POPULARITY
In dit Kletsuurtje praat Jonatan Medart over zijn deelname aan Make Up Your Mind, hoe hij werd ontslagen bij Flying Tiger, zijn spannende avonturen in Berghain, zijn darmproblemen en veel meer.
Get into our new course, Professional English Level 1. Save $100 off the normal price. Offer expires April 20th at midnight. Improve your English for: Meetings Interviews Presentations Small talk More Go here to get the special deal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SEND ME A TEXT MESSAGE NOWTariffs have become the economic battleground of our time, and their impact is about to hit American households where it hurts most—at the grocery store. Trump's policy whiplash—implementing tariffs, escalating them when countries retaliate, then suddenly announcing a 90-day pause—has created an environment of uncertainty that's affecting businesses and consumers alike.Food industry experts are sounding the alarm: prices are going up. Most concerning? The burden will fall hardest on lower-income Americans who already spend a larger percentage of their income on essentials.What makes this situation particularly challenging is that many affected products simply cannot be produced domestically. The United States imports 80% of its seafood and coffee, 59% of its fresh fruit, and 35% of its vegetables. These imports provide year-round access to foods that climate constraints make impossible to grow locally. Now consumers will face higher prices, "shrinkflation" (smaller products at the same price), and fewer options as companies streamline to manage costs. Beyond reporting the news, I'm offering practical advice: review your budget (yes, again), consider stocking up on essentials without hoarding, and perhaps start a small garden if possible. While we can't control national economic policies, we can control our preparedness. Taking these small steps can provide valuable buffers against supply chain disruptions and price increases during these economically turbulent times.Share your thoughts about how tariffs are affecting your shopping habits or any preparation strategies you're implementing. Contact me at wolfpacklistener@gmail.com or leave a message at 833-399-9653. Your engagement makes this podcast possible—let's navigate these challenging times together.AWorldGoneMadPodcast@gmail.com
Make Up Your Mind to Fight! If you're going to fight to win, you have to make up your mind that you're going to keep swinging. Learn more on this episode of Fight To Win with Pastor Kurt Owen.Request the Free Offer: https://www.fighttowin.tvLearn More, Register for Events & Donate:https://www.kurtowen.com/Prefer to Watch the Video?https://youtu.be/Sb3MBWLH3xQBecome a supporter of this podcasthttps://www.spreaker.com/podcast/fight-to-win-tv-with-kurt-owen--5638799/support.
Johan, Wilfred, René en Valentijn Driessen bespreken in razendsnel tempo de actualiteit: De fusiepartij van Frans Timmermans, Pogačar wint Ronde van Vlaanderen en Harry Mens in Make Up Your Mind. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Here is our sermon "Make Up Your Mind That You're Mine" with Pastor Rick McNeely at Christ Community Church, Murphysboro, Illinois on April 6, 2025. Come be a part of our service every Sunday at 10am on 473 West Harrison Road on the corner of Route 127 and Harrison Road. Our Website: www.cccmurphy.com/ Our Facebook: facebook.com/cccmurphysboro/ Our YouTube: www.youtube.com/@christcommunitychurch8257 Our Soundcloud: @cccmurphy We truly appreciate all your support. If you would like to give a donation, here is a link to our website to do so: cccmurphy.churchcenter.com/giving
One of the biggest barriers to us getting the things we really, really want are the mixed messages we send to ourselves. We want it, then we're not sure we do. We want it again and then we don't think it will work out. We definitely want it, but then we can't do it because it's risky. When we want to go in a certain direction, we won't reach our desired destination this way. Instead, we need to be fully committed and completely in alignment - not shaky or wishy washy. The missed messages take different forms - maybe it's doing a push and pull, making excuses not to take action, or just dipping our toe in. However it manifests, this creates a tangle in our energy system and that keeps us from having any momentum. When we fully commit to something and go all in, that's when we experience the magic of the universe conspiring for us, but it starts with taking our whole selves into the decision. If we treat what we want like we deserve it and believe the world is there for us to go after it, that's when the magic happens! How do we use body wisdom to figure out the direction we want to take? How do we fully commit to something? In this episode, we talk about how to find alignment so we can make decisions with less internal friction. Things You'll Learn In This Episode -Make what's going on in your mind real How do we use movement to role play walking in each direction towards the thing we want or don't want? -Thank you for self-selecting The safest place to get feedback is from people who are in alignment themselves. How do we identify who is in integrity and who definitely isn't? -Recognize your inner yes and no In our early years, we're taught that our own experience doesn't matter so we lose trust in what we're experiencing. Why does that make it hard for us to know what we really want? About Your Hosts Katie Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT, is a pioneer in body intelligence and conscious loving with over 40 years of experience. Known internationally as a presenter and seminar leader, she focuses on authenticity, responsibility, and appreciation in conscious living. She co-authored 12 books, including best-sellers Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After and she has appeared on over 500 radio and TV programs. Sophie Chiche is a seasoned coach and consultant who has worked with thousands of individuals and teams globally. With a focus on helping people live fully expressed lives, she guides clients and facilitates group sessions to remove obstacles and design meaningful lives. Sophie has developed unique methods, mindset shifts, and healing modalities to create lasting change. Check out this episode on our website, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm so the show reaches more people!
