Inner Life – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (Larry Levan mix)

As genre defining classics go it’s hard to look past Marvin Gaye’s Ain’t no Mountain High Enough as a candidate for an exemplary Motown soul song. Penned in 1966 by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson and released on Tamla (a subsidiary of Motown Records) the next year. The song is a duet between Gaye and Tammi Terrell and tells of the Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

While the song has been covered a number of times (notably by Diana Ross and The Supremes and the Temptations), the version I want to focus on is 1981’s disco reimagining by Inner Life. Inner Life comprised of Patrick Adams and Greg Carmichael with the legendary Jocelyn Brown adding vocals and Larry Levan on production duties. Let’s start by taking a quick look at the original.

Intros and Verses

In the original 1967 version the intro and the verse follow the same harmonic progression, a four bar chord loop outlined by the excellent James Jamerson bass line, pizzicato strings and celeste on top of Uriel Jones’s iconic drum beat. The chords descend from D6/A, E7/G#, Gmaj7, Bm7, Em7 to G7. Here’s the intro:

The right hand part, played on a celesta but augmented by pizzicato strings and later piano and guitar is an alarmingly simple triad of B and A that alternates adding the F#, G# G or F to fill in the chords. The iconic descending bass pattern walks from A (5th of D) to G# (3rd of E7) to G (root of Gmaj7).

For context here’s the verse. Marvin and Tammi exchange phrases, after the first four bars more of the band enters.

The 1981 version is actually two semitones lower. For the purpose of this article I’ve transposed it up to be in the same key as the original. The verses aren’t radically different; the instrumentation is more akin to that of classic Larry Levan disco re-edits with a stronger backbeat with a kick on each beat of the bar and more pronounced hi-hats, percussion and claps on two and four. The bass follows a similar pattern to the original. There’s a fuller string arrangement, piano and guitar.

Vamp

In the Inner Life version there’s an instrumental loop that plays before the verses. This is original and not found in the Marvin Gaye version. The B7sus4 chord is stabbed, which I’ve left out for clarity/tidiness reasons. The other chords are all heavily accenting the off beats.

I’d be fascinated to know where this style of harmony derived from, it’s non-diatonic and similar to parallel harmony/planing but borrows a lot from Gospel. This kind of successive major sevenths can be heard in fusion of the 70s, take for example Weather Rerport’s Havona, from Heavy Weather:

Chorus

In the original version the chorus repeats a two bar loop of Gmaj7, Em7, F#m7, Bm7 three times. In bars seven and eight there’s a E followed by G. The quarter note chord stabs drive the rhythm track forward, accented by very on-the-nose snares on the beat, a typical feature of early Motown records.

Inner Life’s chorus differs, which for me really drew me into this version of the track. It has a lot of traits we associate with soulful house. The Emaj9 is not diatonic, but it’s the chord that makes the progression unique. Notice the melody hasn’t been radically altered, instead of “enough” descending to an F# it goes up to the B. Both would work though, as they are chord tones of Emaj9.

The other feature of this that out of the ordinary is the bar of three. This sort of arrangement feature began to be phased out the more house music became associated with sequencers, drum machines and latterly computers. The focus on simple beat-mixing meant these odd bar tags weren’t practical for DJs.

I’ve recently discovered this excellent YouTube channel focused on bass. This version compares Marvin’s version with the 1970 Diana Ross version: