“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is a song written by Norman Whitefield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966. Barrett Strong 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.
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 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 shortly became the biggest selling Motown single up to that time. To make the song suitable for Gladys, the first line of the second verse (“I know a man ain’t supposed to cry/But these tears I can’t hold inside”) was altered to (“Take a good look at these tears in my eyes/Baby, these tears I can’t hold inside”).
The Marvin Gaye version was the second to be recorded, in the beginning of 1967, but the third to be released. It was placed 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, when it 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 addition to being recorded several times by Motown artists, the song has been recorded by musicians including Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose 11-minute version appeared on their 1970 album Cosmo’s Factory. The band had initially started to play the song live before rearranging it in the studio with a long jam-like instrumental part for their record. Unusually for such a long song, radio stations began to play the song, and eventually it was released as a single against the band’s wishes. The release reached 43 on Billboard‘s chart, with more modest success in other countries.
In addition, funk musician Roger Troutman whose extended version taken from his 1981 solo album, The Many Facets of Roger, brought the song back to number one on the R&B chart in 1981, marking the third time the song reached the top spot on that chart. British punk band the Slits recorded the song in a post-punk style as a bonus track on their 1979 album Cut. In 1996, the Soultans released their version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”. It reached number 24 in Austria, and charted in New Zealand, Germany and Belgium. Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller performed the song together on Jools Holland in 2006.
