He's been gone from this world for twenty-three years, but Marvin Gaye was born on this day in 1939. He was an important, influential producer, a brilliant songwriter, and not incidentally, the greatest singer who ever lived.
His voice could do anything. He did lots of bedroom ballads, sure; he basically invented the R & B "loverman" tradition. He could do raw, sexy stuff, or pleading heartbreak stuff, or anger or despair. But his voice, sometimes gruff, sometimes sweet, sometimes a keening falsetto, always had an edge of vulnerability, and never, ever did he ever strain for effect. He knew his voice and what it was capable of, and he always delivered.
Obviously, the best way to celebrate Gaye's life and legacy is with some music. You couldn't go wrong with a hits compilation, particularly of his earlier material, which would include such singles as Hitch-Hike, Stubborn Kind Of Fellow and Ain't That Peculiar. These date from Gaye's time in the Motown factory, when songs and production were generally deemed more important than the artist doing the singing. Even then, Motown's staff writers knew what he could do, and these are among the most perfectly crafted pop songs ever.
You should also, of course, own his breakthrough albums, What's Going On and Let's Get It On, the former a groundbreaking howl of protest, the latter one of the sexiest, most groove-heavy things ever recorded. Everybody should be issued copies of these albums at birth.
For me, the greatest things Gaye ever did are two lesser-known albums from the seventies. Trouble Man was the soundtrack to a long-forgotten blaxploitation epic, mostly instrumental and jazz-based, eschewing the wacka-wacka cliches people associate with these things. great stuff all the way, but the title song is not only the best thing Gaye ever did, it is easily in the Top Ten Things Of All Time.
To me, his finest album was 1978's Here, My Dear, a work with a rather complicated backstory. Gaye owed his ex-wife a ton of alimony, and by court order, his salary and profits from this were to go to her. So he chose to record a chronicle of their marriage and its decline, and poured all his anger and pain and love into it. It is cruel to her at times, but he didn't spare himself, either, and it is one of the most frighteningly honest portraits of the human heart ever conceived. That it is also brilliantly produced and beautifully performed is a given--from Marvin Gaye, it could be nothing less.
