Barrett Strong was born in West Point, Mississippi, in 1941, the only boy among six children of a minister, and moved with his family to Detroit at age four. His father bought him a piano, and at Hutchins Intermediate School he sang alongside Aretha Franklin and Lamont Dozier. Signed early to Berry Gordy’s Tamla label, he sang lead and played piano on Money (That’s What I Want) in 1959. The record sold over a million copies, reached number two on the R&B chart in 1960, and gave Gordy’s young company the cash to keep going.
Strong said he co-wrote Money with Gordy and Janie Bradford, and his name appeared on the original U.S. copyright registration, but Gordy later called that a clerical error. Strong moved into full-time lyric writing with producer Norman Whitfield, producing I Heard It Through the Grapevine, War, Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion, Just My Imagination and Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone, which won the 1973 Grammy for Best R&B Song. When Motown moved to Los Angeles he stayed in Detroit and went back to singing, recording for Epic and Capitol, and in 1995 he founded an independent label to support Detroit musicians.
- Money was later covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Guy.
- Strong’s Grapevine lyric centers on learning of a betrayal through gossip rather than from a partner.
- His mid-1970s solo album Stronghold charted on Billboard’s black albums chart.
- In 2010, at nearly 70, he co-produced and starred in his first music video, for a song called Misery.
- Strong and Whitfield entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004, and Strong died in 2023 at 81.
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