Meat Loaf was a working musician for nearly a decade before 1977's Bat Out of Hell made him an overnight success, and one of his more memorable gigs before finding fame was as part of the duo Stoney Meatloaf. Formed in Detroit, the pair cut an album of sturdy, blues-influenced rock in 1971, dominated by the impassioned vocals of Loaf and his singing partner, Shaun Murphy, aka Stoney. While some of Motown Records' best studio talent were involved in making the LP, it was overlooked until Meat Loaf's later fame, which prompted a 1978 reissue. The complete Stoney Meatloaf recordings would later be collected on the 2022 set Everything Under the Sun: The Motown Recordings.

Marvin Lee Aday was a journeyman rock singer from Texas who had moved to Detroit in the late 1960s and adopted the stage name Meat Loaf. During his days in Michigan, he sang in a band variously known as Popcorn Blizzard, Floating Circus, and Meat Loaf Soul. While working Detroit clubs, he got to know Shaun Murphy, a Nebraska-born vocalist who had relocated to Michigan with her family and was performing in a band called Wilson Mower Pursuit. After enjoying only limited success in Detroit, Meat Loaf headed out to Los Angeles, and managed to score an audition to appear in the highly successful "American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" Hair, soon to open in L.A. Meat Loaf got the part, but the producers soon shipped him back to Detroit to appear in the first Michigan production of the show. When the show's Detroit producers asked Meat Loaf if he knew any local talent who would be a good fit for the show, he recommended Murphy. At that time, she was also pursuing an acting career using her real name, and Stoney as her stage name for rock & roll gigs. Both Meat Loaf and Stoney made it into the Detroit production, which was a considerable local success and ran for six months.

Meat Loaf and Murphy were standout performers in the Detroit cast of Hair, and Russ Terrana, who was a recording engineer for Motown Records, saw one of the early shows and was very impressed with their vocal skills. Terrana approached Harry Balk, who was the head of Rare Earth Records, Motown's rock-oriented sibling label, and persuaded him to sign the two singers as a duo. Balk agreed, and Russ Terrana was tapped to produce the Stoney Meatloaf album (for some reason the label insisted on spelling it as one word), joined by Russ' brother Ralph Terrana and Motown songwriter and producer Mike Valvano. During two sets of sessions -- the first taking place from November to December 1970 and the second from March to June 1971 -- the team cut a variety of material that fused rock with R&B and a dash of pop, and most of the sessions were backed by Motown's stellar studio band, the Funk Brothers. In September 1971, the album Stoney Meatloaf was issued by Rare Earth; the duo set out on a short tour to promote the LP, and Rare Earth issued a pair of singles (one including a non-LP B-side, a cover of "The Way You Do the Things You Do"). However, radio play was minimal, and sales were tepid.

In late 1971, Stoney Meatloaf went into the studio to cut a new single, "Who Is the Leader of the People." Motown decided the track would have greater potential with different vocals, and the backing tracks were used for a version by Edwin Starr. Meat Loaf was understandably upset, and after a confrontation with Motown executives, he was dropped. They opted to keep Stoney under contract, and urged her to relocate to Los Angeles when Motown moved their operations to the West Coast. After trying to mold her into an adult contemporary vocalist in the manner of Helen Reddy, Stoney would release one solo single for the label, "Let Me Come Down Easy" b/w "It's Always Me," in April 1973. It came and went without notice, and when Murphy was offered a job singing backup for Bob Seger on an upcoming tour, she jumped at the chance, and Motown severed ties with her. Murphy would become a fixture in Seger's band over the decades to come, and she would also record studio sessions with Eric Clapton and tour with Little Feat, Bruce Hornsby, the Moody Blues, and Joe Walsh. When not on the road with other acts, Murphy fronted her own blues band who played regularly in the Midwest, and she released a number of albums through her own Vision Wall label. Meanwhile, Meat Loaf, after some stage work and several false starts, issued his first solo album in 1977, Bat Out of Hell, which became a multi-platinum smash and launched him on a wildly successful solo career.

In 1978, with Meat Loaf newly established as a major star, Motown reissued the Stoney Meatloaf album under the title Meatloaf (Featuring Stoney Meatloaf), with a juggled sequence, the addition of some non-LP cuts, and a remarkably ugly new cover that featured a face fashioned out of an actual meatloaf. While the reissue racked up higher sales than the initial release, it didn't make the Top 200 Albums chart, and Stoney Meatloaf soon sunk back into obscurity. In 2021, Shaun Murphy and Meat Loaf were both living in Nashville, and when she staged a benefit concert on December 6 of that year, Meat Loaf joined her on-stage to tell stories of their years working together. It would be one of his final public appearances; he died on January 20, 2022 at the age of 74. June 2022 saw the release of Everything Under the Sun: The Motown Recordings, a two-disc set that reissued the Stoney Meatloaf album along with single sides, unreleased tracks, Stoney's solo 45, and "Who Is the Leader of the People" with the original vocals restored. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi