Can I Get a Witness Classic Rock Song

Songfacts®:

• Gaye wrote many of his own hits, just "Can I Get A Witness" was written by the famous Motown team of Eddie Kingdom of the netherlands, Lamont Dozier and Brian The netherlands. The title is a phrase unremarkably used in black churches and has a very spiritual connotation: When the preacher asks, "Can I become a witness," he's request the congregation for affirmation, ofttimes met with the response of "Amen!" This vocal helped popularize the phrase.

  All three members of the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting squad had a background in gospel music. Dozier explained to NME in 1984: "That was the thing a lot of black people played; a lot of gospel music and a lot of classical. When I was coming upward, my aunt played piano and my grandma instructed her what to sing in church since she was one of the church's directors. My aunt played different classical music and I recall sitting on the stool and she would serenade me with these tunes and they sort of stuck with me, influenced me throughout the years. The gospel music on the other manus influenced myself and the Holland brothers because it was the thing you lot had to do every Lord's day – go to church. Blackness gospel music was part of the lifestyle."

• They're barely audible, but The Supremes added background vocals on this runway along with the song'southward writers, Holland-Dozier-Holland. The telephone call-and-response style mimicked a church congregation shouting back to the preacher.

  The Supremes had a lot of support from Motown head Drupe Gordy, but no hits to bear witness for it when this song was recorded in September 1963. Holland-Dozier-Holland had some success with songs like "(Dearest Is Like a) Rut Moving ridge" and "Y'all Lost the Sweetest Male child," simply no #1s. That inverse in 1964 when H-D-H wrote "Where Did Our Love Go," and The Supremes very reluctantly recorded it. The songwriting trio ended up writing nine more than chart-toppers for the grouping, which became the biggest female act on Motown. In 1973, Diana Ross – by so the "outset lady of Motown" – and Marvin Gaye released the duets anthology called Diana & Marvin.

• The Holland-Dozier-Kingdom of the netherlands squad also wrote Gaye's hit "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You." With Gaye, they wrote songs in keys that were higher than he was comfortable singing, which got him into his falsetto. "We would stretch it a key college, or even half a key higher, so it was out of his comfort zone and when he sang it, he could develop his own style and make the song his," Lamont Dozier told Songfacts.

• The Rolling Stones covered this in 1965. They recorded "Now I've Got a Witness," one of the first songs Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote, at the same session, using the keyboard riff from this for inspiration. The Stones also covered Gaye's "Hitch Hike" in 1965. Says bass player Bill Wyman: "Andrew Oldham was always pushing u.s.a. to go united states of america to do Motown things similar 'Can I Become a Witness?' And he was right as well; he was more right than we were. And, of course, when Mick and Keith got into writing, the songs came out more like he was looking for. Keith was ever more into Soul music than me or Charlie, and Mick loved soul performers like Wilson Pickett and James Brown." >>

  Proposition credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France

• A cover version was a The states #39 hit for Lee Michaels in 1971. This is the only other version of the song to make the Hot 100.

• Elton John played this to close out his ready at Live Help in 1985. His performance from the London stage was a highlight of the concert.

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Source: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/marvin-gaye/can-i-get-a-witness

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