For Once in My Life: Billie Jean Brown's Fight to Free Stevie Wonder's Take

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You know, usually when we think about those great, those joyous upbeat anthems of the 20th century, we kind of just assume they were born that way.

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

Right, like they just poured out of the songwriter, fully formed.

SPEAKER_1 (0:11)

Exactly. We picture some writer sitting at a piano, totally energized, just banging out a fast paced rhythm because they are overflowing with happiness.

SPEAKER_2 (0:21)

Yeah, it's a nice image.

SPEAKER_1 (0:22)

But what if I told you that one of the most famous, like universally recognized, platinum-selling soul anthems of the 1960s was actually born as a slow, sentimental, almost melancholic ballad?

SPEAKER_2 (0:35)

It really is a massive contradiction. You have this track that goes on to literally define a generation of joy, and its creator's boss actually thought the upbeat version was basically garbage.

SPEAKER_1 (0:46)

Not just garbage, he hated it so much that he locked the recording in a corporate vault for over a year just to prevent anyone from hearing it.

SPEAKER_2 (0:53)

Which is wild to think about now.

SPEAKER_1 (0:55)

It is. Welcome to the Deep Dive. We are thrilled to have you with us today because we're looking at something incredibly unique.

SPEAKER_2 (1:01)

We really are.

SPEAKER_1 (1:01)

We have a mountain of material tracing the history of a single iconic 1965 track which is For Once in My Life. But instead of just looking at the artist who made it famous, we are going to treat this Deep Dive as the biography of a song.

SPEAKER_2 (1:16)

A biography of a song. I love that.

SPEAKER_1 (1:17)

Right? We are going to trace its incredibly chaotic life because this is a song that was treated kind of like an unwanted movie script.

SPEAKER_2 (1:25)

Passed around from person to person.

SPEAKER_1 (1:27)

Exactly. It was stolen, it was shelved, it broke hearts, it crossed genres, and it ultimately required an internal corporate rebellion to transform into the masterpiece you probably have stuck in your head right now.

Okay, let's unpack this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_2 (1:41)

To understand how this song became an upbeat anthem, we really have to look at what it was supposed to be in the first place.

SPEAKER_1 (1:47)

Right, the original DNA.

SPEAKER_2 (1:48)

Exactly, and the brutal path it took to get there. So it all begins in 1965, inside the walls of Motown.

SPEAKER_1 (1:55)

Specifically with two songwriters, right?

SPEAKER_2 (1:57)

Yes, Ron Miller and Orlando Murden.

SPEAKER_1 (2:00)

And they weren't writing this for a specific band, which is something I think people forget about the 60s. Writing the song and singing the song were often two entirely different businesses.

SPEAKER_2 (2:08)

Oh, absolutely. Motown had a publishing wing, a division called Stein and Van Stock, literally just to create the blueprints.

SPEAKER_1 (2:15)

The sheet music.

SPEAKER_2 (2:17)

Right. They'd write the sheet music and then try to match it with the singer later.

And the crucial foundational fact for our entire biography here is that Miller and Murden designed this blueprint to be a slow ballad.

SPEAKER_1 (2:28)

That was its whole identity.

SPEAKER_2 (2:29)

It was meant to be a sweeping, emotional, sentimental crooner's tune.

So step one is writing it. Step two is finding the right voice to bring it to life.

SPEAKER_1 (2:38)

So they had to shop it around. And the very first person to record it was a contracted Motown singer named Connie Haynes.

This was in July of 1965

SPEAKER_2 (2:48)

But you are not going to find that version on the radio from that era.

SPEAKER_1 (2:51)

Nope, because Motown shelved it.

SPEAKER_2 (2:53)

It sat completely unreleased for 50 years.

SPEAKER_1 (2:56)

Half a century in a drawer.

SPEAKER_2 (2:59)

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_1 (3:00)

It really is. It didn't even see the light of day until a digital compilation in 2015

So the song is born, it gets recorded, and immediately it stalls out.

SPEAKER_2 (3:11)

Which sets the stage for the first real heartbreak of this song's biography.

SPEAKER_1 (3:15)

Yeah. Involving a fiercely talented singer named Jean DuShon.

SPEAKER_2 (3:19)

Right. So Ron Miller, the co-writer, he actually tapped DuShon to record a demo of the song, because he was still fine-tuning the composition.

SPEAKER_1 (3:25)

He just wanted to hear it out loud, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_2 (3:27)

He wanted to hear how it sounded in the room with a live vocalist. DuShon's rendition was spectacular.

SPEAKER_1 (3:33)

Oh, I bet.

SPEAKER_2 (3:34)

In fact, it was so undeniable that her version ended up getting issued as a single in October, 1966 by Chess Records on their cadet label.

SPEAKER_1 (3:43)

It was actually starting to take off too. WXYZ Radio in Detroit named it a pick hit of the week.