THE SOUL GUY
More Soul Than You Can Shake A Stick At!
Marvin Gaye was born the first son and second eldest of four children to Rev. Marvin Pentz Gay, Sr and Alberta Cooper. His sisters, Jeanne and Zeola, younger brother Frankie and Marvin lived in the segregated section of Washington, D.C.'s Deanwood neighborhood in the northeastern section of the city. As a teen, he caddied at Columbia Country Club just outside of D.C. in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Gaye's father preached in a Seventh-day Adventist Church sect called the House of God, which went by a strict code of conduct and mixed teachings of Orthodox Judaism and Pentecostalism.
After dropping out of Cardozo High School, Gaye joined the United States Air Force, but he was discharged because he refused to follow orders.
Shortly after starting his recording career at Motown Records, he changed his name from Marvin Gay to Marvin Gaye, adding the 'e' to separate himself from his father and in admiration of his idol, Sam Cooke, who also added an 'e' to his last name
Gaye began his career in several doo wop groups, settling on The Marquees, a popular D.C. group. With Bo Diddley, The Marquees released a single, Wyatt Earp, in 1958 on Okeh Records and were then recruited by Harvey Fuqua to become The Moonglows. Mama Loocie, released in 1959 on Chess Records, was Gaye's first single with the Moonglows and his first recorded lead. After a concert in Detroit, the 'new' Moonglows disbanded and Fuqua introduced Gaye to Motown Records president Berry Gordy. He signed Gaye first as a session drummer for acts such as The Miracles, The Contours, Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes and others. Most notably, he was the drummer on The Marvelettes' 1961 number one hit Please Mr. Postman and Little Stevie Wonder's 1963 number one hit Fingertips Pt. 2. He also co-wrote Martha & the Vandellas' 1964 hit Dancing in the Street and The Marvelettes 1962 hit Beechwood 4-5789. After much pleading, Gaye was signed as a singer less than a year later.
Popular and well-liked around Motown, Gaye already carried himself in a sophisticated, gentlemanly manner and had little need of training from Motown's in-house Artist Development director, Maxine Powell.
Gaye issued his first solo recording, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye, in June of 1961, which was the first album issued by the Motown record label besides The Miracles' Hi, We're the Miracles! album. An album of Broadway standards and jazz-rendered show tunes, the record failed to chart and Motown issued three singles by Gaye that also failed to chart. After arguing over direction of his career with Gordy, Gaye eventually agreed to conform to record the more R&B-rooted sounds of his label mates and contemporaries issuing the single, Stubborn Kind of Fellow in July of 1962. The record, co-written by Gaye and produced by friend William ‘Mickey’ Stevenson and which was an autobiographical jab at Gaye's moody behavior, became a top ten hit on the Hot Soul Singles chart and started Gaye's rise. The single would be followed by his first Top 40 singles Hitch Hike, Pride & Joy and Can I Get a Witness, all of which were charted successes for Gaye in 1963. The success continued with the 1964 singles You Are a Wonderful One, which featured background work by The Supremes, Try It Baby, which featured backgrounds from The Temptations, Baby Don't You Do It and How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), which became a signature song of his. His work with Smokey Robinson on the 1966 album, Moods of Marvin Gaye, spawned two consecutive top ten singles - I'll Be Doggone and Ain't That Peculiar, which became another signature song of his.
Gaye began his career in several doo wop groups, settling on The Marquees, a popular D.C. group. With Bo Diddley, The Marquees released a single, Wyatt Earp, in 1958 on Okeh Records and were then recruited by Harvey Fuqua to become The Moonglows. Mama Loocie, released in 1959 on Chess Records, was Gaye's first single with the Moonglows and his first recorded lead. After a concert in Detroit, the 'new' Moonglows disbanded and Fuqua introduced Gaye to Motown Records president Berry Gordy. He signed Gaye first as a session drummer for acts such as The Miracles, The Contours, Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes and others. Most notably, he was the drummer on The Marvelettes' 1961 number one hit Please Mr. Postman and Little Stevie Wonder's 1963 number one hit Fingertips Pt. 2. He also co-wrote Martha & the Vandellas' 1964 hit Dancing in the Street and The Marvelettes 1962 hit Beechwood 4-5789. After much pleading, Gaye was signed as a singer less than a year later.
Popular and well-liked around Motown, Gaye already carried himself in a sophisticated, gentlemanly manner and had little need of training from Motown's in-house Artist Development director, Maxine Powell.
