No. 996 -- Heard It Through the Grapevine

Performer: Marvin Gaye

Songwriters: Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong

Original Release: In the Groove

Year: 1968

Definitive Version: None

When I worked in sports at the Flint Journal, it was all about the weekend shifts, which meant driving over to the White Horse Tavern as fast as possible without running too many red lights as soon as the section made it out of paste-up. The deadline was 1 a.m. Fridays but midnight Saturdays, which meant an extra hour of drinking, hanging out and listening to tunes on the juke.

One of the first times I made it to the juke—first come, first play, which typically meant first dominate—I loaded it up with a few automatic requests and then other things I liked. And when I came over to the table, Robb, one of the part-timers who helped out by taking calls and building the agate (box scores and whatnot), quizzed me on the content of my selections. He was something of a music aficionado himself, and he was testing the newbie. I told him, saying that I finished up with Marvin Gaye. That seemed OK to him, but when my music finished up and the Marvin Gaye in question was Mercy, Mercy Me, he broke into a wide smile. “Oh, sweet! I thought when you said Marvin Gaye, you we’re going to play Heard It Through the Grapevine.” (The juke had a disc of Gaye’s greatest hits.) “C’mon, give me some credit here.” I had most definitely passed the test.

It’s interesting to think about that now. Grapevine is a pretty serious song about a man asking his lover to confirm the rumor he’d heard that she was about to split for another guy. (I definitely know what that feels like.) Rolling Stone rates it among the greatest pop songs of all time. Yet by the time I had moved to sports, it represented privileged yuppies boogeying around the kitchen while making salad in The Big Chill and then ubiquitous cartoon raisins strolling across the TV hawking California’s version of the fruit. In short, by the Nineties, Grapevine had become a joke and a song not to be played on the White Horse juke if you wanted to show that you knew anything about music.

It was only later, after my romance with Jenna fell apart, that the song became fully restored, at least in my opinion. No amount of commercialization can buy off a broken heart.