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A Tribute to the Great Nat "King" Cole (Tamla, 1965)

What's Going On (Tamla, 1971)

Trouble Man (Tamla, 1972)

Let's Get It On (Tamla, 1973)

Live (1974; Motown, 1998)

I Want You (Tamla, 1976)

Live at the London Palladium (1977; Motown, 1998)

Here, My Dear (Tamla, 1978)

Midnight Love (Columbia, 1982)

Every Great Motown Hit of Marvin Gaye (Motown, 1983)

Dream of a Lifetime (Columbia, 1985)

Romantically Yours (Columbia, 1985)

18 Greatest Hits (Motown, 1988)

Seek & You Shall Find: More of the Best (1963-1981)

(Rhino, 1993)

Motown Legends: I'll Be Doggone (Motown, 1995)

The Master 1961-1984 (Motown, 1995)

Midnight Love & the Sexual Healing Sessions (Columbia/Legacy, 1998)

The Millennium Collection: Best of Marvin Gaye, Vol. 1 (Universal, 1999)Lost and Found: Love Starved Heart (Motown, 1999)

The Millennium Collection: Best of Marvin Gaye, Vol. 2 (Universal, 2000)

The Millennium Collection: Best of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell (Universal,

2000)

The Final Concert (The Right Stuff, 2000)

What's Going On [Deluxe Edition] (Universal, 2001)

Let's Get It On [Deluxe Edition] (Universal, 2001)

The Very Best of Marvin Gaye (Universal, 2001)

The Complete Duets [with Tammi Terrell] (Universal, 2001)

Love Songs: Bedroom Ballads (Motown, 2002)

Love Songs (Sony/Legacy, 2003)

Love SongsGreatest Duets (Motown, 2003)

From R&B star and soul-music giant to pop icon, the stature of Marvin Gaye has risen

steadily over the years. Others had greater vocal range; there were certainly better

performers (Marvin never did fully vanquish his stage discomfort); and for one who is

regarded as a creative visionary, his genius often needed to be kick-started by collaborators.

Yet few artists in any genre can approach Marvin Gaye's breadth of accomplishment.

Following the failure of an album of standards aimed at establishing him as a black Sinatra,

Gaye submitted to the conventional Motown hit-making machinery. (He would never lose

his desire to become a "serious" singer, as evidenced by his affectionate 1965 tribute to Nat

"King" Cole.) His first couple of successes, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and "Hitch Hike," were

not at all how he saw himself, but they got him in the door and on the charts.

Most of Gaye's early albums are out of print, but the string of hits he recorded between 1962

and '69 with the label's bottomless pool of writers and producersincluding Smokey

Robinson ("Ain't That Peculiar"), Holland-Dozier-Holland ("You're a Wonderful One"), and

Page ofMarvin Gaye

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Norman Whitfield ("I Heard It Through the Grapevine")made him Motown's premier

male singer and have been the basis of countless compilation packages. What impresses is

not only the endless excellence of Motown's production line, but the ease with which Gaye's

voice accommodated the very different demands of each piece, from the gospel exhortations

of "Can I Get a Witness" to the breezy swing of "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)."

He maintained a parallel and almost equally successful career as a singer of romantic duets

with labelmates such as Mary Wells ("What's the Matter With You Baby"), Kim Weston ("It

Takes Two"), and his most significant other, Tammi Terrell ("Ain't No Mountain High

Enough"). Greatest Duets collects the highlights of all his associations (except, curiously,

"Ain't No Mountain"), including a session with gospel singer Ona Page. The Complete Duets

gives you everything recorded by Gaye and Terrell, arguably the most romantic singing

partnership in pop history. (After Terrell's death, Marvin vowed he'd never sing with another

partner. Judging by his tepid 1976 album with Diana Ross, it was a vow he should have

kept.)