Gaye issued his first solo recording, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye, in June of 1961, which was the first album issued by the Motown record label besides The Miracles' Hi, We're the Miracles! album. An album of Broadway standards and jazz-rendered show tunes, the record failed to chart and Motown issued three singles by Gaye that also failed to chart. After arguing over direction of his career with Gordy, Gaye eventually agreed to conform to record the more R&B-rooted sounds of his label mates and contemporaries issuing the single, Stubborn Kind of Fellow in July of 1962. The record, co-written by Gaye and produced by friend William ‘Mickey’ Stevenson and which was an autobiographical jab at Gaye's moody behavior, became a top ten hit on the Hot Soul Singles chart and started Gaye's rise. The single would be followed by his first Top 40 singles Hitch Hike, Pride & Joy and Can I Get a Witness, all of which were charted successes for Gaye in 1963. The success continued with the 1964 singles You Are a Wonderful One, which featured background work by The Supremes, Try It Baby, which featured backgrounds from The Temptations, Baby Don't You Do It and How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), which became a signature song of his. His work with Smokey Robinson on the 1966 album, Moods of Marvin Gaye, spawned two consecutive top ten singles - I'll Be Doggone and Ain't That Peculiar, which became another signature song of his.
A number of Gaye's hit singles for Motown were duets with female artists, such as Mary Wells, Kim Weston and Tammi Terrell; the first Gaye/Wells album, 1964's Together, was Gaye's first charting album. Terrell and Gaye in particular had a good rapport and their first album together, 1967's United, birthed the massive hits Ain't No Mountain High Enough (later covered by Diana Ross and more recently, by former Doobie Brothers singer, Michael McDonald) and Your Precious Love. Real life couple Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson provided the writing and production for the Gaye/Terrell records; while Gaye and Terrell themselves were not lovers (though rumors persist that they may have been), they convincingly portrayed lovers on record; indeed Gaye sometimes claimed that for the durations of the songs he was in love with her. On October 14, 1967, Terrell collapsed into Gaye's arms onstage while they were performing at the Hampton University homecoming in Virginia (contrary to popular belief, it was not Hampden-Sydney College, also in Virginia). She was later diagnosed with a brain tumor and her health continued to deteriorate.
Motown decided to try and carry on with the Gaye/Terrell recordings, issuing the You're All I Need album in 1968, which featured the hits Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing and You're All I Need to Get By. By the time of the final Gaye/Terrell album, Easy in 1969, Terrell's vocals were performed mostly by Valerie Simpson. Two tracks on Easy were archived Terrell solo songs with Gaye's vocals overdubbed onto them.
Terrell's illness put Gaye in a depression; when his Norman Whitfield-produced I Heard It Through the Grapevine became his first number 1 hit and the biggest selling single in Motown history to that point with four million copies sold, he refused to acknowledge his success, feeling that it was undeserved. Meanwhile, Gaye's marriage with Anna was crumbling and he continued to feel irrelevant, singing endlessly about love while popular music underwent a revolution and began addressing social and political issues. His work with Norman Whitfield would result in similar success with the singles Too Busy Thinking About My Baby and That's the Way Love Is.
Tammi Terrell died of a brain tumour on March 16, 1970. Devastated by her death, Marvin was so emotional at her funeral that he'd talk to the remains as if she were going to respond. Gaye subsequently went into seclusion, and did not perform in concert for nearly two years. He tried various spirit-lifting diversions, including a short-lived attempt at a football career with the Detroit Lions. He trained hard, but the team's managers turned him down without a tryout. He continued to feel pain, with no form of self-expression. As a result, he entered the studio on June 1, 1970 and recorded the songs What's Going On, God is Love, and Sad Tomorrows - an early version of Flying High (In the Friendly Sky).
Gaye wanted to release What's Going On, but Motown head Berry Gordy refused, calling the single ‘uncommercial’. Gaye refused to record any more until Gordy gave in and the song became a surprise hit in January 1971. Gordy subsequently requested an entire album of similar tracks from Gaye.
The What's Going On album became one of the highlights of Gaye's career and is today his best-known work. Both in terms of sound (influenced by funk and jazz) and lyrical content (heavily political) it was a major departure from his earlier Motown work. Two more of its singles, Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler), became Top 10 pop hits and #1 R&B hits. The album became one of the most memorable soul albums of all time and, based upon its themes, the concept album became the next new frontier for soul music. It has been called "the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices".
After the success of the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation film, Trouble Man in 1972, Marvin decided to switch topics from social to sensual with the release of Let's Get It On. The album was a rare departure for the singer for its blatant sensualism inspired by the success of What's Going On and Marvin's need to produce himself in his own way. Yielded by the smash title track and subsequent other hits such as Come Get to This, You Sure Love to Ball and Distant Lover. Let's Get It On became Marvin Gaye's biggest selling album during his lifetime, surpassing What's Going On. Also, with the title track, Gaye broke his own record at Motown by surpassing the sales of I Heard It Through the Grapevine. The album would be later hailed as “a record unparalleled in its sheer sensuality and carnal energy.”
Gaye began working on his final duet album, this time for Diana Ross for the Diana & Marvin project, an album of duets that began recording in 1972, while Ross was pregnant with her second child. Gaye refused to sing if he couldn't smoke in the studio, so the duet album was recorded by overdubbing Ross and Gaye at separate studio session dates. Released in the fall of 1973, the album yielded the US Top 20 hit singles You're a Special Part of Me and My Mistake (Was to Love You) as well as the UK versions of two The Stylistics You Are Everything at number 5 and Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart) at number 25, respectively.
In 1976 Gaye released the I Want You LP, which yielded the number-one R&B single, I Want You and the modest charter, After the Dance and produced erotic album tracks such as Since I Had You and Soon I'll Be Loving You Again with its musical productions gearing Gaye towards more funky material.
In 1977, Gaye released the seminal funk single, Got to Give It Up, which went to number-one on both the pop, R&B and dance singles charts and helped his Live at the London Palladium album sell over two million copies and becoming one of the top ten best-selling albums of the year. The following year, after divorcing his first wife Anna, he agreed to remit a portion of his salary and sales of his upcoming album to his ex for alimony. The result was 1978's Here, My Dear, which addressed the sour points of his marriage to Anna and almost led to Anna filing an invasion of privacy against Marvin, though she later reversed that decision. That album tanked on the charts (despite its later critical re-evaluation) however, and Gaye struggled to sell a record. By 1979, besieged by tax problems and drug addictions, Gaye filed for bankruptcy and moved to Hawaii where he lived in a bread van. In 1980, he signed with British promoter Jeffrey Kruger to do concerts overseas with the promised highlight of a Royal Command Performance at London's Drury Lane in front of Princess Margaret. Gaye failed to make the stage on time and by the time he came, everyone had left. While in London, Marvin worked on In Our Lifetime? - a complex and deeply personal record. When Motown issued the album in 1981, Gaye was livid: he accused Motown of editing and remixing the album without his consent, releasing an unfinished song ("Far Cry"), altering the album art he requested and removing the question mark from the title (rendering the intended irony imperceptible).
After being offered a chance to clear things out in Oostende Belgium, he permanently moved there in 1981. Still upset over Motown's hasty decision to release In Our Lifetime, he negotiated a release from the label and signed with Columbia Records in 1982, releasing Midnight Love that year. The album included Marvin's final big hit, Sexual Healing. The song gave Gaye his first two Grammy Awards (Best R&B Male Vocal Performance, Best R&B Instrumental) in February 1983. The following year, he won a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance again, this time for the Midnight Love album itself. In February 1983, Gaye gave an emotional performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at the NBA All-Star Game, held at The Forum in Inglewood, California, accompanied by a drum machine. In March 1983, he gave his final performance in front of his old mentor and label for Motown 25, performing "What's Going On". He then embarked on a U.S. tour to support his album. The tour, ending in August 1983, was plagued by health problems and Gaye's bouts with depression, and fear over an alleged attempt on his life.
When the tour ended, he isolated himself by moving into his parents' house. He threatened to commit suicide several times after numerous bitter arguments with his father, Marvin, Sr. On the E! True Hollywood Story about Gaye, singer Little Richard revealed that Gaye had premonitions of his murder in his final years of life. On April 1, 1984, one day before his forty-fifth birthday, Gaye's father shot and killed him after an argument that had started after Marvin's parents argued over misplaced business documents. Marvin, Sr. later was sentenced to six years of probation after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Charges of first-degree murder were dropped after doctors discovered Marvin, Sr. had a brain tumor. Later serving his final years in a retirement home, he died of pneumonia in 1998.
After some posthumous releases cemented his memory in the popular consciousness, Gaye was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He later was inducted to Hollywood's Rock Walk in 1989 and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990.
