"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (Gladys Knight & The Pips)

Okay, I'll probably get hate mail for what I'm about to say.
I don't care for Marvin Gaye's version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."  It has less to do with Gaye's performance and more to do with the backing track.  The campy strings.  The cheesy background singers.  The tom-toms.  It's gimmicky, and it sounds dated.
But I love Gladys Knight & The Pips' version.
Funny thing is, writer/producer Norman Whitfield and writing partner Barrett Strong wrote the song with neither artist in mind; they wrote it for Smokey Robinson.
In fact, Robinson and The Miracles first recorded a version of the song in 1966.  But Motown head honcho Berry Gordy felt it was weak and refused to let it be released.  (They eventually cut a different version in 1968 for the album Special Occasion.)  
So Whitfield and Strong went back to the drawing board and came up with a new arrangement, which Whitfield recorded with Gaye in 1967—a session that almost ended with a fistfight, according to music journalist David Ritz's liner notes for The Best of Marvin Gaye anthology (1995), because Whitfield kept needling Gaye to sing in a register higher than he was comfortable. 
Anyway, at the time, Gordy rejected that rendition, too.  Didn't feel it was single-worthy.
So in mid-1967, Gordy was itching to put out a Motown single to rival Aretha Franklin's "Respect," which was burning up the soul and pop charts.  That September, Whitfield and Strong came back with a funkier, gospel-influenced arrangement of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and gave it to Knight.  Who promptly sang the hell out of it.
Her read of the song is completely different from Gaye's.  Whereas he sounds torn between love and anguish, she's a woman with a purpose: she's out to confront her man and give that cheating so-and-so a piece of her mind.  She's hurting, but she's going to make darn sure he leaves hurting, too.
The backing track is also superior in every way.  It ignites the moment you press "play" and doesn't let up for 3 minutes.  Funny thing is, the same musicians (Motown's "Funk Brothers") play on both renditions.  For instance, bassist James Jamerson's presence is felt in each instance, but his playing is so much more lively here.  Just listen to the leaps and runs that he plays on every chorus.  It's pure church.
In the end, Gaye's version became the bigger hit in October 1968 when it was released a few months after Knight's version.  It actually was Motown's biggest selling song to date.  
But she still did it best.

"I'm Going Down" (Rose Royce)

After flying the coop at Motown Records in 1973, famed (and infamously difficult) producer Norman Whitfield set out to create his own label, Whitfield Records.  (Subtle, huh?)  
Thing was, he needed acts to record for his new label.
So after nabbing the Sly & The Family Stone-facsimile group The Undisputed Truth from Motown, Whitfield set his sights on Rose Royce, a struggling but talented instrumental funk band out of South Central LA.  Whitfield spent time grooming the band—teaching them about stage presence, picking out their clothes, etc., with the intention of turning them into the cornerstone act on his label.  He also unilaterally decided that the band needed a charismatic female lead singer (think: Chaka Khan & Rufus), and brought in vocalist Gwen Dickey from Miami and promptly renamed her "Rose Norwalt."
As you might guess, Whitfield's interjection of Dickey created tension in the long-established band.  Eventually, Dickey left the band (or was fired, depending upon what source you want to believe on the Interwebs).  But not before recording some of the sweetest R&B ballads, rawest vocal funk, and one of the best original soundtrack albums ever in any musical genre.
Speaking of, the song "I'm Going Down" from the Car Wash soundtrack (1976) is the topic at hand.  
Like most of the band's hits, "I'm Going Down" is a Whitfield composition, through and through.  It works the same kind of minimalistic groove as songs like "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (the Marvin Gaye rendition, specifically).  At first blush, it seems kind of repetitive and simplistic: two chords and two notes, played over and over on the Fender rhodes, with some wailing guitar and occasional bass.  But the moment you realize it's a song about a young woman who is counting the minutes until her estranged lover returns, its brilliance reveals itself.  The backing track is ingeniously repetitive to give Dickey the opportunity to unravel her story of love and loss before she comes unraveled on each explosive chorus.
I'll admit, Mary J. Blige did a fantastic and true cover of the song on her 1994 album My Life.  But there's just something so singular and raw about Dickey's read of the song that I have to go with the original in this case.

