The Life and Times of Eddie King, Jr.

The Life and Times of Eddie King, Jr.
by Mark Anthony Neal

Filmmaker Robert Townsend didn’t have to conjure Eddie King, Jr., the lead singer from the fictional soul group The Five Heartbeats, the subjects of Townsend’s 1991 film of the same title. Well known at the time was the role of The Dells, legendary hit-makers with songs like “Oh What a Night” and “Stay (In my Corner),” as the film’s consultants. And while the Dells’ career resembles nothing like the drama that shapes The Five Heartbeats, as veterans of the chitlin’ circuit, they of course had stories to share.

Townsend also could draw on the tradition of the male Soul singer—the proverbial Soul Man—an iconic figure from the 1960s and 1970s that congealed grand narratives of tragedy—shot dead in a motel; shot dead by your father; shot dead in a game of Russian Roulette; killed in an airplane crash; scorched by a pot of boiling grits, paralyzed in a car accident, marrying your dead mentor’s wife months after his death—wedded to even more complicated personal demons—physical abuse of wives and girlfriends; sexual assault of younger female artists; sex with underage girls.

Conventional wisdom is that these tragedies were the price that these men were damned to pay for offering their Godly gifts of voice for sale in the marketplace of the flesh. And immediately we can see Choir Boy, the Five Heartbeats’ falsetto voiced singer, arguing with his preacher dad about the temptations of being out on the road. What was Choir Boy’s story line was likely applicable for the majority of these men who took a leap of faith—literally—and hoped that those gifts from God would translate into some modicum of fame and the ability to live the “good life,” for a generation of black folk, for which such themes were always simply an ideal. The glitz and glamour of those early Motown days were more wishful thinking than anything—just look at the building in Detroit that housed the famed “Hitsville, USA.”

And whatever the tragedies that befell these men, they were not occur in isolation; in the decades before the internet and 24-hour new cycles, and when Jet Magazine was effectively Black America’s social media, the Soul Man was the secular brethren of the equally iconic Race Man—figures who were dually in a noble (and decidedly patriarchal) struggle against good and evil; blackness and whiteness; military aggression and pacifism; sex and love; and “class and crass” to quote another fictional Soul Man, Dream Girls’ Curtis Taylor. These men existed at the same crossroads where legendary Bluesman Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil (and damn if his BET founding namesake ain’t been every bit the devil); a subtle reminder that if Huey Newton or Medgar Evers had been able to carry a tune or two over a Motown backbeat or a Stax horn chart, they might have still been in the line of fire.

When Townsend’s The Five Heartbeats was released in March of 1991, audiences might have still been aching over the shocking murder of Marvin Gaye, 6 years and 362 days earlier. In truth, Michael Wright’s Eddie King, Jr., most evoked the troubled and tragic soul that was David Ruffin, lead singer of the most classic Temptations’ lineup from 1964, until his ouster in 1968, though Five Heartbeats cast-mate Leon would better perfect Ruffin’s cavalier brilliance in his portrait of him for the television mini-series The Temptations (1997).



Townsend’s movie was released only months after the first of two box-set collections of Gaye’s musical career was released, a moment that demanded a re-evaluation of Gaye’s career, which could be heard in the generation of R&B singers that emerged in the 1990s including Kenny Lattimore, Maxwell, D’Angelo and perhaps, most dramatically, Robert Sylvester Kelly. As the quintessential Soul Man (save Sam Cooke, who served as the template), it was not difficult to read Gaye onto Eddie King, Jr. or a generation later, Eddie Murphy’s stellar portrait of the fictional James “Thunder” Early in the film adaptation of Dreamgirls.



In many ways the specter of Marvin Gaye continues to haunt contemporary imaginations of Soul Men. Perhaps it’s because Marvin Gaye was a project incomplete—we all long for what Gaye might have had to say about the Hip-hop generation that was just emerging when he took his last breathe and how he might have engaged the music that was produced in its wake. I for one, wonder what Gaye might have had to say to Mr. Kelly—men who could be accused of, but never convicted of the same crime; like I said there are stories to tell.

But what makes Gaye’s music so singular, is that he never seemed to seek redemption—he seemed almost tragically comfortable with the duality of his experiences and his duel lust for God and the flesh—thinking of his description of sex, fucking really, as “something like sanctified.” Indeed figures as diverse as Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Ronald Isley, Charlie Wilson—and yes, even Mr. Kelley, have actively sought, and in some cases found redemption.

