timeline

Marvin Gaye

The Motown singer who won control of his own records with What's Going On in 1971, then used it on Let's Get It On, I Want You and Here, My Dear.

Origin
Washington, D.C., United States
Years active
1960-1984
Genres
soul, R&B, funk
Labels
Tamla, Motown, Columbia
Also known as
Marvin Pentz Gay Jr.

Motown

Marvin Gaye was born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. in Washington, D.C., on 2 April 1939, the son of a church minister, and began singing in church at four. After leaving the Air Force he sang with the Marquees and then with Harvey Fuqua's New Moonglows, and followed Fuqua to Detroit, where he signed to Motown's Tamla label in 1960. He spent most of 1961 as a session drummer. His first solo hit, Stubborn Kind of Fellow, came in 1962, and in 1963 he married Anna Gordy, the sister of Berry Gordy.

Through the 1960s he scored with How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You) and with duets alongside Tammi Terrell, who collapsed in his arms on stage in October 1967, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and died in March 1970. In December 1968 I Heard It Through the Grapevine became his first number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for seven weeks.

What's Going On

In June 1970 he recorded What's Going On, a song that began with Renaldo Benson of the Four Tops, who had seen police violence against anti-war protesters in Berkeley. Gaye added a melody and lyrics. Gordy would not release it, and Gaye refused to record more until he did. Motown put it out in January 1971 and it went to number two on the Hot 100 and sold more than two million copies. Gordy then gave Gaye until the end of March to deliver an album.

Gaye recorded What's Going On in about ten working days. It was the first of his albums to credit him as producer and to credit the Funk Brothers. Its songs run into one another, told from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran coming home. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues both reached the top ten, making him the first male solo artist with three top ten singles from one album. In 2020 Rolling Stone placed it first on its revised list of the greatest albums.

The 1970s

After signing a new Motown contract reported at $1 million, he made the soundtrack Trouble Man in 1972, the first album written and produced entirely by him. Let's Get It On followed in August 1973. Its title song, written with Ed Townsend, reached number one in September and became the biggest-selling single Motown had issued to that time. The album outsold What's Going On.

I Want You, made with the writer and producer Leon Ware, came in March 1976. In 1977 a studio track on the live album Live at the London Palladium, Got to Give It Up, reached number one on the Hot 100. His divorce from Anna Gordy ended that year, and he made Here, My Dear, a double album about the marriage, with part of its royalties set aside for her. It reached number 26 on the pop chart, and he declined to promote it.

Ostend and the end

In January 1981 Motown released In Our Lifetime, and Gaye accused the label of editing and remixing it without his consent. That February he moved to Ostend, Belgium, at the invitation of the promoter Freddy Cousaert, and in March 1982 he left Motown for CBS. Midnight Love appeared in November 1982 with Sexual Healing, which spent ten weeks at number one on the R&B chart and won him two Grammy Awards in 1983. On 13 February 1983 he sang the national anthem at the NBA All-Star Game, and that spring he began his last tour.

On 1 April 1984 he was shot and killed by his father at the family home in Los Angeles, the day before his 45th birthday. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Gaye in 1987. In 2024 the Guardian reported that a collection of cassettes thought to hold 66 unreleased demos, belonging to the musician Charles Dumolin, in whose home Gaye stayed in 1981, had been found in Ostend.

Records

Songs

Tammi Terrell, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Barry White, Diana Ross

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Sources

  1. Marvin Gaye, Wikipedia
  2. Marvin Gaye, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
  3. Marvin Gaye, official website, Marvin Gaye estate
  4. What's Going On, 40th anniversary edition, Pitchfork (2011-07-28)
  5. Marvin Gaye: Here, My Dear, Pitchfork (2017-07-02)
  6. Collection of unreleased Marvin Gaye songs found in Belgium, The Guardian (2024-03-31)