Marvin Gaye
A man who, in the voice he learned in his father's church, sang the pain of the streets, the desire of the bedroom, and God all at once.
At a glance 🔭💭
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The people beside him ⏳🌊
- FamilyMarvin Gay Sr.
His father, a preacher, was the root of his son's faith and his wounds, and in the end took his life.
- MentorHarvey Fuqua
As leader of the Moonglows, he brought him into the group and was the first mentor to lead him to Detroit.
- PatronBerry Gordy
Motown's founder and his brother-in-law, he made him a star and clashed with him over the release of “What's Going On.”
- ColleagueTammi Terrell
Motown's finest duet partner; her death in 1970 turned his music in a new direction.
- FamilyFrankie Gaye
His younger brother, whose war stories on returning from Vietnam inspired “What's Going On.”
- FriendshipStevie Wonder
A younger Motown artist, he walked the path of creative autonomy that Gaye had opened, and he sang at his funeral.
I. The boy from the parsonage · 1939–1957
(Birth) He was born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. in April 1939 in Washington, D.C., the American capital. The surname was still Gay, without the final e. His father, Marvin Gay Sr., was a minister in the House of God, a small sect that blended Jewish law with Pentecostal faith, and his mother, Alberta, helped make ends meet by doing domestic work in other people's homes. He had an older sister, Jean, and below him a younger brother, Frankie, and a younger sister, Zeola. The family was poor and for a time lived in a public housing project. (Father) His father was strict and volatile. Gaye later confided to his biographer David Ritz that as a child he was often beaten by his father, and that his mother shielded him in between. This relationship, in which he craved his father's approval yet feared him, remained a knot he never untied. (Church) The singing began in his father's church. From an early age he sang at services and learned piano and drums. At school he was a quiet child, but when he sang, all eyes were on him. It was then that the harmonies of gospel and the art of handling high notes gently became second nature. (Enlistment) Without finishing high school, he enlisted in the Air Force in 1956 but could not adapt to its discipline. He later said he had deliberately feigned mental problems to get out, and the following year he was given a general discharge. Back in Washington, he slipped in among the doo-wop groups harmonizing on street corners.
II. From doo-wop to Motown · 1957–1963
(Fuqua) The Marquees, a group he formed with friends, released a single with Bo Diddley's help, but it went nowhere. The turning point was Harvey Fuqua, leader of the Moonglows. Having parted ways with his original members in 1959, Fuqua made the Marquees the new Moonglows, and Gaye followed him to Chicago to record for Chess Records. Fuqua was his first mentor, teaching him stagecraft, harmony arranging and the workings of the record business. (Detroit) When the group broke up in 1960, he moved to Detroit with Fuqua. Fuqua grew close to the Motown circle by marrying Berry Gordy's sister Gwen, and through Fuqua's arrangement Gaye signed with Gordy's label. When he debuted in 1961, he added an e to his surname. It is said to have been a nod to Sam Cooke, whom he admired, and a way of distancing himself from his father's name and the memory of being teased over it. (Crooner) What he wanted to be was a ballad singer who sang softly, almost in a whisper (a crooner), like Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra. His first album, “The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye” (1961), was a collection of jazz standards, but it didn't sell. Meanwhile he played drums as a musician called in for recording dates (a session musician) and earned a songwriting credit on the Marvelettes' “Beechwood 4-5789.” (First hit) In 1962 the danceable R&B number “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” became his first hit. Far from his crooner's dream, he sang it with a rough, full-throated shout. Around this time he married Gordy's sister Anna Gordy, seventeen years his senior, and the next year's hit “Pride and Joy” is said to have been written for Anna. The couple had one son.
III. The duet years · 1964–1970
(Factory) In 1964 “How Sweet It Is,” written by Holland–Dozier–Holland, was a big hit, followed by “I'll Be Doggone” and “Ain't That Peculiar” (1965), both written for him by Smokey Robinson. Within the Motown system he was polished into a handsome star in neat suits, but his severe stage fright made touring a constant ordeal. (Terrell) Gordy paired him with female singers. After Mary Wells and Kim Weston, he met Tammi Terrell in 1967. With Ashford and Simpson's “Ain't No Mountain High Enough” and “You're All I Need to Get By” hitting one after another, the two became Motown's signature male-female duo. Gaye cherished Terrell like a sister. (Collapse) In October 1967, during a performance at a college in Virginia, Terrell collapsed into his arms. It was a brain tumor. After several operations she died in March 1970, at the age of twenty-four. Gaye was devastated and stayed off the stage for some time. (Grapevine) Meanwhile “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” produced by Norman Whitfield, came out as a single in late 1968 and spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Gordy had at first rejected his recording, and Gladys Knight & the Pips' version became a hit first, but the tables turned when radio began playing the track from his album. Whitfield, who also produced the Temptations, had him sing in a key higher than his comfortable range. Gaye himself could not enjoy that success, recalling that he felt like a puppet singing songs others had made.