Even Eddie King, Jr. found his redemption, singing Rance Allen’s “I Feel Like Going On” in one of the most memorable scenes from The Five Heartbeats. There are no such moments in Gaye’s career—even his most lasting performance, singing the National Anthem at the 1983 All-star game in Los Angeles, was not so much an attempt at redemption, as it was one last dig at the failings of American Democracy—that programmed back-beat a reminder of the Black humanity that lie at the center of a radical Democratic project.

And it is perhaps this lack of resolution that makes Marvin Gaye such a difficult cinematic subject—and perhaps the very reason the idea of Eddie King, Jr.—and all the men who contributed to his mythic creation, will continue to resonate well after The Five Heartbeats are forgotten.

Ashford and Simpson: The Soundtrack to Black Love

Just in time for Valentine's Day we recognize one of R&B's strongest pairs -- in life and in music.

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Ashford and Simpson: The Soundtrack to Black Love
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

Some 40-plus years after its release, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough" may be the most recognizable Soul duet ever recorded. It’s easy to think that the song’s timelessness has everything to do with the musical bond that Gaye and Terrell shared, in the studio and on stage, but in reality Terrell recorded her vocals for the songs months before Gaye did; The duo were not in the studio together for the recording of the song.

While Gaye and Terrell did find studio magic on tracks like “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” and “Your Precious Love,” the one constant on those recordings was the song-writing and production team of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson. The duo was in their early twenties when Motown head Berry Gordy entrusted them with some of the label’s marquee acts, beginning a more than 40-year career where their songs have served as the soundtrack to Black love.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

Mavis Staples Sings 'Wholy Holy' on the Cosby Show

Marvin's Last Protest

Black Music Month 2010

Marvin’s Last Protest

by Mark Anthony Neal

For most of the 1960s Marvin Gaye was the crown prince of the Motown label. Blessed with Hollywood good looks and one of the greatest voices that pop music had ever witnessed, Gaye seemed poised to have the kind of cross-over success that was once promised for the likes of Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke. But right on the cusp of such success—Gaye’s recording “I Heard Through the Grapevine” was Motown’s best selling single ever at the time of its release in 1968, for example—Gaye switched up and decided to give voice the social malaise found in urban America, the state sanctioned destruction of the environment and the rising dissension against American involvement in the Vietnam War.

The product of this moment was What’s Going On (1971), a recording that was at the center of the efforts by Blacks in America to “speak truth to power” musically, both in support of and in response to, the literal efforts of many in America to bring the struggle for racial, gender, and economic equality to the streets. With What’s Going On Gaye joined artists like Freda Payne (“Bring the Boys Home”), Nina Simone (“Young, Gifted and Black” & “Mississppi Goddamn”), Eugene McDaniels (Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse), Edwin Starr (“War”) and John Lee Hooker (“I Don’t Want to Go to Vietnam”) in speaking out about America’s social conditions. The power of Gaye’s recording is still echoed in the phrase “makes me wanna holla” from his brilliant tome “Inner City Blues”.

Just as quickly as Gaye transformed himself into a protest poet, he changed the game again, making himself into the quintessential “love man” with the recording Let’s Get It On (1973). For all intents Gaye had traveled from “protest” to “climax” as so much of Let’s Get It On was about the spiritual pursuit of sex. This would become a common theme for much of Gaye’s music for the rest of is life, though arguably Gaye’s ability to highlight the complex relationship between sexuality and spirituality had political connotations during an era when the very idea black sexuality was still “dirty” in the minds of many.

By the end of the 1970s, Gaye had largely retreated from the public eye, in large part due to a bitter divorce from Anna Gordy Gaye (duly documented on the recording Here, My Dear), troubles with the IRS (refusing to pay his taxes as a another form of protest), and the emergence of artists like Teddy Pendergrass and Rick James to challenge his “love man” throne. Gaye found relief in Ostend, Belgium and it is there in the early 1980s that Gaye began to plot his comeback to the American music scene. No longer with Motown, Gaye singed with CBS Records (SONY) in 1982 and collaborated with Gordon Banks on the track “Sexual Healing” which would trumpet Gaye’s return to the top of the pop charts and earn the veteran soul singer his first Grammy Awards in 1983.

