It’s hard to believe, but Mar­vin Gaye’s clas­sic 1967 record­ing of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was orig­i­nal­ly reject­ed by his record label.

The song, about a man’s grief over hear­ing rumors of his lover’s infi­deli­ty, was writ­ten by the leg­endary Motown Records pro­duc­er Nor­man Whit­field and singer Bar­rett Strong. Smokey Robin­son and the Mir­a­cles first record­ed the track in 1966, but that ver­sion got nixed by Motown founder Berry Gordy dur­ing a week­ly qual­i­ty con­trol meet­ing. Then, Whit­field record­ed the song with Gaye in ear­ly 1967, but for some rea­son Gordy did­n’t like that ver­sion either. So Whit­field changed the lyrics a bit and record­ed it with Gladys Knight and the Pips. The fast-tem­po arrange­ment, influ­enced by Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” was released as a sin­gle in Sep­tem­ber of 1967 and rose to num­ber one on the Bill­board R&B chart.

Gaye’s ver­sion might have been for­got­ten had it not been includ­ed in his 1968 album, In the Groove, where it soon became noticed. “The DJs played it so much off the album,” Gordy said lat­er, “that we had to release it as a sin­gle.”

Gaye’s record­ing of the song became a crossover hit. It rose not only to the top of the R&B charts, but also spent sev­en weeks at the top of the Bill­board Pop Sin­gles chart. It was Motown’s biggest-sell­ing sin­gle up to that time, and the In the Groove album name was soon changed to I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Gaye was known for his sweet-sound­ing tenor voice, which he could mod­u­late from a bari­tone to a silky high falset­to. Dur­ing the “Grapevine” ses­sions, the singer report­ed­ly quar­reled with Whit­field over the pro­duc­er’s insis­tence that he sing the song in a high rasp. Whit­field pre­vailed, and Gaye’s per­for­mance is one of the great­est of the Motown era. You can hear his clas­sic vocals “a cap­pel­la” in the video above. And for a reminder of Whit­field­’s clas­sic arrange­ment, with its puls­ing elec­tric piano intro­duc­tion and shim­mer­ing strings, see the video below. The Funk Broth­ers, the leg­endary Motown back­ing group, played on the track, as did the back­ing vocal group The Andantes and the Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Revis­it­ing Mar­vin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” and the Album That Opened R&B to Resis­tance: Revis­it­ed 50 Years Lat­er

Zoo Hires Mar­vin Gaye Imper­son­ator to Help Endan­gered Mon­keys “Get It On”

Hear Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Fred­die Mer­cury & David Bowie’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (1981)