Gaye married twice. His first marriage, to Berry Gordy, Jr.'s sister Anna Gordy (who was seventeen years his senior), who inspired some of Gaye's earlier hits including Stubborn Kind of Fellow and You Are a Wonderful One, produced an adopted son, Marvin Pentz Gaye III (b. June 8, 1965). Troubled from the start, the marriage permanently imploded after Gaye began courting Janis Hunter (seventeen years his junior), the seventeen-year-old daughter of hipster jazz icon Slim Gaillard, in 1973 following the release of his Let's Get It On album. Hunter was also an inspiration to Gaye's music, particularly his entire post-What's Going On/Trouble Man period which included Let's Get It On and I Want You. Their relationship produced two children, Nona Marvisa Gaye (b. September 4, 1974) and Frankie Christian Gaye (b. November 16, 1975). Marvin and Janis married after Marvin's divorce from Anna was finalized. Shortly after their October 1977 wedding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, however, they separated due to growing tensions between them, finally divorcing in February 1981.
After Gaye's death, two of his children followed in his footsteps to show business: eldest son Marvin Pentz Gaye III became a record producer and has control of his estate, while Gaye's only daughter, Nona, became a model, an actress and a singer. His youngest child, son Frankie Christian, has not followed his siblings into show business.
Motown decided to try and carry on with the Gaye/Terrell recordings, issuing the You're All I Need album in 1968, which featured the hits Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing and You're All I Need to Get By. By the time of the final Gaye/Terrell album, Easy in 1969, Terrell's vocals were performed mostly by Valerie Simpson. Two tracks on Easy were archived Terrell solo songs with Gaye's vocals overdubbed onto them.
Terrell's illness put Gaye in a depression; when his Norman Whitfield-produced I Heard It Through the Grapevine became his first number 1 hit and the biggest selling single in Motown history to that point with four million copies sold, he refused to acknowledge his success, feeling that it was undeserved. Meanwhile, Gaye's marriage with Anna was crumbling and he continued to feel irrelevant, singing endlessly about love while popular music underwent a revolution and began addressing social and political issues. His work with Norman Whitfield would result in similar success with the singles Too Busy Thinking About My Baby and That's the Way Love Is.
Tammi Terrell died of a brain tumour on March 16, 1970. Devastated by her death, Marvin was so emotional at her funeral that he'd talk to the remains as if she were going to respond. Gaye subsequently went into seclusion, and did not perform in concert for nearly two years. He tried various spirit-lifting diversions, including a short-lived attempt at a football career with the Detroit Lions. He trained hard, but the team's managers turned him down without a tryout. He continued to feel pain, with no form of self-expression. As a result, he entered the studio on June 1, 1970 and recorded the songs What's Going On, God is Love, and Sad Tomorrows - an early version of Flying High (In the Friendly Sky).
Gaye wanted to release What's Going On, but Motown head Berry Gordy refused, calling the single ‘uncommercial’. Gaye refused to record any more until Gordy gave in and the song became a surprise hit in January 1971. Gordy subsequently requested an entire album of similar tracks from Gaye.
The What's Going On album became one of the highlights of Gaye's career and is today his best-known work. Both in terms of sound (influenced by funk and jazz) and lyrical content (heavily political) it was a major departure from his earlier Motown work. Two more of its singles, Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler), became Top 10 pop hits and #1 R&B hits. The album became one of the most memorable soul albums of all time and, based upon its themes, the concept album became the next new frontier for soul music. It has been called "the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices".
After the success of the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation film, Trouble Man in 1972, Marvin decided to switch topics from social to sensual with the release of Let's Get It On. The album was a rare departure for the singer for its blatant sensualism inspired by the success of What's Going On and Marvin's need to produce himself in his own way. Yielded by the smash title track and subsequent other hits such as Come Get to This, You Sure Love to Ball and Distant Lover. Let's Get It On became Marvin Gaye's biggest selling album during his lifetime, surpassing What's Going On. Also, with the title track, Gaye broke his own record at Motown by surpassing the sales of I Heard It Through the Grapevine. The album would be later hailed as “a record unparalleled in its sheer sensuality and carnal energy.”
Gaye began working on his final duet album, this time for Diana Ross for the Diana & Marvin project, an album of duets that began recording in 1972, while Ross was pregnant with her second child. Gaye refused to sing if he couldn't smoke in the studio, so the duet album was recorded by overdubbing Ross and Gaye at separate studio session dates. Released in the fall of 1973, the album yielded the US Top 20 hit singles You're a Special Part of Me and My Mistake (Was to Love You) as well as the UK versions of two The Stylistics You Are Everything at number 5 and Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart) at number 25, respectively.
