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Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson were unknown songwriters when Dusty Springfield asked to record their song Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. They refused, treating it as their golden egg and the key to a staff job at Motown, and the song won them that job. By late 1966 it went to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Producers Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol recorded a nervous Terrell alone, and Gaye added his vocal on a separate date, yet the 1967 single sounded like a face-to-face duet and reached number 19 pop and number 3 R&B before entering the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In 1970 Ashford and Simpson remade it for Diana Ross’s first solo album as a six-minute orchestral and gospel piece with long spoken passages. Berry Gordy hated the spoken sections, demanded the song open on the chorus, and when the writers refused he left it as an album track. Radio DJs then cut their own shorter versions by splicing the tape with razor blades. Gordy relented and ordered an official three-minute edit, which became Ross’s first solo number one, holding the Hot 100 top spot for three weeks and topping the R&B chart.

• Dusty Springfield later recorded I’m Gonna Leave You, which has a similar verse melody.
• Backing vocals on the Ross version came from the Andantes, the Undisputed Truth and Ashford and Simpson themselves.
• In 1981 Inner Life’s version got a 10-minute Larry Levan remix, and Boys Town Gang released a dance medley the same year.
• Jimmy Barnes took a rock version into the Australian top 30 in 1991, Michael McDonald had a top 5 adult contemporary version in 2003, and a 2018 Ross remix topped the Billboard Dance Club chart.
• Cascada cut a Eurodance cover in 2024, and in June 2026 CBS News named the Ross version one of 250 essential American songs.