In was in the context Gaye’s return to the limelight that he was asked to perform the National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game at the Los Angeles Forum. Like the “Stubborn Kind of Fella” that Gaye had embodied for much of his life, Gaye came strolling on court to a drum beat that Banks had programmed only the day before. Reminiscent of the back-beat that was featured on “Sexual Healing” Gaye’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” elicited celebratory catcalls and halfway through the song the audience of over 17,000 were tapping their feet and clapping their hands in affirmation. It could have been any ole Sunday at any ole church in Black America, but instead it was on national television, moments before the tip-off of the yearly showcase of what was increasing becoming not only America’s sport, but the sport of the world.

Often referred to as a “sacred’ song, Francis Scott Key’s composition is rarely performed beyond the parameters intended by the composer. The song, which was granted national anthem status in 1931, has for more than 70 years been seen by some as emblematic of the best that American democracy has to offer to the world—think about it’s connection to those immigrants desiring citizenship—and by others as little more than a soundtrack of American imperialism. Thus when artists perform distinctly personal versions of the song it often represents both a sense of belonging and protest. Such was the case when guitarist Jose Feliciano performed a “controversial” rendition of the song prior to a 1968 World Series game at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium.

No doubt Feliciano's version of the song (Motown was based in Detroit in the late 1960s) resonated within Gaye when he stepped on to center court at the Forum that day. Gaye’s performance suggested that African-Americans had the right to “African-Americanize” the song, in part, because of the price they paid for American Democracy, both in the States and abroad. But Gaye’s version also, as Todd Boyd, author of Young, Black, Rich and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, The Hip Hop Invasion and the Transformation of American Culture, told the Los Angeles Times, “was an indication that the NBA was prepared to embrace the popular culture of America, with African-Americans at the center of it.” Arguably, Gaye’s performance that day—one of his last appearances on national television before his murder a year later—was a prescient view into the future of American culture, which has been fundamentally transformed in the years since, because of the profound influence of black urban culture on everything from music to advertising.

'Bulletproof' and Raheem DeVaughn's Urgent Nostalgia

Raheem DeVaughn’s performance of the Black Power era throwback “Bulletproof” begs the question; What is happening exactly in black culture and politics that necessitates this regeneration? What is going on that has forced DeVaughn to put “sexy” back in the closest in exchange for Black radical chic?

The Urgent Nostalgia of Raheem DeVaughn’s “Bulletproof”
By Mark Anthony Neal

For nearly a generation, R&B has been in a hopeless competition with its past. There hasn’t been a male R&B singer who has emerged in the past generation that hasn’t been burdened with the pressure of being this generation’s Marvin Gaye, Al Green or Curtis Mayfield. More often than not, when contemporary male R&B singers have laid claim to the legacies of the great Soul Men of yesterday, they have done so with requisite bedroom attire.

As political scientist Richard Iton astutely observes in his recent book In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics & Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Oxford University Press), “As a result of the gendered transition and classed transition from soul to disco to hip-hop, R&B has come to be seen increasingly as the music of women and hip-hop as a male-only domain, given their respective concerns: “love songs” in the case of the former and “everything else” in the case of rap” (276)

What this dynamic has meant for male R&B singers is that they have largely ceded political terrain to the rappers, who have mined the archives of the Soul generation better than anyone to find inspiration for contemporary moments of crisis; even Lil’ Wayne has been in conversation with Nina Simone. Consistent efforts on the part of male R&B singers over the last twenty years to explicitly address the social and political climate that they exist in are scarce. One literally has to go back to the late 1980s--the last moment R&B’s dominanance on Black (urban) radio—to find examples of socially conscious R&B—such as Paul Laurence’s “Strung Out,” Oran Juice Jones’s “Pipe Dreams,” and Tashan’s “Black Man.”



The absence of social and political commentary—what Iton identifies as part of a “private realm (female) versus public realm (male)” dynamic—has led male R&B singers to look inward; one can only gaze at the spiritual crisis and domestic drama that has marked the music, in recent years, of R. Kelly and Usher Raymond, two of R&B’s best known figures. While this more introspective view, often masked by a strident hyper-sexuality and hyper-masculinity (Jaheim immediately comes to mind), offers a fuller exploration of black masculinity than even the Soul generation was willing to engage, the fact that R&B has been mute when it comes to Black politics remains troubling. In steps Raheem DeVaughn, whose new single “Bulletproof,” featuring Ludacris, seems to be a concerted effort to fill a seeming void.

“Bulletproof,” which has been in heavy circulation on urban radio, finds DeVaughn musing about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, police brutality (personal aside: "really Barack? 30,000 more troops?"), poverty, homicide and sexual violence alongside the refrain “Living like we bulletproof/We bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang /I say we load it, cock it, aim and shoot.” Musically “Bulletproof” is the logical progeny of the soundtrack era of Soul music, clearly nodding to Marvin Gaye’s soundtrack for Trouble Man and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack. For the song DeVaughn even trades in his own yearning tenor for Mayfield’s signature falsetto.

This is not new terrain for DeVaughn, who prior to signing with Jive records a few years ago had established himself as a mixtape artist often melding traditional R&B balladry with a distinct street sensibility. Tracks like “Catch 22” and “Until” from DeVaughn’s Jive debut The Love Experience (2006) attempted to speak to more pressing social realities. Audiences instead gravitated to his “Guess Who Loves You More”—a bit of user-friendly R&B which heavily borrows from Earth Wind and Fire’s “Can’t Hide Love.” DeVaughn’s follow-up, Love Behind the Melody (2008), seemed calibrated to the club and the after-party, an attempt to take advantage of DeVaughn’s sexy (though unconventional) Soul Man looks (see the doe-eyes and full lips).

During a recent performance of "Bulletproof" on the Soul Train Awards, DeVaughn riffs on the sartorial politics of the Black Power era , dressed in all-black—turtle neck, leather jacket, sun glasses, black gloves and untied combat boots—recalling the stylistic choices of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and other black militants from the late 1960s and 1970s. Adding to the sense of urgent nostalgia, DeVaughn was joined on stage by Professor Griff and the S1Ws—Public Enemy’s famed faux paramilitary unit (modeled after the Nation of Islam’s Fruit of Islam). The presence of Black Power iconography—DeVaughn and the S1Ws raise a Black Power fist at the close of the performance—alongside the symbolic presence of hip-hop’s most political moment, suggest that DeVaughn embodies the regeneration of socially conscious black music.

Yet the DeVaughn’s performance begs the question; What is happening exactly in black culture and politics that necessitates this regeneration? What is going on that has forced DeVaughn to put “sexy” back in the closest in exchange for Black radical chic?

The murders of Shaniya Davis and Derrion Albert notwithstanding, I’d like to suggest that there is a general sense of crisis simmering in Black communities, that has little to do with the actual challenges facing black communities. What I am suggesting is that the crises experienced by black communities are no more daunting than they were prior to January of 2009, but with the first family Obama serving as the ultimate agents of Black respectability—there is suddenly added pressure within the black body politic to resist social deviance and to conform to notions of respectability. Such tensions are indexed in the erection of dress codes at historically black institutions and anxieties over innocuous black stereotypes (most pronounced in the hackneyed debates about the Lee Daniel’s film Precious).

In this context, “Bulletproof” is the kind of song that Raheem DeVaughn is supposed to make, because that is what respectable Soul Men are supposed to do; R. Kelly’s sexual ruminations on “Pregnant” and “Bangin’ the Headboard” or even Usher's midst-of-divorce broadside “Papers” are read as little more than deviant excesses. But the motivations for the social commentary of the Soul Men who clearly inspire DeVaughn—Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye —are instructive.

Mayfield, who penned many a Civil Rights anthem while fronting the Impressions in the 1960’s, is most remembered for his soundtrack recording for Superfly—a recording that was both a commercial and artistic success. Less remembered is the fact that Mayfield only agreed to record the album after reading a copy of the script of the film. It was in fact the film—as opposed to the reality of drug addiction in black communities--that Mayfield sought to counter with his soundtrack. According to Mayfield, “[W]hen I saw it visually I thought ‘this is a cocaine infomercial’…I did the music and the lyrics to be a commentary as though someone was speaking as the movie was going” (quoted in In Search of The Black Fantastic, 114). My intent is not to quibble with Mayfield’s choices—the recording was a clear boost to his post-Impressions career—but to highlight that he was responding less to Black crises and more to a Hollywood financed Blaxploitation film’s mediation of those crises—crises that were largely manufactured for a popular audience.

Similarly, Marvin Gaye’s soundtrack for Trouble Man was released as Gaye was trying to craft a following up to his groundbreaking What’s Going On?—a recording generally regarded as one of the quintessential protest albums of the era. In the spring of 1972 Gaye recorded the track “You’re the Man,” the intended lead single for a follow-up protest album with the same title. The song was directed at the presidential candidates during the 1972 primary season (rapper Brother Ali recorded a version of the song on the eve of Barack Obama’s election in November of 2008).

The album never materialized. As Iton writes in In Search of the Black Fantastic, “The failure of the single to cross over to the pop charts led Gaye to return to the mold—that of the singer of songs about male/female relationships…The subsequent success of his next [single] ‘Let’s Get It on’—originally conceived as ‘(Come On People) Let’s Get It On’—reinforced his anxieties about recording political material.” (99) Gaye’s decision to transition from the music of social protest to that of sexual climax would reverberate for nearly two generations of male R&B singers, ushering in an era of hypersexualized Soul—thinking specifically of Major Harris’s “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” which is accompanied by post-coital moans—that framed the careers of figures like Teddy Pendergrass, Rick James, R. Kelly and many others.

Marvin Gaye Let’s Get it On (1973) effectively put Black politics back in the closet, just as social policy began to reflect a retreat from the social gains of the late 1960s. Now more than thirty years, Raheem DeVaughn has pulled respectable black politics from the closet—at the expense of gender, sexuality and class—performing a urgent nostalgia that may ultimately ring hollow in this new age of Black Respectability.

Everyday Grandeur: Remembering Artist Ernie Barnes

Left of Black

Everyday Grandeur: Remembering Artist Ernie Barnes

by Mark Anthony Neal

Though his name was rarely uttered in conversations of fine art and few in academic circles had more than a passing interest in his body of work, when Ernie Barnes died this past Monday, his art was arguably some of the most recognizable among African-Americans. Most known for his 1971 painting “Sugar Shack” and for his striking treatments of African-American athleticism, Barnes will be most remembered for bringing grandeur to the everyday lives of African-Americans.

Born in Durham, NC in 1938, Barnes first began to paint as a refuge from childhood peers who teased him about his boyish heft. Ironically by his teenage years Barnes became interested in fitness, so much so, that he received more than twenty scholarship offers to play college football. He chose to play for North Carolina Central, an HBCU, and though he didn’t graduate, he went on to play professionally in the now defunct American Football League (AFL). It was Barnes’s connections with professional football that led to his career as a full-time painter, initially as the “official” artist for the AFL before the merger with the National Football League (NFL). Later Barnes found support from then New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who paid Barnes a $15,000 salary to develop his skills and helped organize Barnes’s first major gallery show in New York City.

Barnes’s biggest break occurred, when television producer Norman Lear decided to feature the artist’s work in his series Good Times (ghosting the art of eldest son JJ, who was a painter on the series). “Sugar Shack” was featured in the series’ closing credits, a painting that highlights blacks in a local dance hall. The same painting was used as the cover art for Marvin Gaye’s 1976 recording I Want You, the album in some ways serving as a logical soundtrack for “Sugar Shack.” The painting not only reflected the beauty of African Vernacular culture, it was accessible enough to be enjoyed by the very folk who derived the most pleasure from that culture.

According to Duke University Art Historian Richard J. Powell, “Ernie was arguably a pioneer in the mass-marketing of his highly stylized paintings of African American life and leisure. As early as the early 1970s (when many artists turned up their noses at the idea of transforming their art works into posters or notecards), he sold beautiful, high-quality reproductions of his paintings that ordinary folks could afford.” By the end of the 1970s Charlton Heston, Harry Belafonte, Ethel Kennedy, Sammy Davis, Jr., Flip Wilson and Bert Reynolds were among those with Barnes originals in their collection while there was nary a black student dorm room that didn’t have a copy of Gaye’s I Want You cover adorning their walls.

Barnes’s signature pieces featured African-American subjects with elongated limbs—a metaphor perhaps for reaching beyond the limits of possibility. For Powell, author of the new book Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (University of Chicago Press), Barnes’s figures were “so intentionally sensuous and impossibly elongated, very much like Marvin Gaye's vocals on the classic album.” Barnes gained more recognition in 1984, when he was chosen as the official artist of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, despite being originally overlooked until former teammate and then New York congressman Jack Kemp brought Barnes’s work to the attention of Olympic officials. It was a fitting apex to Barnes career, as the artist told People Weekly at the time that, “without athletics…I don’t think my work would have the guts and fluidity that it does.”

Art historian Powell notes that Barnes “took the idea of being a ‘popular artist’ to an aesthetic apogee,” adding that “folks never grow weary of his beautiful and outrageous athletes, dancers, and other African American men, women, and children.” Indeed Barnes art resonated even for the hip-hop generation; When Camp Lo released their nostalgia laced 1997 recording Uptown Saturday Night (which features the classic “Luchini aka This is It”), the cover art paid homage to Barnes’s “Sugar Shack.”

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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of several books and is currently completing Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities for New York University Press.

Marvin Gaye @ 70

From the Archives...

I've written a great deal about Marvin Gaye, and on this, the 70th anniversary of his birth, I'm not sure I have much more to say. So I offer this piece from the archives, originally published at Africana.com

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Spiritual Sex: Marvin Gaye
By Mark Anthony Neal

Ask any of them. Ask any of the current crop of Chocolate Boy Wonders, who they listened to as up-and-coming shorties trying to get at the panties — with weak game and a soulful warble — there’s no doubt that Marvin Gaye will be the first name out of their mouths.

Not too long ago, in a British poll, respondents were asked to name their “soundtrack for sex” and two Marvin Gaye songs, “Sexual Healing” and “Let’s Get It On” topped the list.

First it’s that brief “wah, wah, wah, wah” intro by guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah” Ragin (bruh fo’ sure earned his rep) and then there’s Marvin, naked with emotion, “I’ve been really tryin’ baby/Tryin’ to hold back this feelin’ for so long…Let’s Get it On.” When the single “Let’s Get It On” dropped in June of 1973, black sexuality had never before been expressed so passionately and so brilliantly to mainstream audiences.

Though Marvin Gaye had long had the reputation of being Motown’s leading “love man,” it was with the release of Let’s Get It On 30 years ago, that the late Soul Man became synonymous with “blue light in the basement” sexuality. But “Let’s Get it On” was never a song just about sex (“getting’ it on”), but a song about the spirituality of the sex act — the proverbial sermon in the sheets.

This was a territory always hinted at in the gospel music of Sam Cooke (hell, there were woman who wanted to toss their panties up at the pulpit when he sang) and was later articulated in the music of his soulful sons, like Al Green (ya gotta hear his “Belle” to know what we talkin’ about here), Eddie Levert, and later Prince and R. Kelly.

These were the men who had voices given from the most high, but who lamented in song, the fact that they could only sing of the flesh. This was the crisis of spirituality, and at times sexuality, that has defined the “Soul Man”— that legendary figure, often tragic (would you like some hot grits with that Bible?) who is arguably just as influential, if not more so, than the “Race Man” (who no doubt in his hour of need, found a blue-lighted basement, filled with the sounds of the “Soul Man” to salve the pain of speaking for the race.)

As Teresa L. Reed notes in her important book The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music, the tragedies associated with some of these figures “tend to conjure images of the Robert Johnson legend. In exchange for their stardom, some would say, the Devil had come to collect his due.”

The first side of Let’s Get It On is essentially a suite of music that was largely written by Ed Townsend, who had written and produced for the likes of Etta James and Nat King Cole. The opening track, “Let’s Get it On,” in one of the landmarks of sound-recording technology from that era as three distinct Marvin Gaye voices (and at times a fourth, with his falsetto) were layered on top of each other creating a cascading, ethereal choir of Marvin Gaye, that as many witnesses may testify, comes as close to sonic orgasm, as a pop recording ever has.

Initially audiences were deprived of the song’s third verse, which was deleted for the single release. But the full version of the song was included on the album release and that verse was worth the price of admission alone as Gaye gleefully coos, “I know you know what I been dreaming of…(my body wants it, my body wants it, my body wants, my body wants it…).” And then there is the song’s climax, where Gaye just riffs “girl you give me good feelin’, something like sanctified.” Religious Sex.

According to Townsend, who had just returned from rehab for alcohol addiction at the time he was tapped to work with Gaye, “Let’s Get It On” was initially as an inspirational song — one intended to reflect his own desires to get on with life. (Linear notes Let’s Get It On Deluxe Edition)

There’s a demo version of the song on the Deluxe Edition of Let’s Get On (2001) that bears out this truth. But when Gaye finally laid down the vocals for the version of the song we know now, he had been smitten by 16 year-old Janis Hunter (mother of the actress and singer Nona Gaye), and the passion, energy, and improvised sensuality of the song was largely a tribute to her impact on Gaye, who turned 34 a week after laying down the song’s vocals. (This is where Gaye and R. Kelly are powerfully linked, but we ain’t goin’ there now)

Though “Let’s Get it On” is one of Marvin Gaye’s best known tracks, the songs that follow it on the side one suite of Let’s Get It On, including the extended riff of the lead single called “Keep Gettin' It On,” are arguably some of the most exquisite recordings of his career. The verses to “Please Stay (Once You Go Away)” prominently feature Gaye’s overdubbed vocals and essentially comprise two distinct songs — two totally different listening experiences — dependant on whether the listener is focused on his lead vocals or Gaye’s background “punch-ins.”

