"Of course ‘heard it through the grapevine’ is best known to us as the Motown song, recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1967 and by Marvin Gaye in 1968. It’s salutary that, whilst the telegraph is long gone, the person-to-person communication that preceded it is still going strong."

reminds me oft the origins of

"scuttlebutt"

humans are so inventive !