Having worked all these wonders, Marvin Gaye then did something no other Motown artist

had ever dared. With What's Going On (1971), he started a revolution. Although it spawned

three hitsthe antiwar title song, the ecological plea "Mercy Mercy Me," and "Inner City

Blues"this was Motown's first true album. Its blend of unembarrassed spirituality and

unflinching social realism, as well as relentless percussion set against lush orchestration, was

unlike anything that came before it in both form and content. For Gaye, it was a self-

produced declaration of independence. (The 2001 Deluxe Edition adds an earlier and

substantially different mix and a rare live performance of the album from 1972.) After a

detour to score the film Trouble Man, he followed his masterpiece with the almost equally

magnificentLet's Get It On in 1973. From the title-track opener to the closing "Just to Keep

You Satisfied," it is as unashamedly sexual as its predecessor is spiritual. (Its Deluxe Edition

bonus disc illuminates Marvin's many false starts with multiple collaborators before he

settled on the final framework.)

I Want You boasts the seductive title song and "After the Dance" but is otherwise slight, a

disappointment after the twin peaks ofWhat's Going On andLet's Get It On.Live is from a

1974 concert that was his first in two years, and it shows, though the sparks that fly on

"Distant Lover" are eternal.Live at the London Palladium catches a better show and

contains the 12 studio minutes of "Got to Give It Up," proof positive that disco and genuinesoul could coexist in a single slab of wax.Here, My Dear (1978) was not a successful album

saleswise, but it may be his most fascinating. Forced to give up the royalties to his ex-wife in

their divorce settlement, Gaye's album brutally chronicles the breakdown of the marriage

no hits, but plenty of bruises.

After a European exile and a divorce from Motown, he reappeared in 1982 withMidnight

Love on Columbia. Its slinky single "Sexual Healing" intertwines his two major themessex

and salvationand is as seductive as anything in Marvin's overstuffed little black book of

song. That said, the rest is smooth and superficially pleasing but leaves little lasting

impression. What was a welcome comeback would prove to be his final album.

Since the tragic shooting death of Marvin Gaye in 1984, collections, compilations, andunissued material have rained down on an apparently insatiable marketplace. Pick of the

litter is the two-CD Very Best of Marvin Gaye, though it is not quite up to the double

Anthology it replaced in the catalogue. The 1995 four-CD set The Master is excellent, as well

as being a marked improvement over a botched box attempt earlier in that decade.Every

Great Motown Hit of Marvin Gaye ain't all that, but its 17 songs make it an acceptable

sampler; ditto 18 Greatest Hits, butI'll Be Doggone is just a Motown mishmash. The two

best-ofvolumes in the Millennium Collection series, split between the '60s and '70s, contain

only 11 songs each.

Steer clear of the countless packages of bootleg-quality live material drawn from his erratic

1983 comeback tour, issued under titles like Greatest Hits Live,Performance, andIn

Concert. Even the best of these, The Final Concert, offers only marginally improved sound

on a performance that is charitably characterized as adequate.

There are no less than three packages trading under the titleLove Songs: 1) the

100 GREATEST GUITARISTS

10 0 GREATEST SINGERS

500 GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALLTIME

500 GREATEST SONGS

10 0 BEST ALBUMS OF THE 2000S

100 GREATEST BEATLES SONGS

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Wenner Media Websites: Rolling Stone | Us Weekly | Men's Journal | Jann S. Wenner

COPYRIGHT 2012 ROLLING STONE; JANN S. WENNER, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

aforementioned Greatest Duets; 2) a Sony comp that again reshuffles the Midnight Love

material; and 3)Love Songs: Bedroom Ballads, assembled by biographer David Ritz to

combine the singer's most amorous slow songs with the handful of standards arranged for

Gaye by Bobby Scott (previously available as Vulnerable). In the same vein as the Ritz

collectionimagine an update of Jackie Gleason's Fifties albums of makeout musicis

Romantically Yours, which was compiled by Marvin's mentor and sometime producer

Harvey Fuqua.

Love Starved Heartis a true rarity: an album of vault material that doesn't waste your time;

Gaye rivals Bob Dylan in the quantity of quality material left on the shelf.

Portions of this album guide appeared in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (Fireside,2004).

To read the new issue ofRoll ing Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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