On today's episode, Les Brown encourages you to make up your mind and commit to doing what you really want to do. Plus, why you always want to make sure you're prepared for the incoming opportunities.Source: Dig Deeper and Go FurtherHosted by Sean CroxtonFollow me on Instagram
Here's my background. Love Bryan Adams. He did "Cuts Like a Knife", one of the great rock tracks of eighties radio. "Straight from the Heart", one of the great ballads of rock radio, and the windows down, summertime, turn it up loud, catch a little buzz, rock and roll of Reckless. His eighties work is the foundation. And then he went into the nineties and worked with Mutt Lange and had a huge album. And then worked on some soundtracks, went ballad-heavy, and then lost his way. Now I saw him live, would have been 1987. The Hooters opened. It was Joe Louis Arena. So it was the, you know, 17,000. Great show. Saw him in Indianapolis - 2007-ish. And it was really good Bryan Adams has always been good live. He has a 2025 tour of Europe planned. Now he has new music. And I've been so disappointed with Bryan Adams music over the past 30 years. Never a great lyricist - he's not Springsteen. He's not Petty. But the the banging eighties guitar, drums, whiskey-soaked voice played loud - that's Bryan Adams. That is his sweet spot, and and he had lost that. Shyper-generic and not great fun - to me anyway. But he's come back with some new music. It's a first listen for me. Hadn't heard it yet. We're gonna hear it together. We're gonna I'm gonna react to it, and we'll see what we see what I think. What does it do for me? For you? A single called Roll With the Punches was released in February. That's gonna be the name of the album due to come out sometime in 2025. And then he has released a second single in March He's working again with Mutt Lange. Let's see what this sounds like. may stop it as we're getting through part of it. What do we think? So this is the brand new single. It's called "Make Up Your Mind". Let's turn it up and listen together. And then I found a couple of added surprises. :) email: rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com website: www.rockpopandroll.com
Hoe deed radioman Edwin Evers het als tv-presentator in Talent Unplugged? Wat gaan we straks zien in de satirische nieuwsshow van Arjen Lubach bij RTL 4 en hoe was de vuurdoop van Roxeanne Hazes in Het Holland Huis? ‘Presenteren is een vak, alleen moet iemand dat deze vrouw nog even vertellen!’ Met die vragen houdt het panel van de AD Media Podcast zich onder meer bezig in de nieuwste editie, waarin ook stilgestaan wordt bij het overlijden van Rob de Nijs, het pensioen van Gerri Eickhof en de In de Hoofdrol-achtige uitzending van Eva Jinek met Songfestival-ganger Claude. Verder besteden de drie aandacht aan de meest recente aflevering van Boer zoekt vrouw, waarin de eerste dagdates te zien waren. Andere onderwerpen in de AD Media Podcast: de nieuwe reeks van Make Up Your Mind en Jeroen Pauw bij Bar Laat. En dan is er natuurlijk nog het verschrikkelijke nieuws van dat ene ‘juweeltje’ dat helaas niet meer terugkeert op de tv. ‘De Nederlandse televisie zal nooit meer hetzelfde zijn zonder dit programma!’ Luisteren dus! Naar de wekelijkse AD Media Podcast, waarin tv-columnist Angela de Jong en verslaggever Dennis Jansen alle hoofd-, rand- en bijzaken bespreken op het gebied van media. De presentatie is in handen van Manuel Venderbos. Luister je liever via Spotify of Apple, of een andere podcastapp? Dat kan! Vind alle onze podcasts op ad.nl/podcasts.Support the show: https://krant.nl/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How To Make Up Your Mind Peacefully This episode helps you know how to make decisions more peacefully in your busy mom life. Discover a powerful four-element framework that will transform how you approach choices big and small! In this episode you'll learn: How to get crystal clear on your true desire, not what others expect. Why faith in yourself is crucial for confident decision-making The importance of persistent effort when following through feels challenging How to recognize and trust your God-given abilities as a mom Practical tools to make decisions with confidence Whether you're planning summer activities, considering school changes, or setting boundaries with extended family, this framework will help you navigate decisions with grace and peace. If you liked this episode, here are some others you might enjoy: 25. Peaceful Decision Making 219. Overcoming Indecision: Finding Peace Beyond FOMO For more help from Danielle Thienel Coaching: To explore an opportunity to work with me as a one-to-one Catholic Life Coaching client or to see if my group life coaching program, Busy to Balanced, is right for you, Schedule a call with me HERE. Get a copy of my books, The Cyclone Mom Method or The Divine Time Solution for only $4.99 HERE plus access paperback versions too including my new devotional- Happy Healthy & Holy Visit my website: www.daniellethienel.com to learn more about the life changes possible for you through having a faith-based life coach. Connect with me on Facebook and Instagram: @daniellethienelcoaching
Thanks for joining us for the latest episode of the Covenant Podcast! Today, Pastor Gregory is joined by his dear friend Rex Crain!Pastor and Rex discuss a powerful topic... MAKE UP YOUR MIND!Rex will also be kicking off Love Conference 2025 at Covenant Church on Wednesday, March 5th at 7 PM. Come expecting!
Message: How to Make Up Your Mind Series: Faith IRL Original Date: February 16, 2025 Click HERE for Message Outline Click HERE for Discussion Guide
https://www.myheraldreview.com/news/cochise_county/supreme-court-to-cochise-supes-make-up-your-mind-now/article_1fe8ebc4-e449-11ef-b695-ffc2a63713ca.html Today – we’re looking into the legal battle over the 2023 Cochise County Jail District election.Support the show: https://www.myheraldreview.com/site/forms/subscription_services/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nobody likes indecision, Choose This Day Who You Serve! If Jesus is Lord, Then Do What He Says!
As an actor/performer, you just have to make up your mind. Let's dive in!!
Have you ever envisioned your day, your year, or even your life going one way, only to have things turn out completely different? Sometimes, these moments leave us struggling to find a single reason to be thankful. We know there must be something good to hold onto, but in the midst of challenging circumstances, it can be hard to see past the pain or disappointment. This message explores what it means to choose gratitude in all seasons—not just when things are easy. We'll challenge the mindset that says, “I'll be thankful when things get better” and discover how God calls us to a gratitude that isn't dependent on life's ups and downs. Real thankfulness isn't about waiting for good days but learning to see God's faithfulness through every situation.
