Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Author: BBC Radio 4 November 13, 2021 Duration: 28:44

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell made Ain't No Mountain High Enough a hit for Motown in 1967.

Diana Ross followed suit in 1970 as a solo artist with her version of the song.

It has a place in people's hearts with its anthemic themes of love, loyalty, triumph and perseverance.

Cynthia Dagnal-Miron is an African American who grew up in the 1960s and she says the song gave black people a sense of comfort and of being loved.

Kevin Patterson recalls meeting an elderly lady in a store in Philadelphia and hearing the song. He learned she had been part of a movement to desegregate a local school in the 1960s and she had sung it then at a talent show.

John Harris says music and being part of a choir were what saved him when he sank into drug addiction and crime and ended up in court. When he got clean he sang that song at the Court's 25th anniversary celebration.

"No wind no rain no winters cold can stop me from getting to you" were the words Lesley Pearl sang to her birth mother as she lay gravely ill in hospital. Lesley had braved Hurricane Sandy to fly to Charleston to be with her and it brought them closer towards the end of her life.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020 when New York was suffering huge numbers of Covid deaths and hospitalisations, nurse Kym Villamer sang it to staff and patients at the hospital where she works to remind them of the perseverance of the human spirit and the goodness of humanity.

An Assistant Professor of Music at Washington University in St Louis breaks down the various musical elements that make it such an enduring powerful uplifting anthem.

Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2021.


There’s a certain piece of music that, when you hear it, seems to stop time. It might be a melody from your childhood, a song that played at a pivotal moment, or a composition that simply reaches into your chest and grips your heart. Soul Music, from BBC Radio 4, is built around that very phenomenon. This isn’t a program about genres or charts; it’s an intimate exploration of why specific pieces of music carry such profound emotional weight. Each episode focuses on a single, iconic work-from classical adagios to folk ballads, from film scores to pop anthems. The podcast weaves together the voices of people whose lives have been indelibly marked by that music: listeners share personal, often moving stories of grief, joy, love, and remembrance, while composers and performers might shed light on the piece’s creation. You’ll hear the music itself, of course, but framed in a way that reveals its deeper resonance in human experience. It’s a quiet, thoughtful series that reminds us how soundtracks our inner lives. Tuning into this podcast feels like being part of a conversation about the invisible threads that connect us all through notes and rhythms, exploring how a sequence of sounds can become a vessel for collective memory and feeling.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Soul Music
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