David Van DePitte was born in Detroit in 1941. He went to California to study music at Westlake College in Los Angeles. He played bass, trombone and a range of other instruments and started his professional career in the early sixties playing in Johnny Trudell’s band in Detroit. However, he was attracted to songwriting and, above all, arranging and conducting. He has one early credit as an arranger in 1966, but his career started in earnest in 1968, when he joined Motown. His first contributions involved arranging songs on a number of albums, and, perhaps surprisingly, given his late arrival on the scene, he was allocated songs for major artists straight away. The list is impressive: “Who’s Lovin’ You” and others from the Jackson 5’s debut album “Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5”, songs for the Supremes’ album “Cream Of The Crop”, tracks for David Ruffin’s “Feelin’ Good”, and Chuck Jackson’s single “Let Somebody Love Me”, all from 1969.
During the following year, Van DePitte arranged all the songs on the Four Tops “Changing Times” album, plus singles for R. Dean Taylor (“Indiana Wants Me”) and the Supremes (“Everybody’s Got The Right To Love”). He orchestrated and conducted “Ungena Za Ulimwengu (Unite The World)” for the Temptations and “Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)” for the Undisputed Truth. He co-wrote “How About You” with Deke Richards and Sandra Sanders for Diana Ross. He was involved in thirty-six other recordings before the end of 1970, working with a range of producers. He had quickly become a key figure in the Motown family.
David Van DePitte
Photo: Vandenbrulle (Wikimedia Commons)
In 1971, over fifty releases (singles and albums) bore a credit to David Van DePitte. He worked with everybody and wrote arrangements for tracks on some of the best albums of that year: “Where I’m Coming From” (Stevie Wonder), “Rainbow Funk” (Junior Walker & the AllStars), “Solid Rock” and “Sky’s The Limit” (The Temptations), “Touch” and “Floy Joy” (The Supremes), “Standing Ovation” (Gladys Knight & the Pips) and many singles too. The most significant of all was surely Marvin Gaye’s album “What’s Going On”, which Van DePitte arranged and conducted, playing a key role in creating the new sound that Marvin Gaye wanted. It was probably at Van DePitte’s suggestion that his old bandleader Johnny Trudell was brought in to play trumpet on the album!
The pattern continued into 1972, with a long list of credits stretching into 1973. However, in 1972 he is also credited with arranging and conducting the song “Brother, Brother” for the Shirelles, which became the B-side of their single “Sunday Dreaming” for RCA Victor. The A-side was arranged by Wade Marcus, another Motown regular. Both of them probably left Motown in 1972, as a result of the move to Los Angeles, and started working as freelance arrangers. Van DePitte went on to write for RCA and many other companies, including Karen Records in Detroit and Curtom Records in Chicago. Credits at Motown still appeared too, as songs worked their way through the system or were re-issued.
In just four years, he made a remarkable contribution to Motown’s musical output. As an indication of his all-round abilities, it is significant that he was an adjunct professor at Wayne State University between 1979 and 1983, working on the Jazz Studies programme.
Was he Motown’s Best Arranger? He was certainly one of the most prolific.