In this sermon, we'll explore how our struggles are not signs of a distant or uncaring Jesus, nor of punishment for our mistakes. Instead, sometimes the storms we face are designed to build our faith. Looking at Peter's experience on the water, we'll see that he was doing just fine walking toward Jesus—until doubt crept in. Just as Peter began to sink when he wavered, we, too, face times when our trust in Jesus feels shaky. Jesus challenges us with a choice: do we trust Him fully or let doubt pull us under? This message will encourage us to embrace faith, even when life's storms feel overwhelming, knowing Jesus is right there with us, inviting us to keep our eyes on Him.
West Virginia has resurrected its season with back-to-back road wins. Baylor's playing offense at least as well as anyone n the county. It has to end for someone on Saturday. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Have you ever had someone suggest that you should just give up? Or maybe you've felt that way yourself—wondering if it's time to let go, if you're asking too much, or if your dream is simply out of reach. We've all been there. Anyone who's ever reached for something great has had that moment of doubt, standing on the edge, thinking, “This feels impossible. This is too much. Maybe this is just crazy.” Yet, it's often in those very moments that God meets us, reminding us that with Him, all things are possible. When we feel the weight of the unknown, we're faced with a choice: do we let doubt hold us back, or do we lean into God's strength, trusting that His plans are greater than what we can see?
No matter how long we've been carrying the weight of our struggles, today could be the day Jesus transforms everything. His timing is perfect, even when it feels delayed or uncertain. In a single moment, He can bring healing, breakthrough, or peace to the situation we've been battling for so long. Make up your mind to keep showing up because Jesus is always working, and today could be the day He brings the change we've been praying for.
In today's message (Make Up Your Mind!) Pastor Cochran teaches God's people to set their minds on the will of God and to remain fixed! You must own your choices and decisions. Stop crying about a decision you have made that you are living with! Make up your mind to trust God and watch Him satisfy you! When you are an indecisive person, you are easily deceived! Make up your mind to serve The Lord and stay determined to follow Him come what may! Our website: www.apor-newnan.org Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@APORNEWNAN Also enjoy these powerful podcast: Productive Living Podcast: https://aplaceofrefugechurch.podbean.com/ The Way 2 Go Podcast: https://aportrendsetters.podbean.com/ The L.I.F.E Podcast: https://aporrome.podbean.com/
4 Day conferences, 4 Sundays of speakers or something completely off the wall? How do you do mission conferences? Is there a right way, wrong way or new way? Listen in and you will find out as the guys discuss missions conferences.
September 22nd, 2024 The post “Make up your mind” [Philippians 2:1-8] appeared first on Calvary Chapel Mountain Home.
2024-08-04-1030 Pastor Loran Livingston is the speaker this morning, August 4, 2024 in the 1030 AM service. Scripture: John 14:21-24; Luke 13; Proverbs 8 Notes: -All the words in the Bible are God's words. -There are no excuses for people living in sin. -Say no to unholiness. -Jesus loves those who love Him. -Those who search for Jesus first will find Him. -Only Jesus can satisfy your soul.
2024-08-04-0830 Pastor Loran Livingston is the speaker this morning, August 4, 2024 in the 830 AM service. Scripture: John 14:21-24; Luke 13; Proverbs 8 Notes: -All the words in the Bible are God's words. -There are no excuses for people living in sin. -Say no to unholiness. -Jesus loves those who love Him. -Those who search for Jesus first will find Him. -Only Jesus can satisfy your soul.
Tune in to today's Sermon: MAKE UP YOUR MIND Date: 4th, 2024 Speaker : REV. REV HAYFORD GYAMOAH Readings : Romans 1:16 1 King 18:19-36 1 King 19:10 1 Corinthians 1:23 Galatians 3:13-14
Musician, comedian and writer Dave Hill returns to the Power Chord Hour to talk about the new Valley Lodge record Shadows in Paradise and lots moreDAVE HILLhttps://www.davehillonline.comhttps://www.instagram.com/mrdavehillhttp://www.valleylodgehq.comhttps://valleylodge.bandcamp.comPCHInstagram - www.instagram.com/powerchordhourTwitter - www.twitter.com/powerchordhourFacebook - www.facebook.com/powerchordhourYoutube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC6jTfzjB3-mzmWM-51c8LggSpotify Episode Playlists - https://open.spotify.com/user/kzavhk5ghelpnthfby9o41gnr?si=4WvOdgAmSsKoswf_HTh_MgDonate to help show costs -https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/pchanthonyhttps://cash.app/$anthmerchpowerchordhour@gmail.comCheck out the Power Chord Hour radio show every Friday night at 8 to 11 est/Tuesday Midnight to 3 est on 107.9 WRFA in Jamestown, NY. Stream the station online at wrfalp.com/streaming/ or listen on the WRFA app.Special Thanks to my buddy Jay Vics for the behind the scenes help on this episode!https://www.meettheexpertspodcast.comhttps://www.jvimobile.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The imports found a ready spot for their idols: “the high places which the Samaritans had made” (2 Ki 17:29)!
It's swim time in the neighborhood, and Mindy is getting ready to fill her pool! Will she fill it with a liquid, a solid, or both?! Join Mindy, Guy Raz, and Dennis as they explore a rule defying non-newtonian fluid that's full of surprises! It's the Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and Wow in the world of Oobleck! Originally aired 5/11/20.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Finally! The land that God promised the Israelites was in sight! Moses has died and it's up to Joshua to lead the people into the promised land. With the Lord on his side, success would follow. In this series, we will get a birds-eye view of Joshua's journey of faith in the wilderness and into the promise land.
Have you really made the decision to go all out on what your dreams are or are you still messing around? This quick message will shake you back into reality and help you decide to make the decision, whether you look crazy or not!
