"Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" is a song originally performed by Motown recording act the Undisputed Truth in 1972, though it became much better known after a Grammy-award winning cover by the Temptations was issued later the same year.

The edited 7-inch single release of this Temptations track was issued in September 1972, and this version was a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and won three Grammy Awards in 1973.

[6] Vocal duties are performed in a true ensemble style: Temptations singers Dennis Edwards, Melvin Franklin, Richard Street (who was a frequent fill-in for Paul Williams and his eventual replacement) and Damon Harris (who had replaced Eddie Kendricks as the group's falsetto singer the previous year) alternate vocal lines, taking the role of siblings questioning their mother about their now-dead father; their increasingly pointed questions, and the mother's repeated response ("Papa was a rollin' stone/wherever he laid his hat was his home/and when he died, all he left us was alone") paint a somber picture for the children who have never seen their father and have "never heard nothing but bad things about him."

For this mix, congas were added to bolster the song's sparse percussion; this version appeared on the 1973 Anthology triple LP.

The B-side was the instrumental backing by the Funk Brothers without the Temptations' vocals (though Damon Harris' final chorus is included after a single "Unngh!"

at the end of the second verse), this version appears on the Funk Brothers' 2003 compilation 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection.

[10] Kelefa Sanneh described the song as "nearly seven glorious minutes long (the album version was twelve) sustained by little more than a perfect bassline and a few artfully placed hand claps.

A towering monument out of tense hi-hats and pulsating bass and shivering strings and hard-strutting chicken-scratch guitars and panicked trumpet-blasts.