"I Wanna Get Next To You" (Rose Royce)

My mom often reminisces that the first movie she and my dad went to see together was the comedy Car Wash (1976).  It sort of became a tradition in our household to watch it at least once a year when I was growing up.  I mean, it has George Carlin and Richard Pryor in it.  So even if some of the 70s references are a bit dated, its skit-like scenes and (surprisingly) tasteful dramatic moments always guarantee a good time.
The soundtrack, which was written and produced by Motown expatriate Norman Whitfield and performed by Los Angeles-based band Rose Royce, may be one of the best, most consistent original soundtracks to any film.  What makes the double album so good is that Whitfield had the band tackle a number of styles: straight up funk, smooth soul, R&B, disco, and jazz soul.  The effect is that you're listening to a mix of hit music by different performers on an urban radio station, circa 1976.  (In the film, the workers at the car wash listen to fictional station KGYS over the PA system, with selections from the soundtrack comprising the station's program set.)
"I Wanna Get Next To You" from the soundtrack sets the mood for a key scene, where comedian Franklyn Ajaye's character "T.C." tries--and fails--to get a date with "Mona," a waitress at the coffee shop next door to the car wash.  The song has a feel that pays homage to smooth Philly soul (think: The Stylistics or The Delfonics) with a dash of Whitfield's own composition "Just My Imagination" mixed in.  
Unlike most Rose Royce songs, where Rose Norwalt (a.k.a. Gwen Dickey) takes the lead vocal, trumpeter Kenny Copeland is the featured vocalist here, addressing a woman who constantly ignores him and takes him for granted in a smooth falsetto (the lyrics mirroring the on-screen relationship between T.C. and Mona.)
It's a simple song with a simple theme: no matter what, he still wants to be her man.  
But it's so indelibly sung by Copeland with such soulful backing vocals and a note-perfect performance from the rest of the band that it's hard not hit "replay" a time or two to let its tranquil vibe soak in.  This is a song made for a long drive on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Also, I have to point out what Lequeint "Duke" Jobes is doing on bass throughout this song.   Although it would have been easy to just play whole notes, he instead keeps this steady pulse going that syncopates with the kick drum and congas.  He also doesn't just stick to the tonic of each chord, which gives the track movement and a little extra injection of soul.  It's simple but effective playing.

"Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" (The Temptations)

For years, I'd heard that The Temptations' lead singer, Dennis Edwards, had refused to sing "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" when writer/producer Norman Whitfield had first presented it to the group.  As with any rumor, it's only somewhat true.
In an October 2013 interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, Edwards told journalist Mark Hinson that he was afraid his mother eventually would hear the song's lyrics (which tell a fictitious tale of a deadbeat father) and think he was defaming his own deceased father--a respectable pastor and family man.  Said Edwards, “My father was a preacher and the complete opposite of the character in the song. My father died on the third of October and the character in the song died on the third of September.  So I knew my mother wouldn't like that either."
It's also fairly well documented that Whitfield wasn't exactly the easiest producer to work with.  In the liner notes of The Best of Marvin Gaye anthology (1995), music journalist David Ritz states that Whitfield and the usually affable Gaye almost came to blows during the sessions for "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," when the producer kept pushing the singer to sing in a register higher than he was comfortable to get a raspier vocal on the track.  Similarly, Edwards also didn't see eye-to-eye with Whitfield, who kept forcing Edwards to do take after take of his vocal on "Papa," basically stoking Whitfield's anger to get a more dramatic vocal on the track.
Edwards's final word on the subject in the interview: "Norman made me mad before I sang it, but he wanted that anger in it.  And he got it.  But I never refused to sing it.”
The song itself is deceptively simple.  The bass repeats the same three-note pattern, over and over.  The rhythm guitar scratches and wah-wah's the same chord, over and over, every few bars.  And the song never changes chords for 7 minutes (12 minutes if we're talking the album version).
However, the thrifty arrangement and instrumentation cleverly add to the tension bubbling under the track.  There's a lot of space to let things breathe and to let its atmospherics sink in.  In particular, each voice takes a solo turn telling the story over the lonely tiss-tah and thump of the hi-hat and kick drum.  But then you get jolted--not unlike the shock of finding out your absentee father was a ne'er-do-well who died and left you with nothing--by this sudden burst of syncopated handclaps, tight-as-hell harmony, atmospheric strings, and bleats of trumpet that sound like they were lifted straight off a dub reggae record.
Stylistically, the record owes a lot to what Isaac Hayes was doing at the time.  Nevertheless, nothing else that preceded or followed it ever sounded quite the same.