Which Motown song held the number one spot for the longest in the 1960s?
LSD anthems, civil rights soul, and counterculture folk: the soundtrack of 1960s America sonically diverse and ever-expanding, but if you looked exclusively at the pop charts of the decade, then it was Motown who dominated the sound of the swinging sixties.
Over the course of ten short years, Berry Gordy’s Motown had gone from being a shoestring operation in the increasingly-saturated Detroit soul scene to being a cultural trendsetter with a natural aptitude for commercial domination. Launching a plethora of now-iconic names, from Diana Ross to The Jackson Five, the label’s roster was bursting with talent, and Gordy was keen to squeeze out as much of it as humanly possible – something he was particularly successful at doing.
From the outset of Motown, Gordy was out to generate chart hits. He is, after all, a businessman at heart, and entering into the pop charts is a sure-fire means of keeping the lights on and the royalty cheques rolling in, so he wasted absolutely no time. Within just a year of Motown’s formation, its augural hit hd arrived in the form of Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’, followed closely by their first number-one in The Marvelettes’ ‘Please Mr. Postman’, opening the floodgates for a deluge of chart-topping anthems.
Planting its foot firmly on the accelerator, Motown determinedly continued that run of success, singing a wealth of new artists and pumping out pop-soul masterpieces with almost alarming regularity. Between The Marvelettes in 1961 and the close of 1969, the Detroit label boasted a whopping 20 number-one singles, and a further plethora of top-tens, which is an impressive feat for any record label, let alone one as young and independent as Motown.
Admittedly, the majority of those 1960s number-ones came from the pens of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and the voices of The Supremes. That partnership, in many ways, defined the elusive ‘Motown sound’, and helped to establish the label as an American cultural institution akin to fast food or CIA meddling into Latin American politics. Despite their many hits, though, The Supremes missed out on holding the accolade for the longest-running Motown number-one.
Instead, that privilege goes to the velvet voice of Marvin Gaye, and his masterpiece 1968 single ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, which lasted for seven weeks at the top of the US singles chart, and three weeks at number-one in the UK (bizarrely, the soul star’s only UK number-one). Gaye’s single is certainly a worthy recipient of that intense level of success, being perhaps the greatest Motown song of all time, but its chart-topping tenure was a little bittersweet for Berry Gordy.
Gaye recorded his version of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ in February 1967, after the original version by Motown stalwarts The Miracles went unreleased. However, Gaye soon found his version similarly sidelined, in favour of a recording by Gladys Knight and the Pips, which reached number-two in the Hot 100.
Despite countless pleas both from the vocalist and production staff, Gordy outright refused to release Gaye’s version. In fact, it was only after the track was snuck onto Gaye’s In the Groove album that the Motown boss finally relented, unleashing one of Motown’s all-time biggest hits, and forever vindicating the vocal talents of Marvin Gaye.
That seven-week record stood unchallenged throughout the following decade, and it took the combined powers of both Diana Ross and Lionel Richie to break it, with 1981’s ‘Endless Love’ amassing nine weeks at the top spot.
After Gordy sold off the label to MCA in 1988, the record was again broken, this time by Boyz II Men and their 1994 single ‘I’ll Make Love to You’ which spent a ludicrous 14 weeks at number-one. When it comes down to Motown’s 1960s golden age, though, it doesn’t get much better than ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’.