In 1976 Gaye released the I Want You LP, which yielded the number-one R&B single, I Want You and the modest charter, After the Dance and produced erotic album tracks such as Since I Had You and Soon I'll Be Loving You Again with its musical productions gearing Gaye towards more funky material.
In 1977, Gaye released the seminal funk single, Got to Give It Up, which went to number-one on both the pop, R&B and dance singles charts and helped his Live at the London Palladium album sell over two million copies and becoming one of the top ten best-selling albums of the year. The following year, after divorcing his first wife Anna, he agreed to remit a portion of his salary and sales of his upcoming album to his ex for alimony. The result was 1978's Here, My Dear, which addressed the sour points of his marriage to Anna and almost led to Anna filing an invasion of privacy against Marvin, though she later reversed that decision. That album tanked on the charts (despite its later critical re-evaluation) however, and Gaye struggled to sell a record. By 1979, besieged by tax problems and drug addictions, Gaye filed for bankruptcy and moved to Hawaii where he lived in a bread van. In 1980, he signed with British promoter Jeffrey Kruger to do concerts overseas with the promised highlight of a Royal Command Performance at London's Drury Lane in front of Princess Margaret. Gaye failed to make the stage on time and by the time he came, everyone had left. While in London, Marvin worked on In Our Lifetime? - a complex and deeply personal record. When Motown issued the album in 1981, Gaye was livid: he accused Motown of editing and remixing the album without his consent, releasing an unfinished song ("Far Cry"), altering the album art he requested and removing the question mark from the title (rendering the intended irony imperceptible).
After being offered a chance to clear things out in Oostende Belgium, he permanently moved there in 1981. Still upset over Motown's hasty decision to release In Our Lifetime, he negotiated a release from the label and signed with Columbia Records in 1982, releasing Midnight Love that year. The album included Marvin's final big hit, Sexual Healing. The song gave Gaye his first two Grammy Awards (Best R&B Male Vocal Performance, Best R&B Instrumental) in February 1983. The following year, he won a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance again, this time for the Midnight Love album itself. In February 1983, Gaye gave an emotional performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at the NBA All-Star Game, held at The Forum in Inglewood, California, accompanied by a drum machine. In March 1983, he gave his final performance in front of his old mentor and label for Motown 25, performing "What's Going On". He then embarked on a U.S. tour to support his album. The tour, ending in August 1983, was plagued by health problems and Gaye's bouts with depression, and fear over an alleged attempt on his life.
When the tour ended, he isolated himself by moving into his parents' house. He threatened to commit suicide several times after numerous bitter arguments with his father, Marvin, Sr. On the E! True Hollywood Story about Gaye, singer Little Richard revealed that Gaye had premonitions of his murder in his final years of life. On April 1, 1984, one day before his forty-fifth birthday, Gaye's father shot and killed him after an argument that had started after Marvin's parents argued over misplaced business documents. Marvin, Sr. later was sentenced to six years of probation after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Charges of first-degree murder were dropped after doctors discovered Marvin, Sr. had a brain tumor. Later serving his final years in a retirement home, he died of pneumonia in 1998.
After some posthumous releases cemented his memory in the popular consciousness, Gaye was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He later was inducted to Hollywood's Rock Walk in 1989 and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990.
Gaye married twice. His first marriage, to Berry Gordy, Jr.'s sister Anna Gordy (who was seventeen years his senior), who inspired some of Gaye's earlier hits including Stubborn Kind of Fellow and You Are a Wonderful One, produced an adopted son, Marvin Pentz Gaye III (b. June 8, 1965). Troubled from the start, the marriage permanently imploded after Gaye began courting Janis Hunter (seventeen years his junior), the seventeen-year-old daughter of hipster jazz icon Slim Gaillard, in 1973 following the release of his Let's Get It On album. Hunter was also an inspiration to Gaye's music, particularly his entire post-What's Going On/Trouble Man period which included Let's Get It On and I Want You. Their relationship produced two children, Nona Marvisa Gaye (b. September 4, 1974) and Frankie Christian Gaye (b. November 16, 1975). Marvin and Janis married after Marvin's divorce from Anna was finalized. Shortly after their October 1977 wedding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, however, they separated due to growing tensions between them, finally divorcing in February 1981.
After Gaye's death, two of his children followed in his footsteps to show business: eldest son Marvin Pentz Gaye III became a record producer and has control of his estate, while Gaye's only daughter, Nona, became a model, an actress and a singer. His youngest child, son Frankie Christian, has not followed his siblings into show business.
IT'S NOT UNUSUAL