The peak of the period when the Motown system was polishing him into a sleek star. It lets you hear how at ease he was in the studio, for all his dread of the stage.
- The song opens with a heavy piano and tambourine. Over a rhythm that hits the second and fourth beats hard (the backbeat), the tambourine layers on to lay down Motown's signature buoyant groove.
- Gaye's voice relaxes and glides. The soft tone of the would-be crooner and gospel-style shouts alternate within a single song.
- The back-and-forth in which a female chorus answers his singing (call and response) sounds as if it were carried straight over from a church service.
- As the song goes on, he breaks away from the set melody and ornaments the notes in improvisation. Listen for the slightly different expression each time the same refrain comes back.
His first hit with Tammi Terrell, and the starting point for the duets that became the face of Motown. This is her voice a few months before she collapsed.
- Gaye opens the first line low and calm, and Terrell picks it up with a bright tone. The heart of it is the way two voices begin at different temperatures and gradually fold into one.
- Strings and timpani swell grandly at every chorus. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol's production turns a small love song into something like a majestic march.
- The two voices are said to have been recorded separately and combined. Even so, you can hear them breathing together as if they were singing face to face.
- In the chorus, Gaye steps back half a pace from Terrell to support the harmony. Listen for the way he makes his partner shine in a duet.
A recording Gordy once rejected went to No. 1 for seven straight weeks. His unease at feeling like a puppet in the midst of success overlaps with the song's dark texture.
- The eerie electric piano intro and low, rumbling drums set an ominous mood from the start. The difference is stark when compared with the brisk version by Gladys Knight & the Pips, released first in 1967.
- Whitfield had Gaye sing in a key higher than his comfortable range. The strained edge as his voice cracks slightly on the high notes sounds like the anxiety of someone betrayed.
- The strings don't sing out lavishly; they lie cool beneath, sustaining the tension. An unease that never resolves throughout the song is the point of this arrangement.
- Toward the end he repeats the same words again and again, stretching the notes into winding runs (melisma). Follow the emotional curve as suspicion turns into certainty.
IV. What's going on · 1970–1972
(War) The battlefield stories told by his brother Frankie on his return from Vietnam, Terrell's death, and the poverty and violence of Detroit's streets shook him. It was then that Renaldo “Obie” Benson of the Four Tops brought him a draft of a song he had written after witnessing a clash between protesters and police in Berkeley in 1969. Gaye refined it with Al Cleveland and completed “What's Going On.” (Refusal) Gordy opposed its release, arguing that a political song would damage a star's image. Gaye held out, refusing to record anything else unless the song came out. When the single appeared in January 1971, it reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and was a great success, and Gordy asked him to fill an album with songs in the same vein. (Album) The album “What's Going On,” released in May, flowed from track to track without a break to unfold a single theme (a concept album). It wove together war, drugs, urban poverty, environmental pollution and faith through the eyes of a returning soldier. Producing himself for the first time, he dressed the Funk Brothers' playing in strings and jazz-inflected arrangements. The questions about God he had learned in his father's church had become questions addressed to the world. (Autonomy) This success set a precedent at Motown for artists deciding their own music. Critics generally agree that Stevie Wonder, who came of age that same year and won creative autonomy when he re-signed, was part of the same current. Gaye signed a new contract of a size unusual for a Black singer at the time, and in 1972, after releasing the film score “Trouble Man,” he followed Motown to Los Angeles.
His brother's war stories, Terrell's death and the violence of the streets became a single question. It is the first music he made himself, overcoming the opposition of his label's head.
- The song opens with the murmur of a party and a saxophone. The chatter, mixed with the voices of his friends on the Detroit Lions, makes the song feel like a conversation in someone's living room.
- Two of Gaye's voices are heard at once. This is the technique of recording the same voice several times over (double tracking), and it is said that an engineer accidentally played two separate takes together, liked how they rang against each other, and kept them.
- James Jamerson's bass doesn't repeat a set riff; it drifts as freely as a melody. Together with the congas it builds a groove that is loose yet relentless.
- He doesn't shout; he asks, as if consoling. Speaking in sorrow and compassion rather than anger is what makes this protest song so singular.
