NEW YORK (AP) — Barrett Robust, considered one of Motown’s founding artists and most proficient 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” , “Warfare” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”. He was 81 years outdated.
The Motown Museum introduced his loss of life Sunday through social media, and didn’t instantly present additional particulars.
“Not solely was Barrett a tremendous singer and pianist, however, alongside together with his writing accomplice Norman Whitfield, he created an unbelievable physique of labor,” Motown founder Berry Gordy stated in an announcement.
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 12 months, 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 group.
Whereas Gordy’s “Sound of Younger America” was criticized for being too shiny and repetitive, Whitfield-Robust’s group 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 music for Gladys Knight and the Pips and a darkish, hypnotic ballad for Marvin Gaye, his 1968 model, considered one of Motown’s all-time sellers.
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As Motown grew to become 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 “Warfare” and his extensively quoted, “Warfare! What’s It for? Nothing?” by no means!”
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“With ‘Warfare’,” 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 speak about this stuff with your loved ones once you’re sitting at dwelling, and it conjures up 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 Means Love Is” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (typically spelled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”) “). Artists whose songs they’ve lined have ranged from The Rolling Stones (Simply My Fantasy) and Aretha Franklin (I Hope It Rains) to Bruce Springsteen (“Warfare”) and Al Inexperienced (“I Cannot Be On Your Facet”).
Robust spent a part of the Nineteen Sixties recording for different labels, leaving Motown once more within the early Nineteen 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 childhood”.
Music by Robust and different Motown writers later appeared within the Broadway hit “Ain’t They Proud: The Life and Occasions of the Temptations”.
Robust was born in West Level, Mississippi and moved to Detroit a number of years later. He was a self-taught musician who realized to play the piano with out the necessity for classes, and together with his sisters fashioned a neighborhood gospel group, the Highly effective Singers. In his teenagers, he grew to become acquainted with artists equivalent to Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and Gordy, who admired his writing and piano enjoying. Mockingly, “Cash” with its opening cry, “One of the best issues in life are free / However you can provide them to the birds and the bees”, will result in a combat – over the cash.
Initially listed among the many writers, Robust typically spoke of his innovation together 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 normal lined 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 likely one of the music’s credited writers, and his legal professionals claimed Robust’s identify solely appeared as a consequence of a clerical error.)
“Songs outlast individuals,” Robust informed The New York Occasions in 2013. “The true motive Motown does enterprise is publishing. Data had been only a solution to get songs out to the general public. The true cash is in publishing, and if you happen to’re publishing, dangle on to it. That is all there’s to it. In the event you give it up, you hand over your life and your legacy. When you’re gone, it is on These songs are in motion.”
