The Temptations' "Cloud Nine" is ground zero for the psychedelic soul aesthetic that pioneering producer
Norman Whitfield (recipient of the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Award for Musical Excellence) would continue to develop for the duration of his Motown Records tenure.
"Cloud Nine," which reached number two on the U.S. R&B charts and number six on the pop charts, challenged Motown orthodoxy by embracing acid rock and funk, the pervasive sounds of turbulent 1968. "Cloud Nine" also broke new lyrical ground, presenting an unflinching portrayal of life in inner-city America - a "dog-eat-dog world" where "it ain't even safe no more to walk the streets at night." The single's success set in motion a series of Whitfield-produced hits (among them
Edwin Starr's "War," the
Undisputed Truth's "Smiling Faces Sometimes" and the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone") that transformed the Motown Sound for a new age in music and culture.
Here are nine things to elevate your "Cloud Nine" consciousness as you explore the song in KORD.
1. "Cloud Nine" was co-written by
Barrett Strong, Whitfield's collaborator on a jaw-dropping number of Motown milestones, including
Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and the Temptations' "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)." Strong first rose to prominence as a singer and pianist: in 1959, he recorded the R&B classic "Money (That's What I Want)," the first hit record for
Berry Gordy Jr.'s fledgling Motown enterprise.
2. "Cloud Nine" is the first Temptations single to feature the group's latest addition,
Dennis Edwards, who in late June 1968 replaced the increasingly erratic, cocaine-addicted
David Ruffin, the lead vocalist on earlier Tempts perennials like "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."
3. All five Temptations trade lead vocals on "Cloud Nine" in homage to the trailblazing flower-power funk of Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music," a Top Ten pop hit earlier in the year. "My thing was to out-Sly Sly Stone," Whitfield told David Ritz in an interview for 1985's
Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye. "Sly was definitely sly, and his sound was new. His grooves were incredible. He borrowed a lot from rock. He caught the psychedelic thing. He was bad. I could match him, though - rhythm for rhythm, horn for horn."
4. "Cloud Nine" heralds the Motown Records debut of Funk Brother
Dennis Coffey. The guitarist - already a mainstay on the Detroit live music circuit, with session credits including Del Shannon's "Little Town Flirt" and Edwin Starr's pre-Motown single "S.O.S. (Stop Her on Sight)" - arrived at Hitsville with his Gibson Firebird and a leather bag stuffed with effects pedals, and proceeded to usher Motown into a bold new dimension.
Solo Coffey's performance to plunge headlong into "the stoned-soul miasma of [his] wah-wah guitar licks," per KORD editor-in-chief Jason Ankeny's description in the Dec/Jan. 2007 issue of
Wax Poetics magazine. "I had that funk feel from working all the local Black clubs," Coffey told Ankeny. "When I pulled out that [Cry Baby] wah-wah pedal, Whitfield loved it."
5. When you solo Coffey's guitar stem, you will hear a piano enter the arrangement at the 1:20 mark. Whitfield must have decided the performance (most likely by
Earl Van Dyke) didn't quite fit, and removed it from the final mix. The lone keyboard part that made the cut: one held organ note that appears 2:30 in.
6. "Cloud Nine" features
Spider Webb (born Kenneth Rice) on hi-hats and Funk Brothers mainstay
Uriel Jones on a full drum kit. Coffey claims it's the first Motown session to boast two drummers.
7. Wikipedia would have you believe that "Cloud Nine" also features a guest performance by the celebrated Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria. Not true, although Santamaria did cover the song to conclude his 1969 solo LP
Stone Soul. Those incendiary conga drums are instead played by Funk Brother
Eddie "Bongo" Brown;
isolate Brown's contributions via the percussion stem.8. "Cloud Nine" won Motown its first-ever Grammy Award. Let
that sink in.
9. Whitfield, Strong and members of the Temptations all denied that "Cloud Nine" is about narcotics use. "I know there weren't drug references, because Norman and Barrett didn't do drugs," Temptation
Otis Williams told uDiscoverMusic. "Norman said ‘Man, the saying ‘cloud nine' has been around for eons.' I said ‘Yeah, you're right there,' because I remember, growing up, I would hear a guy being so knocked out by the woman that he would tell me ‘Man, the way she made love to me' or ‘The way she kissed me, I was on cloud nine.' So the expression had been around for a long time, but Norman and Barrett just took it in various ways."