V. Desire and debt · 1973–1980
(Desire) In 1973, “Let's Get It On” turned his gaze from the street to the bedroom. The title track, written with his songwriting partner Ed Townsend, began as a song about faith and became a song of sensuality. That same year he released the duet album “Diana & Marvin” with Diana Ross, though the two reportedly recorded most of it separately. In 1974 he set out on his first full-scale tour since Terrell's death. (Remarriage) In 1977 he remarried, to Janis Hunter, and the couple had two children. (Divorce) The divorce battle with Anna Gordy was a long one. Under a 1977 settlement he agreed to hand over to Anna the advance and part of the royalties from his next album. At first he meant to toss it off, but in the end he made “Here, My Dear” (1978), a double album that poured out the whole of the marriage, its beginning and its end. At the time it met with scathing reviews and poor sales, but it was later reappraised as the most candid record of divorce in popular music. Meanwhile “Got to Give It Up” (1977), his half-reluctant answer to the demands of disco, went to No. 1. (Hardship) Lavish spending and unpaid taxes swelled his debts, and his cocaine dependence deepened. He moved to Maui, Hawaii, and for a time lived in a converted bread delivery truck. According to Ritz's biography, around this time he even tried to take his own life by ingesting a large amount of cocaine at once.
A gaze once turned on the world swung toward love and desire. Begun as a song about faith and finished as a song of sensuality, this track holds his soul and his body together.
- The intro, on a guitar whose tone quavers as if close to tears as the pedal is rocked (wah-wah guitar), is famous enough that the first note alone gives the song away.
- He whispers in his low register, then suddenly soars into a high falsetto. That wide drop is what gives him his way of persuading and pleading.
- His multi-layered ad-libs flow behind the lead vocal as if answering it. In effect, he makes a choir of himself.
- Over the slow tempo, bass and drums play without hurry, leaning slightly behind the beat. This languor is what holds up the song's sensuality.
In a period beset by divorce and debt, the song he made half-reluctantly when asked to try disco went to No. 1. He sings the story of a shy man stepping onto the dance floor as if poking fun at himself.
- Party noise and laughter wrap the whole song. It is a studio recording, but placed on a live album it gives the feeling of being in the thick of a party.
- He sings almost from start to finish not in his chest voice but in a lightly floated head voice (falsetto). He chose playful lightness over grandeur.
- Percussion like cowbell and a bouncing bass roll a simple rhythm on and on. Listen for why the body moves even without lush disco strings.
- The nearly 12-minute album version stretches out in improvisation over the same groove. Compared with the short single, the hypnotic effect of repetition comes through clearly.
VI. Ostend, and the end · 1980–1984
(Exile) After a European tour in 1980 he stayed on in London, and in February 1981, at the invitation of the Belgian concert promoter Freddy Cousaert, he settled in Ostend, a town on the North Sea coast. He ran along the beach, got back into shape through boxing, and went to the local church. He remembered this time, when he cut back on drugs, as a rare period of calm. (Break) That same year Motown released an album he considered unfinished, under the title “In Our Lifetime,” without his consent. He said he would never record for Motown again, and in 1982 he signed with CBS. (Healing) In the fall of 1982 came “Sexual Healing,” made in Belgium. Built around a device in which a machine, not a human hand, keeps the beat (a drum machine), the song won him the first two Grammys of his life in February 1983. That same month the slow, soulful national anthem he sang at the NBA All-Star Game became legend, and at the concert for Motown's 25th anniversary he sat at the piano, spoke about the history of Black music, and then sang “What's Going On.” Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, the Temptations and Michael Jackson also appeared on that stage. (Gunshot) The 1983 tour was a success, but cocaine and paranoia were eating away at him. When it ended he moved into the Los Angeles house he had bought for his parents and once again lived under the same roof as his father. On April 1, 1984, one day before his forty-fifth birthday, he was shot dead by his father after an argument. His father pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and received a suspended sentence and probation. Stevie Wonder sang at the funeral, and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific.
A comeback made while he had left Motown behind and was recovering in body and mind in Belgium. With this song he won the first Grammy of his life.
- The backbone of the song is the Roland TR-808 drum machine. The contrast of a warm voice laid over a mechanical beat offers an early hearing of the sound of 1980s R&B.
- A bouncing synthesizer bass and a short keyboard riff repeat in simple cycles. With so much open space in the arrangement, the voice sounds all the closer.
- He stacks harmonies from layer upon layer of his own voice, forming a chorus all by himself. Lead and harmony trade lines as if whispering to each other.