For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a two-episode look at the song “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”. This week we take a short look at the song’s writers, Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and the first released version by Gladys Knight and the Pips. In two weeks time we’ll take a longer look at the sixties career of the song’s most famous performer, Marvin Gaye. This episode is quite a light one. That one… won’t be. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on “Bend Me Shape Me” by Amen Corner. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources Mixcloud will be up with the next episode. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. Motown: The Golden Years is another Motown encyclopaedia. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 693 tracks released on Motown singles. For information on Marvin Gaye, and his relationship with Norman Whitfield, I relied on Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz. I’ve also used information on Whitfield in Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, I’ve also referred to interviews with Whitfield and Strong archived at rocksbackpages.com , notably “The Norman Whitfield interview”, John Abbey, Blues & Soul, 1 February 1977 For information about Gladys Knight, I’ve used her autobiography. The best collection of Gladys Knight and the Pips’ music is this 3-CD set, but the best way to hear Motown hits is in the context of other Motown hits. This five-CD box set contains the first five in the Motown Chartbusters series of British compilations. The Pips’ version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” is on disc 2, while Marvin Gaye’s is on disc 3, which is famously generally considered one of the best single-disc various artists compilations ever. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a brief note — this episode contains some brief mentions of miscarriage and drug abuse. The history of modern music would be immeasurably different had it not been for one car breakdown. Norman Whitfield spent the first fifteen years of his life in New York, never leaving the city, until his grandmother died. She’d lived in LA, and that was where the funeral was held, and so the Whitfield family got into a car and drove right across the whole continent — two thousand five hundred miles — to attend the old lady’s funeral. And then after the funeral, they turned round and started to drive home again. But they only got as far as Detroit when the car, understandably, gave up the ghost. Luckily, like many Black families, they had family in Detroit, and Norman’s aunt was not only willing to put the family up for a while, but her husband was able to give Norman’s father a job in his drug store while he saved up enough money to pay for the car to be fixed. But as it happened, the family liked Detroit, and they never did get around to driving back home to New York. Young Norman in particular took to the city’s nightlife, and soon as well as going to school he was working an evening job at a petrol station — but that was only to supplement the money he made as a pool hustler. Young Norman Whitfield was never going to be the kind of person who took a day job, and so along with his pool he started hanging out with musicians — in particular with Popcorn and the Mohawks, a band led by Popcorn Wylie. [Excerpt: Popcorn and the Mohawks, “Shimmy Gully”] Popcorn and the Mohawks were a band of serious jazz musicians, many of whom, including Wylie himself, went on to be members of the Funk Brothers, the team of session players that played on Motown’s hits — though Wylie would depart Motown fairly early after a falling out with Berry Gordy. They were some of the best musicians in Detroit at the time, and Whitfield would tag along with the group and play tambourine, and sometimes other hand percussion instruments. He wasn’t a serious musician at that point, just hanging out with a bunch of people who were, who were a year or two older than him. But he was learning — one thing that everyone says about Norman Whitfield in his youth is that he was someone who would stand on the periphery of every situation, not getting involved, but soaking in everything that the people around him were doing, and learning from them. And soon, he was playing percussion on sessions. At first, this wasn’t for Motown, but everything in the Detroit music scene connected back to the Gordy family in one way or another. In this case, the label was Thelma Records, which was formed by Berry Gordy’s ex-mother-in-law and named after Gordy’s first wife, who he had recently divorced. Of all the great Motown songwriters and producers, Whitfield’s life is the least-documented, to the extent that the chronology of his early career is very vague and contradictory, and Thelma was such a small label there even seems to be some dispute about when it existed — different sources give different dates, and while Whitfield always said he worked for Thelma records, he might have actually been employed by another label owned by the same people, Ge Ge, which might have operated earlier — but by most accounts Whitfield quickly progressed from session tambourine player to songwriter. According to an article on Whitfield from 1977, the first record of one of his songs was “Alone” by Tommy Storm on Thelma Records, but that record seems not to exist — however, some people on a soul message board, discussing this a few years ago, found an interview with a member of a group called The Fabulous Peps which also featured Storm, saying that their record on Ge Ge Records, “This Love I Have For You”, is a rewrite of that song by Don Davis, Thelma’s head of A&R, though the credit on the label for that is just to Davis and Ron Abner, another member of the group: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Peps, “This Love I Have For You”] So that might, or might not, be the first Norman Whitfield song ever to be released. The other song often credited as Whitfield’s first released song is “Answer Me” by Richard Street and the Distants — Street was another member of the Fabulous Peps, but we’ve encountered him and the Distants before when talking about the Temptations — the Distants were the group that Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant had been in before forming the Temptations — and indeed Street would much later rejoin his old bandmates in the Temptations, when Whitfield was producing for them. Unlike the Fabulous Peps track, this one was clearly credited to N. Whitfield, so whatever happened with the Storm track, this is almost certainly Whitfield’s first official credit as a songwriter: [Excerpt: Richard Street and the Distants, “Answer Me”] He was soon writing songs for a lot of small labels — most of which appear to have been recorded by the Thelma team and then licensed out — like “I’ve Gotten Over You” by the Sonnettes: [Excerpt: The Sonnettes, “I’ve Gotten Over You”] That was on KO Records, distributed by Scepter, and was a minor local hit — enough to finally bring Whitfield to the attention of Berry Gordy. According to many sources, Whitfield had been hanging around Hitsville for months trying to get a job with the label, but as he told the story in 1977 “Berry Gordy had sent Mickey Stevenson over to see me about signing with the company as an exclusive in-house writer and producer. The first act I was assigned to was Marvin Gaye and he had just started to