Norman Whitfield was born in Harlem in 1940 and moved to Detroit, attending Northwestern High School. At 19 he hung around Hitsville USA until Berry Gordy hired him for quality control, the Friday meetings where new mixes were played through cheap speakers to mimic car radios. In 1966 his production of Ain’t Too Proud to Beg outperformed Smokey Robinson’s Get Ready, and he took over the Temptations through 1974. With lyricist Barrett Strong he recut I Heard It Through the Grapevine for Marvin Gaye after Gladys Knight and the Pips’ faster 1967 hit, and the slower version surpassed it.
When Dennis Edwards replaced David Ruffin, Whitfield moved the Temptations into psychedelic soul with Cloud Nine, which won Motown its first Grammy, though the group resented their voices being buried under his tracks. He shifted songs between acts, giving War to Edwin Starr and Smiling Faces Sometimes to the Undisputed Truth. After leaving Motown in 1975 he launched Whitfield Records and Rose Royce, whose Car Wash theme won a Grammy. In 2005 he pleaded guilty to failing to report over $2 million in royalty income, and he died of diabetic complications in 2008.
- He won three BMI awards in 1969 alone.
- He multi-tracked drums slightly out of phase to create a thick, disorienting rhythm section.
- Papa Was a Rolling Stone, first cut with the Undisputed Truth, opens with about three minutes of instrumental before any vocal.
- One of that record’s two Grammys went to its instrumental B-side.
- He wrote or co-wrote 61 UK chart hits and 92 US chart hits and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.
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