“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” – Marvin Gaye (7 weeks)
The date that Marvin Gaye’s song reached No.1 was December 14, 1968. The song was originally written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown Records in 1966. But it was Gaye’s version that got the attention of radio DJs. But the original writer of the song, Barrett Strong explained his reason for writing the song.
Strong got the idea for the song when he was living in Chicago. He heard lots of people using the phrase “I heard it through the grapevine.” He said, “Nobody wrote a song about it, so I sat at a piano and came up with the bass line.”
The next is a song was played by one famous group but written by a different famous musician.