become popular.” That’s not quite how the story went. According to everyone else, he was constantly hanging around Hitsville, getting himself into sessions and just watching them, and pestering people to let him get involved. Rather than being employed as a writer and producer, he was actually given a job in Motown’s quality control department for fifteen dollars a week, listening to potential records and seeing which ones he thought were hits, and rating them before they went to the regular department meetings for feedback from the truly important people. But he was also allowed to write songs. His first songwriting credit on a Motown record wasn’t Marvin Gaye, as Whitfield would later tell the story, but was in fact for the far less prestigious Mickey Woods — possibly the single least-known artist of Motown’s early years. Woods was a white teenager, the first white male solo artist signed to Motown, who released two novelty teen-pop singles. Whitfield’s first Motown song was the B-side to Woods’ second single, a knock-off of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” called “They Call Me Cupid”, co-written with Berry Gordy and Brian Holland: [Excerpt: Mickey Woods, “They Call Me Cupid”] Unsurprisingly that didn’t set the world on fire, and Whitfield didn’t get another Motown label credit for thirteen months (though some of his songs for Thelma may have come out in this period). When he did, it was as co-writer with Mickey Stevenson — and, for the first time, sole producer — of the first single for a new singer, Kim Weston: [Excerpt: Kim Weston, “It Should Have Been Me”] As it turned out, that wasn’t a hit, but the flip-side, “Love Me All The Way”, co-written by Stevenson (who was also Weston’s husband) and Barney Ales, did become a minor hit, making the R&B top thirty. After that, Whitfield was on his way. It was only a month later that he wrote his first song for the Temptations, a B-side, “The Further You Look, The Less You See”: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “The Further You Look, The Less You See”] That was co-written with Smokey Robinson, and as we heard in the episode on “My Girl”, both Robinson and Whitfield vied with each other for the job of Temptations writer and producer. As we also heard in that episode, Robinson got the majority of the group’s singles for the next couple of years, but Whitfield would eventually take over from him. Whitfield’s work with the Temptations is probably his most important work as a writer and producer, and the Temptations story is intertwined deeply with this one, but for the most part I’m going to save discussion of Whitfield’s work with the group until we get to 1972, so bear with me if I seem to skim over that — and if I repeat myself in a couple of years when we get there. Whitfield’s first major success, though, was also the first top ten hit for Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”] “Pride and Joy” had actually been written and recorded before the Kim Weston and Temptations tracks, and was intended as album filler — it was written during a session by Whitfield, Gaye, and Mickey Stevenson who was also the producer of the track, and recorded in the same session as it was written, with Martha and the Vandellas on backing vocals. The intended hit from the session, “Hitch-Hike”, we covered in the previous episode on Gaye, but that was successful enough that an album, That Stubborn Kinda Fellow, was released, with “Pride and Joy” on it. A few months later Gaye recut his lead vocal, over the same backing track, and the record was released as a single, reaching number ten on the pop charts and number two R&B: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”] Whitfield had other successes as well, often as B-sides. “The Girl’s Alright With Me”, the B-side to Smokey Robinson’s hit for the Temptations “I’ll Be In Trouble”, went to number forty on the R&B chart in its own right: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “The Girl’s Alright With Me”] That was co-written with Eddie Holland, and Holland and Whitfield had a minor songwriting partnership at this time, with Holland writing lyrics and Whitfield the music. Eddie Holland even released a Holland and Whitfield collaboration himself during his brief attempt at a singing career — “I Couldn’t Cry if I Wanted To” was a song they wrote for the Temptations, who recorded it but then left it on the shelf for four years, so Holland put out his own version, again as a B-side: [Excerpt: Eddie Holland, “I Couldn’t Cry if I Wanted To”] Whitfield was very much a B-side kind of songwriter and producer at this point — but this could be to his advantage. In January 1963, around the same time as all these other tracks, he cut a filler track with the “no-hit Supremes”, “He Means the World to Me”, which was left on the shelf until they needed a B-side eighteen months later and pulled it out and released it: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “He Means the World to Me”] But the track that that was a B-side to was “Where Did Our Love Go?”, and at the time you could make a lot of money from writing the B-side to a hit that big. Indeed, at first, Whitfield made more money from “Where Did Our Love Go?” than Holland, Dozier, or Holland, because he got a hundred percent of the songwriters’ share for his side of the record, while they had to split their share three ways. Slowly Whitfield moved from being a B-side writer to being an A-side writer. With Eddie Holland he was given a chance at a Temptations A-side for the first time, with “Girl, (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”] He also wrote for Jimmy Ruffin, but in 1964 it was with girl groups that Whitfield was doing his best work. With Mickey Stevenson he wrote “Needle in a Haystack” for the Velvettes: [Excerpt: The Velvettes, “Needle in a Haystack”] He wrote their classic followup “He Was Really Sayin' Somethin’” with Stevenson and Eddie Holland, and with Holland he also wrote “Too Many Fish in the Sea” for the Marvelettes: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Too Many Fish In The Sea”] By late 1964, Whitfield wasn’t quite in the first rank of Motown songwriter-producers with Holland-Dozier-Holland and Smokey Robinson, but he was in the upper part of the second tier with Mickey Stevenson and Clarence Paul. And by early 1966, as we saw in the episode on “My Girl”, he had achieved what he’d wanted for four years, and become the Temptations’ primary writer and producer. As I said, we’re going to look at Whitfield’s time working with the Temptations later, but in 1966 and 67 they were the act he was most associated with, and in particular, he collaborated with Eddie Holland on three top ten hits for the group in 1966. But as we discussed in the episode on “I Can’t Help Myself”, Holland’s collaborations with Whitfield eventually caused problems for Holland with his other collaborators, when he won the BMI award for writing the most hit songs, depriving his brother and Lamont Dozier of their share of the award because his outside collaborations put him ahead of them. While Whitfield *could* write songs by himself, and had in the past, he was at his best as a collaborator — as well as his writing partnership with Eddie Holland he’d written with Mickey Stevenson, Marvin Gaye, and Janie Bradford. And so when Holland told him he was no longer able to work together, Whitfield started looking for someone else who could write lyrics for him, and