Barrett Strong had the first hit for Tamla-Motown when he sang the original version of Money (That’s What I Want) in 1959.

Everybody knows this song. There are at least two cover versions – very different ones – that most of us love. But this is the first.

It’s best known (obviously) by The Beatles, because they’re the most popular group of all time, and a barnstorming rock’n’roll version by Jerry Lee Lewis. And was best loved by some of us when it was covered in deconstructed minimalist style by The Flying Lizards.

But I have only just discovered it was first recorded by Barrett Strong five years before The Beatles, in 1959. And that it’s a little bit of history – the first hit single on a new Detroit record label called Tamla Motown.

The song turned Strong into a one-hit wonder. But there was much more to him than that. As a lyricist, he wrote (or co-wrote) soul classics including I Heard It Through The Grapevine, War and Papa Was A Rolling Stone.

I know his name best from his elaborate psychedelic soul productions for The Temptations with Norman Whitfield, who co-wrote so many Temps classics – not just Papa Was A Rolling Stone but also Ball Of Confusion, Just My Imagination, Psychedelic Shack, Cloud Nine – with Whitfield writing the music, Strong the lyrics.

They also penned I Heard It Through The Grapevine for Gladys Knight & The Pips, which became a classic when it was covered a year later by Marvin Gaye, and turned their hand to politics with War for Edwin Starr.

Like so many more soul singers of that postwar era, Barrett Strong Jr. was a pastor’s son, born in Mississippi, before his family moved in 1945, where to Detroit, where one of his high school classmates was Aretha Franklin.

He started out playing piano in his sisters’ gospel group, The Strong Sisters and through them he met Jackie Wilson. Soon on his way to stardom, Wilson then introduced him to an aspiring songwriter called Berry Gordy, who became his manager.

This song has an unusual genesis. It came about when Gordy invited his protege to record the Ray Charles song What’d I Say at an impromptu session in his studio, where Strong began improvising a different melody that turned into Money (That’s What I Want).

Gordy and Strong were joined by Benny Benjamin on drums and Brian Holland on tambourine for the recording. The guitarist and bass guitarist were “two white kids walking home from high school who heard the music out on the street and wandered in to Hitsville and asked if they could play along.”

Strong claimed he never saw the two boys who played bass and guitar again though a fellow called Eugene Grew later claimed he was the guitarist, and that Barrett showed him what to play.

Released on Gordy’s fledgling Tamla label, it kicked off the label’s world-conquering success, hitting number two on the R&B singles chart and crossing over to the pop charts. Strong would later spend years in a legal battle with Gordy, insisting he wrote the song.

He continued to write and record material for Tamla/Motown but his follow-up singles failed to chart and he left the label in 1962 and relocated to Chicago, where his commercial success really began to take off, first with Stay In My Corner, which became a huge hit for The Dells.

Barrett Strong died on January 28, 2023 at his home in San Diego, California at the age of 81.