The Undisputed Truth

Formed 1970 · Detroit · Gordy/Motown

Norman Whitfield assembled The Undisputed Truth in 1970 — Joe “Pep” Harris on lead with Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Joyce Evans — explicitly as a laboratory for his psychedelic soul production ideas. Their one big hit was “Smiling Faces Sometimes” in 1971, itself a song Whitfield had first cut with The Temptations. The traffic ran both ways: they got “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” first, in a tight three-and-a-half-minute reading, and watched it be taken back. They followed Whitfield off Motown to his own label in 1975 and broke up in the early 1980s.

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