he soon found someone: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Money”] Barrett Strong had, of course, been the very first Motown act to have a major national hit, with “Money”, but as we discussed in the episode on that song he had been unable to have a follow-up hit, and had actually gone back to working on an assembly line for a while. But when you’ve had a hit as big as “Money”, working on an assembly line loses what little lustre it has, and Strong soon took himself off to New York and started hanging around the Brill Building, where he hooked up with Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, the writers of such hits as “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “Viva Las Vegas”, “Sweets for My Sweet”, and “A Teenager in Love”. Pomus and Shuman, according to Strong, signed him to a management contract, and they got him signed to Atlantic’s subsidiary Atco, where he recorded one single, “Seven Sins”, written and produced by the team: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Seven Sins”] That was a flop, and Strong was dropped by the label. He bounced around a few cities before ending up in Chicago, where he signed to VeeJay Records and put out one more single as a performer, “Make Up Your Mind”, which also went nowhere: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Make Up Your Mind”] Strong had co-written that, and as his performing career was now definitively over, he decided to move into songwriting as his main job. He co-wrote “Stay in My Corner” for the Dells, which was a top thirty R&B hit for them on VeeJay in 1965 and in a remade version in 1968 became a number one R&B hit and top ten pop hit for them: [Excerpt: The Dells, “Stay in My Corner”] And on his own he wrote another top thirty R&B hit, “This Heart of Mine”, for the Artistics: [Excerpt: The Artistics, “This Heart of Mine”] He wrote several other songs that had some minor success in 1965 and 66, before moving back to Detroit and hooking up again with his old label, this time coming to them as a songwriter with a track record rather than a one-hit wonder singer. As Strong put it “They were doing my style of music then, they were doing something a little different when I left, but they were doing the more soulful, R&B-style stuff, so I thought I had a place there. So I had an idea I thought I could take back and see if they could do something with it.” That idea was the first song he wrote under his new contract, and it was co-written with Norman Whitfield. It’s difficult to know how Whitfield and Strong started writing together, or much about their writing partnership, even though it was one of the most successful songwriting teams of the era, because neither man was interviewed in any great depth, and there’s almost no long-form writing on either of them. What does seem to have been the case is that both men had been aware of each other in the late fifties, when Strong was a budding R&B star and Whitfield merely a teenager hanging round watching the cool kids. The two may even have written together before — in an example of how the chronology for both Whitfield and Strong seems to make no sense, Whitfield had cowritten a song with Marvin Gaye, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home”, in 1962 — when Strong was supposedly away from Motown — and it had been included as an album track on the That Stubborn Kinda Fellow album: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home”] The writing on that was originally credited just to Whitfield and Gaye on the labels, but it is now credited to Whitfield, Gaye, and Strong, including with BMI. Similarly Gaye’s 1965 album track “Me and My Lonely Room” — recorded in 1963 but held back – was initially credited to Whitfield alone but is now credited to Whitfield and Strong, in a strange inverse of the way “Money” initially had Strong’s credit but it was later removed. But whether this was an administrative decision made later, or whether Strong had been moonlighting for Motown uncredited in 1962 and collaborated with Whitfield, they hadn’t been a formal writing team in the way Whitfield and Holland had been, and both later seemed to date their collaboration proper as starting in 1966 when Strong returned to Motown — and understandably. The two songs they’d written earlier – if indeed they had – had been album filler, but between 1967 when the first of their new collaborations came out and 1972 when they split up, they wrote twenty-three top forty hits together. Theirs seems to have been a purely business relationship — in the few interviews with Strong he talks about Whitfield as someone he was friendly with, but Whitfield’s comments on Strong seem always to be the kind of very careful comments one would make about someone for whom one has a great deal of professional respect, a great deal of personal dislike, but absolutely no wish to air the dirty laundry behind that dislike, or to burn bridges that don’t need burning. Either way, Whitfield was in need of a songwriting partner when Barrett Strong walked into a Motown rehearsal room, and recognised that Strong’s talents were complementary to his. So he told Strong, straight out, “I’ve had quite a few hit records already. If you write with me, I can guarantee you you’ll make at least a hundred thousand dollars a year” — though he went on to emphasise that that wasn’t a guarantee-guarantee, and would depend on Strong putting the work in. Strong agreed, and the first idea he brought in for his new team earned both of them more than that hundred thousand dollars by itself. Strong had been struck by the common phrase “I heard it through the grapevine”, and started singing that line over some Ray Charles style gospel chords. Norman Whitfield knew a hook when he heard one, and quickly started to build a full song around Strong’s line. Initially, by at least some accounts, they wanted to place the song with the Isley Brothers, who had just signed to Motown and had a hit with the Holland-Dozier-Holland song “This Old Heart of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)”] For whatever reason, the Isley Brothers didn’t record the song, or if they did no copy of the recording has ever surfaced, though it does seem perfectly suited to their gospel-inflected style. The Isleys did, though, record another early Whitfield and Strong song, “That’s the Way Love Is”, which came out in 1967 as a flop single, but would later be covered more successfully by Marvin Gaye: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “That’s the Way Love Is”] Instead, the song was first recorded by the Miracles. And here the story becomes somewhat murky. We have a recording by the Miracles, released on an album two years later, but some have suggested that that version isn’t the same recording they made in 1966 when Whitfield and Strong wrote the song originally: [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] It certainly sounds to my ears like that is probably the version of the song the group recorded in 66 — it sounds, frankly, like a demo for the later, more famous version. All the main elements are there — notably the main Ray Charles style hook played simultaneously on Hammond organ and electric piano, and the almost skanking rhythm guitar stabs — but Smokey Robinson’s vocal isn’t *quite* passionate enough, the tempo is slightly off, and the drums don’t have the same cavernous rack tom sound that they have in the more famous version. If you weren’t