the band Rose Royce, which began at Motown as Edwin Starr's backup group. The score for the 1976 film Car Wash earned Whitfield a Grammy award for Best Soundtrack Album, and the soundtrack's title song, recorded by Rose Royce, topped both pop charts and what was by then called the soul chart in Billboard magazine. Whitfield produced several more albums for Rose Royce, returned briefly to Motown in the early 1980s to produce the Temptations' comeback hit "Sail Away," and finally drifted into retirement, living comfortably in Toluca Lake, California, off song royalties, despite a 2005 tax evasion charge. In 2004 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Plagued by diabetes and kidney problems, Norman Whitfield died in Los Angeles on September 16, 2008. He was survived by a daughter, Irasha, and four sons, Michael, Johnnie, Roland, and Bill.
Selected discography
As producer
The Marvelettes, The Marvelous Marvelettes, Motown, 1963.
The Temptations, With a Lot o' Soul, Motown, 1967.
Marvin Gaye, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Motown, 1968.
The Temptations, Wish It Would Rain, Motown, 1968.
The Temptations, Cloud Nine, Motown, 1969.
Rare Earth, Ecology, Motown, 1970.
The Temptations, Psychedelic Shack, Motown, 1970.
The Temptations, Sky's the Limit, Motown, 1971.
The Temptations, Solid Rock, 1972.
The Temptations, All Directions, Motown, 1972.
The Temptations, Masterpiece, Motown, 1973.
Car Wash (film soundtrack), MCA, 1976.
Rose Royce, Rose Royce II: In Full Bloom, Whitfield, 1977.
The Temptations, Back to Basics, Motown, 1983.
Sources
Books
George, Nelson, Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound, rev. ed., University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Periodicals
Guardian (London, England), September 19, 2008, p. 47.
Independent (London, England), September 18, 2008, p. 36.
Jet, October 13, 2008 p. 47.
New York Times, September 18, 2008, p. B8.
Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), September 20, 2008, p. 19.
Times (London, England), September 19, 2008, p. 83.
USA Today, September 18, 2008, p. D2.
Online
"Norman Whitfield," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (May 3, 2009).
"Soul Revolt: Remembering Norman Whitfield," Vibe, http://www.blogs.vibe.com/man/2008/09/soul-revolt-remembering-norman-whitfield (May 3, 2009).
"Today in Motown History," Motown Records, http://www.classic.motown.com/todayinmotownhistory.aspx (May 3, 2009).
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