Three outside children and another wife.

September 3, 2010 12:15 PM

Got a 90210 Day hangover? Chill.It is the 3rd of September.
posted by timsteil (9 comments total)

I am dumb and lacking in cultural sophistication so I needed this WiKi link for context:

Friction arose during the recording of "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" for a number of reasons. The Temptations didn't like the fact that Whitfield's instrumentation had been getting more emphasis than their vocals on their songs at the time, and that they had to press Whitfield to get him to produce ballads for the group. In addition, Dennis Edwards was angered by the song's first verse: "It was the 3rd of September/That day I'll always remember/'cause that was the day/that my daddy died". Edwards' father had died on that date, and although the song wasn't originally written for the Temptations, Edwards was convinced that Whitfield assigning him the line was intentional. Although Whitfield denied the accusation, he used it to his advantage: he made Edwards record the disputed line over and over again until Whitfield finally got the angered, bitter grumble he desired out of the usually fiery-toned Edwards (it was, however, one of the reasons Whitfield was eventually fired as the group's producer).

posted by cavalier at 12:21 PM on September 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

A day I'll always remember...
posted by Gungho at 12:22 PM on September 3, 2010

oh, wow. When I was a freshman in college, a bunch of us would occasionally go to the all-night diner after work (we'd get out of work at 2-3am). Invariably I would ride over in this one guy's car and the ONLY song he would play on his car stereo was the Was (Not Was) version of this song.

So it's 1991 again in my head.
posted by Lucinda at 12:42 PM on September 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

A song that I'll always remember. It evokes childhood in LA during the dog days of the Nixon years for me in a way that no other songs do. Thanks.
posted by blucevalo at 12:42 PM on September 3, 2010

I came across this song in an odd way, through the "Mitchell" episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The theme to that movie sounds, for a moment, suspiciously similar to this and Tom Servo sings the first two lines. I chased down the reference online and came across the excellent original tune. That was several years ago and is but one of the many ways in which MST3K has enriched my life.

Thanks for the post!
posted by Monster_Zero at 2:00 PM on September 3, 2010

Nice!
Not sure about the outfits though...
posted by DougFromDover at 7:17 PM on September 3, 2010

The Temptation's pink outfit
posted by DougFromDover at 7:22 PM on September 3, 2010

In the pre-internet days I was torn if the lyric was "(And when he died) All he left us was A LOAN" or if it was "ALONE". At the time it was very important to get clarification.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 8:24 PM on September 3, 2010

Oh, God, to this day I still don't know and don't want to know. NO TEMPS SPOILERS.

And I actually put the Was (Not Was) album with this track on at a recent dinner (after being challenged to "Just pick something," and grumbling, "I'll pick something."), whereupon everyone listened politely without comment.
posted by klangklangston at 9:06 PM on September 3, 2010