Norman Whitfield RIP Posted by Junior

Norman Whitfield (1943 – September 16, 2008) Temptations: I Know I'm Losing You and Ain't No Sun Since You've Been Gone From: With a Lot o' Soul [Motown, 1967] Temptations: Cloud Nine From: Cloud Nine [Motown, 1969] Undisputed Truth: Smiling Faces Sometimes Available on: Smiling Faces: The Best of Undisputed Truth [Gordy, 1971 ] It's a sorry state of affairs that I seem to be posting up an RIP tribute post every other week at the moment and it's particularly distressing when the subject of that post is one of my favourite soul producers of them all, Norman Whitfield. Although I'm still unable to find any reliable news confirmation of this it seems to be spreading round the web so I can only assume the news is sadly true. One of the greats of the Motown producer/songwriters, Whitfield would be up among the titans for his work with the Temptations alone, not even taking into account the brilliance of much of his work with other artists from Marvin Gaye onwards. This news caught me off guard so I haven't got anywhere near enough of Whitfield's extraordinary discography at hand to do him justice (particularly the development of his sound in the early seventies) but I thought I'd put up a few of my favourites that I did have available to give you a taste of the wealth of talent he brought to soul music in the sixties, seventies and beyond. RIP.