Mojo - The Music Magazine

It isn't easy to think of another couple who've been, well, a couple for quite this long in popular music. They met in the early '60s at Harlem's White Rock Baptist Church, he a 21-year-old dance graduate, she a 17-year-old music student. They began writing songs and in 1966 had a first hit, the Ray Charles version of Let's Go Get Stoned. They'd never be that louche again. Snapped up by Motown, they produced a string of love songs for Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell and Diana Ross, with and without The Supremes: Ain't No Mountain High Enough, You're All I Need To Get By, Reach Out And Touch (Somebody's Hand), Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing, Good Lovin' Ain't Easy To Come By, You Precious Love.

They did the decent thing and got married in the early '70s, by which time Val had released solo albums on Motown, and to ensure Terrell's family got some money after her death sang Tammi's parts on Easy, the final duet album Gaye/Terrell before Tammi's death. In the '70s Ashford & Simpson became a major soul act under their own name thanks to albums such as Send It and Is It Still Good To Ya. Their best songs are all implacably, almost insufferably positive about love and relationships - only the odd diamond of heartbreak, such as Gladys Knight's incandescent version of Didn't You Know You'd Have To Cry Sometime, suggests a harsh word ever troubled this longest running saga of lurve birds. [GB]