("Tell Me More"/NPR) Grammy-award winning song writer Norman Whitfield, known for co-writing such hits as "Papa was a Rolling Stone" and "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" passed away yesterday at the age of 67. Host Michel Martin offers a remembrance of Whitfield, who had an expansive career churning out hit music. (AP)...Norman Whitfield, songwriter and producer who co-wrote a string of Motown classics including "War," "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," has died. He was 67. A spokeswoman at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Whitfield died there Tuesday. He suffered from complications of diabetes and had recently emerged from a coma, The Detroit Free Press reported. The New York-born Whitfield was a longtime Motown producer who during the 1960s and '70s injected rock and psychedelic touches into the label's soul music. Many of his biggest hits were co-written with Barrett Strong, with whom he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004. He and Strong won the Grammy in 1972 for best R&B song for the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." Many of Whitfield's songs from late '60s and early '70s have a strong political tone, including the Temptations' 1970 "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)," and Edwin Starr's 1970 "War." In his only No. 1 hit, Starr sings in an anguished voice that war is "a heartbreaker, friend only to the undertaker. ... What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" Whitfield produced as well as co-wrote the song. Among Whitfield's other songs were "Cloud Nine," "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" and "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)," all hits for the Temptations; and "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby," a 1969 hit for Marvin Gaye. The group Undisputed Truth had a top five hit in 1971 with Whitfield and Strong's "Smiling Faces Sometimes." Whitfield "was able to go beyond R&B cliches with punchy melodies and arrangements and topical lyrics," Joe McEwen and Jim Miller wrote in "The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll." Whitfield won another Grammy in 1976 for best original TV or motion picture score for "Car Wash." The movie's theme song was a No. 1 hit for Rose Royce and a Golden Globe nominee for best original song.

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