It remains a tribute to Gaye’s craftsmanship, that he was so concerned with the quality of the background vocals, an art that has been lost on this generation of artists, save Luther Vandross and Dave Hollister.

But it is the haunting and eerie “If I Should Die Tonight” that is the signature performance of the opening side of Let’s Get It On. Townsend’s simple opening lyrics, “Oh, if I should die tonight, though it be far before my time, I won’t die too blue, ‘cause I’ve known you” express a depth of romantic love that even the most sexual of pop songs barely hint at.

It would be hard to believe that Stevie Wonder and Prince did not have “If I Should Die Tonight” somewhere in their consciousnesses when they wrote their grand romantic opuses “As” and “Adore.” Townsend notes that initially Gaye couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea of loving a woman so much, that he could accept a premature death simply because he had known her in the biblical sense.

But after meeting Janis Hunter, Gaye purportedly told Townsend, “Get that tape. I can sing that son of a bitch now” (linear notes Let’s Get It On Deluxe Edition). In the initial mastering of Let’s Get It On, the final verse of “If I Should Die Tonight” was “accidentally” deleted. The original version of the song stood on its own for more than twenty years until, the deleted verse was re-inserted in a re-mastered CD of the recording in 1994.

The missing verse captures the depth of love, infatuation, passion and obsession that Gaye felt for Hunter, who he would later share a volatile four-year relationship and marriage with. It is hard to not imagine Gaye on his knees, damn-near driven to tears in the studio as he openly queries “How many eyes have seen their dreams? /How many arms have held their dreams? /How many hearts (oh, darling) have felt their world stand still?” only to respond, “Millions never, no never, never, never and millions never will.”

Ed Townsend was not involved on any of the tracks that appear on side two of Let’s Get It On and would only work once more with Gaye on the latter’s 1978 double-disc recording Here, My Dear (the recording was done in part to pay alimony to Anna Gordy Gaye, Gaye’s first wife and sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy, who incidentally was nearly twice Gaye’s age when they were married in the early 1960s.)

As hyper-sexual as the song “Let’s Get It On” seemed, side two’s “You Sure Love to Ball” (“ball” was slang for sex in the 1970s) took it to another level. Built around a smoothed-out Jazz groove (featuring the Detroit Hard-Bop heads known as “The Funk Brothers,” who were Motown’s house musicians. They are given tribute in the film Standing in the Shadows of Motown) the song opens with a women’s voice feigning orgasmic pleasure. This was straight-up adult music.

Anybody could dig “Let’s Get It On,” but “You Sure Love to Ball” was the song you broke out when you were “gettin' grown” (folks just slept on Cee Lo). Gaye later revisited the simulated orgasm that opened “You Sure Love to Ball” on his album I Want You (1975) and former Delphonics lead Major Harris had his only hit with “Love Won’t Let Me Wait,” which upped the ante on the strategy.

The remaining three cuts on side two, were all songs that Gaye conceived of at an earlier point in his career. The Doo-Wop inspired “Come Get to This,” “Distant Lover” and “Just To Keep You Satisfied” were all songs that Gaye initially recorded while working on the legendary What’s Going On (1971). Regarded as one of the most important protest recordings of all time, What’s Going On marked Gaye’s transition from Motown’s “Sepia Sinatra” (as Nelson George describes him in The Death of Rhythm and Blues) to “serious” artist.

In some regards Gaye’s travels from What’s Going On to Let’s Get It On mark his transition from protest to climax. The presence of these three What’s Going On era tracks on Let’s Get It On suggest that the transition was more seamless than most of us thought. Though the studio version of “Distant Lover” is fine in its own right, Gaye’s live version of the song, which was featured on his Marvin Gaye Live (1974) is arguably one of his best performances ever and one of the greatest live recordings in all of black pop, rivaled only by Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry,” Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Reasons,” and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace.”

Ultimately though, it is Let’s Get It On’s closing track, “Just to Keep You Satisfied,” that makes the project, a recording that you have to listen to, thirty years after it’s release. Gaye’s first wife Ann Gordy Gaye is given writing credit on the song, largely on the basis that she was the inspiration for the song.

