JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Absolute Essential #1

Hi y'all,

Yes Motown has at least a couple dozen that are all time great examples of simple, direct, songwriting. I'll choose Motown's most "unlikely" hit and maybe simplest, harmonically, as my all-time fave: The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" ...

Can you HEAR the opening in your imagination? The hi-hat figure, coupled with the staccato bass? My attention is "grabbed" immediately...

I'm hearin' the chords in my head, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's MINOR ONE ALL THE WAY THROUGH?!?! That never occurred to me before! It's the minor key "Coconut", lol....

So why is this song good? There's the excellent lyric, probably "backwards engineered" from "...and when he died/all he left us was a loan" which is maybe THEE best double entendre' EVER. Once you've got THAT line, what other lyric COULD one possibly write?

Then an arrangement carefully built around a rhythm section, strings, and a nice vocal arrangement.

This is not a "great" song in the sense that anyone could pull this off, just guitar and voice...though I can imagine Richard Thompson coming close ... but a great song in the sense that it overcomes its own limitations by shining in other ways, and shine this does.

Mike