familiar with the eventual hit, it would sound like a classic Motown track, but as it is it’s missing something… [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] According to at least some sources, that was presented to the quality control team — the team in which Whitfield had started his career, as a potential single, but they dismissed it. It wasn’t a hit, and Berry Gordy said it was one of the worst songs he’d ever heard. But Whitfield knew the song was a hit, and so he went back into the studio and cut a new backing track: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine (backing track only)”] (Incidentally, no official release of the instrumental backing track for “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” exists, and I had to put that one together myself by taking the isolated parts someone had uploaded to youtube and synching them back together in editing software, so if there are some microsecond-level discrepancies between the instruments there, that’s on me, not on the Funk Brothers.) That track was originally intended for the Temptations, with whom Whitfield was making a series of hits at the time, but they never recorded it at the time. Whitfield did produce a version for them as an album track a couple of years later though, so we have an idea how they might have taken the song vocally — though by then David Ruffin had been replaced in the group by Dennis Edwards: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] But instead of giving the song to the Temptations, Whitfield kept it back for Marvin Gaye, the singer with whom he’d had his first big breakthrough hit and for whom his two previous collaborations with Strong – if collaborations they were – had been written. Gaye and Whitfield didn’t get on very well — indeed, it seems that Whitfield didn’t get on very well with *anyone* — and Gaye would later complain about the occasions when Whitfield produced his records, saying “Norman and I came within a fraction of an inch of fighting. He thought I was a prick because I wasn't about to be intimidated by him. We clashed. He made me sing in keys much higher than I was used to. He had me reaching for notes that caused my throat veins to bulge.” But Gaye sang the song fantastically, and Whitfield was absolutely certain they had a sure-fire hit: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] But once again the quality control department refused to release the track. Indeed, it was Berry Gordy personally who decided, against the wishes of most of the department by all accounts, that instead of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” Gaye’s next single should be a Holland-Dozier-Holland track, “Your Unchanging Love”, a soundalike rewrite of their earlier hit for him, “How Sweet It Is”. “Your Unchanging Love” made the top thirty, but was hardly a massive success. Gordy has later claimed that he always liked “Grapevine” but just thought it was a bit too experimental for Gaye’s image at the time, but reports from others who were there say that what Gordy actually said was “it sucks”. So “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was left on the shelf, and the first fruit of the new Whitfield/Strong team to actually get released was “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got”, written for Jimmy Ruffin, the brother of Temptations lead singer David, who had had one big hit, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” and one medium one, “I’ve Passed This Way Before”, in 1966. Released in 1967, “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got” became Ruffin’s third and final hit, making number 29: [Excerpt: Jimmy Ruffin, “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got”] But Whitfield was still certain that “Grapevine” could be a hit. And then in 1967, a few months after he’d shelved Gaye’s version, came the record that changed everything in soul: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, “Respect”] Whitfield was astounded by that record, but also became determined he was going to “out-funk Aretha”, and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was going to be the way to do it. And he knew someone who thought she could do just that. Gladys Knight never got on well with Aretha Franklin. According to Knight’s autobiography this was one-sided on Franklin’s part, and Knight was always friendly to Franklin, but it’s also notable that she says the same about several other of the great sixties female soul singers (though not all of them by any means), and there seems to be a general pattern among those singers that they felt threatened by each other and that their own position in the industry was precarious, in a way the male singers usually didn’t. But Knight claimed she always *wished* she got on well with Franklin, because the two had such similar lives. They’d both started out singing gospel as child performers before moving on to the chitlin circuit at an early age, though Knight started her singing career even younger than Franklin did. Knight was only four when she started performing solos in church, and by the age of eight she had won the two thousand dollar top prize on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour by singing Brahms’ “Lullaby” and the Nat “King” Cole hit “Too Young”: [Excerpt: Nat “King” Cole, “Too Young”] That success inspired her, and she soon formed a vocal group with her brother Bubba, sister Brenda and their cousins William and Eleanor Guest. They named themselves the Pips in honour of a cousin whose nickname that was, and started performing at talent contests in Atlanta Chitlin’ Circuit venues. They soon got a regular gig at one of them, the Peacock, despite them all being pre-teens at the time. The Pips also started touring, and came to the attention of Maurice King, the musical director of the Flame nightclub in Detroit, who became a vocal coach for the group. King got the group signed to Brunswick records, where they released their first single, a song King had written called “Whistle My Love”: [Excerpt: The Pips, “Whistle My Love”] According to Knight that came out in 1955, when she was eleven, but most other sources have it coming out in 1958. The group’s first two singles flopped, and Brenda and Eleanor quit the group, being replaced by another cousin, Edward Patten, and an unrelated singer Langston George, leaving Knight as the only girl in the quintet. While the group weren’t successful on records, they were getting a reputation live and toured on package tours with Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and others. Knight also did some solo performances with a jazz band led by her music teacher, and started dating that band’s sax player, Jimmy Newman. The group’s next recording was much more successful. They went into a makeshift studio owned by a local club owner, Fats Hunter, and recorded what they thought was a demo, a version of the Johnny Otis song “Every Beat of My Heart”: [Excerpt: The Pips, “Every Beat of My Heart (HunTom version)”] The first they knew that Hunter had released that on his own small label was when they heard it on the radio. The record was picked up by VeeJay records, and it ended up going to number one on the R&B charts and number six on the pop charts, but they never saw any royalties from it. It brought them to the attention of another small label, Fury Records, which got them to rerecord the song, and that version *also* made the R&B top twenty and got