In late September 1972, Motown’s Gordy label released the Temptations’ extraordinary, genre-defining single “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” After an ominous, slow-building instrumental passage, Dennis Edwards enters with one of soul music’s most indelible openings: “It was the third of September / That day I’ll always remember, yes I will.” The record became a No. 1 pop hit and helped cement the Temptations’ transformation from polished pop-soul hitmakers into leading voices of the darker, more expansive sound often called psychedelic soul.
Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and produced by Whitfield, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” tells of children confronting the legacy of an absent, unfaithful father after his death. Whitfield had first recorded the song with the Undisputed Truth in 1972; for the Temptations, he enlarged it into a brooding, nearly twelve-minute album performance, with a roughly seven-minute single edit. The result fused orchestral drama, spacious funk, and social realism in a way that stretched the boundaries of Motown’s sound.
The opening line also carried uncomfortable personal resonance for Edwards. Later accounts describe him as unhappy with the song and especially irritated by its first verse. His father was a minister and had died on October 3—not September 3—but the similarity reportedly made Edwards suspect that Whitfield and Strong were needling him. Whitfield nevertheless pushed Edwards through repeated takes and provocation, drawing out the resentment and emotional edge audible in the finished performance.
That tension became part of the record’s power. What listeners hear is not merely a singer delivering a lyric, but a voice that sounds wounded, defensive, and unwilling to sentimentalize the man at the center of the story. “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” ultimately won three Grammys in 1973: one for the Temptations’ vocal performance, one for its instrumental B-side, and one for Whitfield and Strong’s songwriting.
Image: The Temptations from 1971 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
