NEW YORK (AP) — Barrett Robust, one in every of Motown’s founding artists and most gifted songwriter who sang lead on the corporate’s hit single “Cash (That is What I Need)” and later collaborated with Norman Whitfield on classics like “I Heard It By means of” , “Battle” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”. He was 81 years previous.
The Motown Museum introduced his demise Sunday through social media, and didn’t instantly present additional particulars.
“Not solely was Barrett a tremendous singer and pianist, however, alongside along with his writing accomplice Norman Whitfield, he created an unbelievable physique of labor,” Motown founder Berry Gordy mentioned in a press release.
Robust was simply 20 when he agreed to let his buddy Gordy, within the early days of constructing a recording empire in Detroit, handle him and launch his music. Inside a yr, he was a part of historical past because the pianist and vocalist for “Cash,” a million-seller launched in early 1960 that was Motown’s first main hit. Robust by no means once more got here near the success of “Cash” on his personal, and a long time later he fought for recognition that he helped write it. However, with Whitfield, he put collectively a productive and eclectic songwriting workforce.
Whereas Gordy’s “Sound of Younger America” was criticized for being too shiny and repetitive, Whitfield-Robust’s workforce delivered stern and thematic work, together with timeless ballads like “I Want It Would Rain” and “Simply My Creativeness (Run With Me)”. With “I Heard it By means of the Grapevine,” they delivered an up-tempo, call-and-response tune for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a darkish, hypnotic ballad for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 model, one in every of Motown’s all-time sellers.
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As Motown turned extra politically acutely aware late within the decade, Barrett Whitfield penned “Cloud 9” and “Psychedelic Shack” for The Temptations and for Edwin Starr’s protest anthem “Battle” and his broadly quoted, “Battle! What’s It for? Nothing?” by no means!”
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“With ‘Battle’,” Robust informed LA Weekly in 1999, “I had a cousin who was a paratrooper who was badly wounded in Vietnam. He was badly wounded by shrapnel and crippled for all times. You discuss these items with your loved ones while you’re sitting at dwelling, and it evokes you to say one thing about it.”
Different hits for Whitfield-Robust, largely for the Temptations, included “I Cannot Get Subsequent to You”, “That is the Method Love Is” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (typically spelled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”) “). Artists whose songs they’ve coated have ranged from The Rolling Stones (Simply My Fantasy) and Aretha Franklin (I Hope It Rains) to Bruce Springsteen (“Battle”) and Al Inexperienced (“I Cannot Be On Your Aspect”).
Robust spent a part of the Sixties recording for different labels, leaving Motown once more within the early Seventies and producing a handful of solo albums, together with “Stronghold” and “Love is You”. In 2004, he was voted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame, which cites him as “a pivotal determine in Motown’s early life”.
Music by Robust and different Motown writers later appeared within the Broadway hit “Ain’t They Proud: The Life and Instances of the Temptations”.
Robust was born in West Level, Mississippi and moved to Detroit just a few years later. He was a self-taught musician who discovered to play the piano with out the necessity for classes, and along with his sisters fashioned an area gospel group, the Highly effective Singers. In his teenagers, he turned acquainted with artists resembling Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and Gordy, who admired his writing and piano taking part in. Paradoxically, “Cash” with its opening cry, “The perfect issues in life are free / However you may give them to the birds and the bees”, will result in a struggle – over the cash.
Initially listed among the many writers, Robust usually talked about his innovation along with his piano blitz whereas jamming to Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” within the studio. However solely a long time later did he study that Motown had eliminated his identify from the credit, costing him royalties for a folks customary coated by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and plenty of others and a memento on John Lennon’s jukebox. Robust’s authorized alibi was weakened as a result of he took so lengthy to ask for his identify again. (Jordy is among the tune’s credited writers, and his legal professionals claimed Robust’s identify solely appeared resulting from a clerical error.)
“Songs outlast individuals,” Robust informed The New York Instances in 2013. “The true purpose Motown does enterprise is publishing. Data have been only a method to get songs out to the general public. The true cash is in publishing, and in case you’re publishing, hold on to it. That is all there may be to it. In case you give it up, you hand over your life and your legacy. When you’re gone, it is on These songs are in motion.”
