The Temptations’ Dennis Edwards resented the opening line of the Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong–penned “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” The reason was that his own father, a preacher wholly unlike the cretin immortalized in the song, had passed away on a Sept. 3, making horribly uncomfortable that opening line: “It was the third of September/ That day I’ll always remember/ ‘Cause that was the day that my daddy died.” But he sang it with just the right amount of clenched grit in his vocal to help the Temptations score a No. 1 hit in 1973.
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