I figure you’d know the backstory, LV since you’re very savvy about nearly everything, especially music.
They used tracks and recorded instruments and vocals separately and then engineered them together.
The version of this tune you're referencing was a cover. There is a mildly interesting article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_Was_a_Rollin'_Stone
BTW: Intelligentsia is not a big word for FReepers.
I remember the extended version of that song well. I used to have it on vinyl many moons ago. One of the best late night listening jams ever.
A lot of the magic you hear in there is plain old top notch editing and mixing by the Motown engineers and producers. The reverb effects weren’t hard to achieve in the right sized room. It could even be simulated with tape delays and such.
Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong were the chief producers of Motown artists in that day. They were beginning to stretch out and experiment with the standard top forty format of the day. Lots of experimental things were going on in the studios, and creativity was suddenly turned up to 11 (as we used to say).
A couple of interesting facts about that song. First, the Temptations version was the second one. It was originally done by The Undisputed Truth in 1971, but didn’t do well, so the Temps redid it a year later.
Also Dennis Edwards of the Temptations at first refused to do it because of the line “It was the third of September/That day I’ll always remember/’cause that was the day/that my daddy died”. He said that was the date his dad actually did die, and thought the writers did it on purpose. He finally did the song. As it turned out he misremembered, his dad actually died on Oct. 3.
Why do you say that? Are painting a target on yourself?
They used strings, but don’t know who they got. Most likely the engineer was Tony Bongiovi, Jon Bon Jovi’s cousin, who was the first (and only, for a while) white engineer at Motown. One of the classic techniques was massive layering (made popular by Phil Spector and Shadow Morton) which had multiple guitarists, even drummers, playing the same thing. It gave a much rounder and richer effect than the later synthesized technique because by nature even the best human musicians are never perfectly in synch. This produces a warmth and thickness that cannot be replicated by a computer, which has more perfect calibration.