Men of Gaye’s generation were very familiar with the “Dear John” letters that war veterans received while serving abroad during World War II and the Korean conflict. “Just to Keep You Satisfied” was Gaye’s “Dear Anna” letter, where he essentially detailed the basis for their break-up and impending divorce. In a performance that is sparse and tragic, Gaye sings of wanting to keep his wife satisfied despite “all the jealousy, all the bitchin’ too.”

In one particularly poignant moment he admits that he’d “forget it all, once in bed with you.” What makes listening to “Just To Keep You Satisfied” such a bone-chilling experience is that Gaye performs the song largely in a falsetto voice and though he gets little credit for it, he was one of the great falsettos of his generation (Eddie Kendricks, Ted Mills, Smoky Robinson, Russell Thompkins, Jr, please take a bow).

What’s Going On was the most important recording of Marvin Gaye’s career and rightfully so. But none of Gaye’s recording was as heartfelt, both in his performance and in the lives of those who have listened to it, as his Let’s Get It On. This was a recording that got at the very spirit of the man that was Marvin Gaye and thirty years after its release, it remains in the very spirits of all those who have been touched by his genius.

of Soul & Sneakers

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Marvin Gaye's "song & dance" for Nike
by Mark Anthony Neal

Moments before the start of National Basketball Association's annual All-Star Game in February of 1983, the legendary Soul singer Marvin Gaye took center court at the Los Angeles Forum to perform the "Star Spangled Banner." . Armed with only a first generation drum machine (programmed the day before by Gordon Banks), his own vocal genius and the legacy African-American protest, Gaye offered the most soulful rendition of the National Anthem that most Americans had ever heard. That singular moment in Gaye's career has been recaptured in a recent Nike commercial featuring the so-called Olympic "Redeem Team."

Give Nike credit for mining the digital crates of Black American culture to make explicit comment on the hegemony of basketball, black music and their products in the world. It's difficult to watch images of Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony juxtaposed to classic footage of Marvin Gaye and not get warm fuzzies about America's role in the world and the position of black athletes and artists as ambassadors. The Nike commercial succeeds in part because it forces us to forget the silence of these same athletes on issues like China's support of the Sudanese government and Nike's own labor practices.

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Black Music Month 2008: Perfect Combination--The Soul Duets

from Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

This is the third in a series Black Music Month Playlists that will explore common themes explored in the Soul Music Tradition.

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In 1984, Stacy Lattisaw recorded "Perfect Combination" with Johnny Gill. Lattisaw was a teen sensation recordings hits like a remake of The Moments' "Love on a Two Way Street" and "Let Me Be Your Angel." Atlantic hoped to capitalize on her success in order to break a teen-aged Boston vocalist by the name of Johnny Gill. It would still be years before Gill's body would catch up to his grown man vocals and eventually an audience that appreciated his talents. But "Perfect Combination" was an earnest attempt to capture that Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell magic. When Lattisaw was on the downside of her career and Gill's star was finally on the rise (courtesy of his spin with New Edition) the two collaborated again on "Where Do We Go from Here?" The songs with Lattisaw and Gill are a reminder of other great Soul and R&B duets, like these below.


"Ain't No Mountain High Enough"--Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" borders on being cliché, as it is so often referenced as the quintessential Soul duet. True there's an innocence and sexiness that's palpable in this classic pairing of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and Motown milked it for all they could releasing three album's worth of material by the duo including classics like "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," "You're All I Need to Get By" and "Your Precious Love", the song that Terrell was signing when she collapsed in Gaye's arms at a concert in Virginia in 1967. Ironically, Gaye and Terrell weren't even in the studio together--Gaye added his vocals long after Terrell laid down hers. Yet the energy is real and for that we can thank the writers, Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who gave Marvin and Tammi songs drawn from their own romance. Terrell died tragically in 1970 of a brain tumor.


"Ain't Understanding Mellow"--Jerry Butler & Brenda Lee Eager

Jerry Butler had been in the music business for nearly 15 years and was on the third stage of a career that began as the lead vocalist of The Impressions (with Curtis Mayfield). Butler was on the downside of the most popular point of a career that was largely resuscitated courtesy of Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble (a few years before PIR) when he teamed with Brenda Lee Eager for the ultimate breakup song "Ain't Understanding Mellow." This was serious grown folk music about a man showing appreciation for a partner, who was honest enough to admit to her love for another man. In turn she shows appreciation for him understanding her situation. This ultimately a song about a couple who were grounded in friendship, even as the romantic relationship starts to sour. And yeah, what's the deal with that title?

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