as high as number forty-five on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Every Beat of My Heart (Fury version)”] However, just because they had a contract with Fury didn’t mean they actually got any more money, and Knight has talked about the label’s ownership being involved with gangsters. That was the first recording to be released as by “Gladys Knight and the Pips”, rather than just The Pips, and they would release a few more singles on Fury, including a second top twenty pop hit, the Don Covay song “Letter Full of Tears”: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Letter Full of Tears”] But Knight had got married to Newman, who was by now the group’s musical director, after she fell pregnant when she was sixteen and he was twenty. However, that first pregnancy tragically ended in miscarriage, and when she became pregnant again she decided to get off the road to reduce the risk. She spent a couple of years at home, having two children, while the other Pips – minus George who left soon after – continued without her to little success. But her marriage was starting to deteriorate under pressure of Newman’s drug use — they wouldn’t officially divorce until 1972, but they were already feeling the pressure, and would split up sooner rather than later — and Knight returned to the stage, initially as a solo artist or duetting with Jerry Butler, but soon rejoining the Pips, who by this time were based in New York and working with the choreographer Cholly Atkins to improve their stagecraft. For the next few years the Pips drifted from label to label, scoring one more top forty hit in 1964 with Van McCoy’s “Giving Up”, but generally just getting by like so many other acts on the circuit. Eventually the group ended up moving to Detroit, and hooking up with Motown, where mentors like Cholly Atkins and Maurice King were already working. At first they thought they were taking a step up, but they soon found that they were a lower tier Motown act, considered on a par with the Spinners or the Contours rather than the big acts, and according to Knight they got pulled off an early Motown package tour because Diana Ross, with whom like Franklin Knight had something of a rivalry, thought they were too good on stage and were in danger of overshadowing her. Knight says in her autobiography that they “formed a little club of our own with some of the other malcontents” with Martha Reeves, Marvin Gaye, and someone she refers to as “Ivory Joe Hunter” but I presume she means Ivy Jo Hunter (one of the big problems when dealing with R&B musicians of this era is the number of people with similar names. Ivy Jo Hunter, Joe Hunter, and Ivory Joe Hunter were all R&B musicians for whom keyboard was their primary instrument, and both Ivy Jo and just plain Joe worked for Motown at different points, but Ivory Joe never did) Norman Whitfield was also part of that group of “malcontents”, and he was also the producer of the Pips’ first few singles for Motown, and so when he was looking for someone to outdo Aretha, someone with something to prove, he turned to them. He gave the group the demo tape, and they worked out a vocal arrangement for a radically different version of the song, one inspired by “Respect”: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] The third time was the charm, and quality control finally agreed to release “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” as a single. Gladys Knight always claimed it had no promotion, but Norman Whitfield’s persistence had paid off — the single went to number two on the pop charts (kept off the top by “Daydream Believer”), number one on the R&B charts, and became Motown’s biggest-selling single *ever* up until that point. It also got Knight a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female — though the Grammy committee, at least, didn’t think she’d out-Aretha’d Aretha, as “Respect” won the award. And that, sadly, sort of summed up Gladys Knight and the Pips at Motown — they remained not quite the winners in everything. There’s no shame in being at number two behind a classic single like “Daydream Believer”, and certainly no shame in losing the Grammy to Aretha Franklin at her best, but until they left Motown in 1972 and started their run of hits on Buddah records, Gladys Knight and the Pips would always be in other people’s shadow. That even extended to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” when, as we’ll hear in part two of this story, Norman Whitfield’s persistence paid off, Marvin Gaye’s version got released as a single, and *that* became the biggest-selling single on Motown ever, outselling the Pips version and making it forever his song, not theirs. And as a final coda to the story of Gladys Knight and the Pips at Motown, while they were touring off the back of “Grapevine’s” success, the Pips ran into someone they vaguely knew from his time as a musician in the fifties, who was promoting a group he was managing made up of his sons. Knight thought they had something, and got in touch with Motown several times trying to get them to sign the group, but she was ignored. After a few attempts, though, Bobby Taylor of another second-tier Motown group, the Vancouvers, also saw them and got in touch with Motown, and this time they got signed. But that story wasn’t good enough for Motown, and so neither Taylor nor Knight got the credit for discovering the group. Instead when Joe Jackson’s sons’ band made their first album, it was titled Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5. But that, of course, is a story for another time…
Subject: Bible Class Speaker or Performer: Bro Marty McMillin Scripture Passage(s): Luke 24:44-53 Date of Delivery: April 7, 2024
Lynette and Stefanie open the show by asking Caelan about a poor restaurant experience he had over the weekend. Then the ladies talk about The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, along with a few other things they've watched. After that, Stefanie talks about how positive the kid's winter break was. Before they wrap, Stefanie shares an unfortunate experience she had on someone else podcasts while trying to promote her new book. And thanks for supporting today's sponsors: Quince.com/FCOL & GreenChef.com/60fcol enter 60fcol Follow us on all social media channels @FCOLpodcast Full guest episodes are available on our Youtube channel Youtube.com/@FCOLpodcast And sign up for our Patreon page here for bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/FCOL
Pastor Levi Lusko preaches on what to do with the intrusive thoughts, the pulls of this world, and the war between flesh and spirit. The kind of person you're going to become will be determined by the kind of thoughts you're going to think, so we're learning to stay in step with the spirit and lift our eyes on things above.
Pastor Levi Lusko preaches on what to do with the intrusive thoughts, the pulls of this world, and the war between flesh and spirit. The kind of person you're going to become will be determined by the kind of thoughts you're going to think, so we're learning to stay in step with the spirit and lift our eyes on things above.
Contact Carey at carey@careygreen.com ---------- I encourage you to also share your need for inclusion in our Friday prayer episodes, so more people in the Morning Mindset family can be praying about it. You can remain anonymous if you like. Please go to https://MorningMindsetMedia.com/prayer if you'd like to do so! ----------