Marvin Gaye (born Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr.) (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) was an American soul and R&B singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, record producer and performer who gained international fame as an artist on the Motown label in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beginning his career at Motown in 1961, Gaye quickly became Motown’s top solo male artist and scored numerous hits during the 1960s, among them "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", and several hit duets with Tammi Terrell, including "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough" and "You’re All I Need to Get By", before moving on to his own form of musical self-expression. Gaye is notable for fighting the hit-making, but creatively restrictive, Motown record-making process, in which performers and songwriters and record producers were generally kept in separate camps. With his successful 1971 album What’s Going On and subsequent releases including Trouble Man and Let’s Get It On, Gaye, who was a part-time songwriter for Motown artists during his early years with the label, proved that he could write and produce his own singles without having to rely on the Motown system. This achievement (along with those of contemporaries, Curtis Mayfield and George Clinton), would pave the way for the successes of later self-sufficient singer-songwriter-producers in African American music, such as Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, and Babyface.
During the 1970s, Gaye would release several other notable albums, including Let’s Get It On and I Want You, and had hits with singles such as "Let’s Get It On", "Got to Give It Up", and, in the early 1980s, "Sexual Healing". By the time of his death in 1984 at the hands of his clergyman father, Gaye had become one of the most influential artists of the soul music era.
Let’s Get It On is a landmark soul album by Marvin Gaye, released on the Tamla (Motown) label on August 28, 1973. Described by critics as a sexually and romantically charged album that "remains a record unparalleled in its sheer sensuality and carnal energy", Let’s Get it On was Gaye’s second venture into funk music, was his most successful album with Motown and helped to push his multi-tracking vocals to the forefront.
History
By the spring of 1973, Marvin Gaye was suffering from writer’s block. After releasing his most successful album up to that point, 1971’s What’s Going On and the popular soundtrack to the film, Trouble Man in 1972, Marvin had struggled to come up with material. He recorded some more politically conscious material including the released single, "You’re the Man" and the then unreleased "The World is Rated X" and "Where Are We Going" – the latter track later covered and released by Donald Byrd. Gaye had planned a release of an album titled You’re the Man but was later shelved for unknown reasons. After a discussion with old friend and former singer Ed Townsend of "For Your Love" fame, Gaye agreed to record the rough draft of a song Townsend had worked on: "Let’s Get It On". Originally the song was a religious ode to life and was later re-written by Gaye confidant Kenneth Stover. Upon hearing Gaye’s demo of the political version of the song, Townsend protested that the song was about "making sweet love". Marvin and Ed then rewrote the lyrics with the arrangements and musical accompaniment of the demo intact. The song gave Gaye inspiration to revive old recordings of songs he had yet finished including the doo-wop-leaning "Come Get to This", "Distant Lover" and "Just to Keep You Satisfied". Gaye and Townsend worked on four songs together including the ballad "If I Should Die Tonight" while Gaye composed the majority of the remaining four songs reexamining older songs. "…Satisfied" was originally recorded by least three Motown groups: The Miracles, The Originals and the Monitors and had been originally recorded as a song dedicated to long-standing love. By the time Gaye recorded his own version, he had re-written the lyrics and arrangement of the song to talk about the demise of his real marriage to Anna Gordy Gaye, who was ironically the original song’s co-writer.
Release and reaction
Released on August 28, 1973, Let’s Get It On surpassed What’s Going On as the biggest-selling recording of his tenure with Motown. Peaking at number two on the pop albums chart and staying at number-one on the R&B album chart (then the Top Black Albums chart) for eleven weeks, making it the biggest-selling R&B album that year and was at that time in Motown’s history the label’s largest-selling recording ever selling over three million units between 1973 and 1975. Two of the singles reached the top forty including "Let’s Get It On", which became Gaye’s second number-one pop single, and the top thirty hit "Come Get to This" which peaked at number twenty-three on the chart. A third single, the orgasmic "You Sure Love to Ball" was a more modest charted hit peaking at number fifty while it registered at number thirteen on the R&B singles chart.
Legacy
Many musicians have since copied aspects of the album. The album’s success would influence the music of mid-1970s sex symbol R&B singers such as Barry White, Smokey Robinson and Teddy Pendergrass and the careers of future soul musicians such as Rick James and Prince. Some have gone so far as to take Gaye’s fashion style on the cover of the album, with his red kufi, unshaven beard, and singular earring as part of their look. Rapper Common is among those who have taken that image to promote his material.
In 2004, the album was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame.
In 2003, the album was ranked number 165 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.