- His delivery sounds like a confession of torment, yet mischief lingers in his voice. You hear both the earnestness and the ease of a man craving healing.
The American national anthem, sung at the NBA All-Star Game in February 1983. A little over a year before his death, the man who had left the military and sung protest songs turned the anthem into soul.
- He turned the familiar, march-like anthem into a slow soul ballad. Only the simple beat of a drum machine supports his voice.
- Sliding and stretching each note (melisma), he sings the anthem like a church hymn. Solemnity and sensuality live together in a single voice.
- As the song goes on, the crowd begins clapping on the beat. The footage preserves the moment the whole arena is drawn into his groove.
- He doesn't force the high notes; he holds back. It shows well the singing of his last years, which moves the listener through space rather than dazzling technique.
Lesser-known stories
(Football) Around 1970, Gaye trained in earnest, determined to become a professional football player. He wanted a tryout with the Detroit Lions, but the team reportedly turned him down, citing the risk of injury and insurance concerns. Mel Farr and Lem Barney of the Lions, who became his friends at this time, lent their voices to the party noise and backing vocals at the opening of “What's Going On.” The story of how athletes' laughter came to open one of music history's great albums turns up only in the footnotes of liner notes. (Ballads) His dream of becoming a crooner never died. From the late 1960s he recorded jazz standard ballads with the arranger Bobby Scott, and he is said to have returned to them again and again until the late 1970s. Never released in his lifetime, these recordings came out in 1997, 13 years after his death, as “Vulnerable.” Because he is remembered as a giant of soul, the fact that he admired singers like Sinatra all his life has seldom reached the public. (Ostend) His Belgian years were brief, but they were documented. A documentary that the Belgian director Richard Olivier filmed of Gaye in Ostend in 1981 shows him walking along the shore and mingling with the locals. Because this was time spent beyond the gaze of the American press, the fact that “Sexual Healing” was born in a small town on the North Sea long circulated only among fans.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Crooner
(Meaning) The English word croon means to hum or sing low and soft. A crooner is someone who sings that way. (In pop) A ballad singer who sings close to the microphone, relaxed, almost whispering. Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra are classic examples. It's like speaking quietly, as if telling a secret to the friend right beside you, instead of shouting so you can be heard at the far end of a gym. It is a style made possible because the microphone picks up even soft sounds.
Session musician
(Meaning) Session comes from the Latin sessio, meaning a gathering of people sitting together. (In pop) Not a star performing under their own name, but a professional player called into the studio to play on other singers' records. Motown's Funk Brothers are a famous example. They are like the friends backstage at a school play who handle the sound effects and accompaniment. The audience doesn't know their names, but the show can't be complete without them. (Elsewhere) In computing, a session is a single period of use, from logging in until logging out.
Concept album
(In pop) An album that isn't a collection of separate songs but sets its tracks in sequence to follow a single theme or story. The tracks are sometimes joined without breaks between them. “What's Going On” was bound together by a single story: the world seen through the eyes of a soldier home from war. Think of it not as a stack of separate pictures but as a picture book that tells one story from beginning to end.
Double tracking
(In pop) A method in which the same singer records the same part two or more times and the takes are layered for playback. The voice sounds thicker and fuller. In “What's Going On,” two different recordings of Gaye overlap to create a strange resonance. It's like drawing the same picture slightly differently on two sheets of tracing paper and laying one over the other, so the lines look darker and more vivid.
Falsetto
(Etymology) The Italian falso means "false." Falsetto thus comes to mean not one's ordinary voice but a false one, a feigned voice. (In pop) A technique in which a male singer reaches notes too high for his ordinary voice by relaxing the throat and producing a light, thin sound. It is used often in soul and R&B to create a soft, tender, yearning feel. When you playfully imitate a baby's voice or a cartoon character and feel your voice float lightly upward, that is falsetto.
Drum machine
(In pop) An electronic instrument that, instead of a person playing the drums, repeats a pre-programmed beat with perfect sameness. The Roland TR-808 is the most famous, and “Sexual Healing” is one of the songs that brought its sound to a mass audience. It is like jumping rope with a machine that turns the rope automatically at a steady pace instead of a friend turning it for you. The beat is exact, without the slightest waver.
Melisma
(Etymology) The Greek melisma means "song." (In pop) A technique of stretching a single syllable of a lyric across many notes in a winding line. Born in the gospel of Black churches, it became an essential skill for soul and R&B singers. It is like calling a friend's name not in one short burst but drawing it out, rising and falling as if singing. Layer upon layer of feeling rides on a single syllable.