Marvin Gaye - Motown Icon of the 1960s

(Marvin Gaye via last.fm)

Marvin Gaye - Enduring Legend by Robert D Hill

Marvin Gaye had one of the most recognizable voices in music history. Even thirty years after his death his voice is a fresh as the first day he signed to Motown Records in Detroit. His style and tone has made him an icon in rhythm and blues history and he is known as the quintessential example of cool. Gaye's three octave vocal range put him above his class of contemporaries at Motown and made him one of the most popular musicians of our time even this long after his death.

Marvin Gaye started out his career in a group called the Moonglows in the late 1950's. After deciding to go solo, Gay signed with Motown Records as a session drummer. Pretty soon his vocal talent earned him a recording contract and he became Motown's number one selling vocal artist. He was often called the Prince of Motown and the Prince of Soul. As a true artist, Gaye fought against the norm of the record industry's system of separating song writers from performers and began producing his own records as well as performing on them. This opened the door for other Motown legends like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder.

There is probably just about no one living in the United States who doesn't know at least one of Marvin Gaye's hits. Heard it through the Grapevine, Let's Get It On, What's Going On and of course the monster hit Sexual Healing have been the backbone of R&B's success as a music genre in this country. He is also credited with being a progenitor of slow jams and urban adult contemporary genres. In the late seventies, Gaye lived in Europe coming back to the US in 1982 to release Sexual Healing on the album Midnight Love.

Unfortunately, Marvin Gaye was gunned down by his own father in 1984 making for a very premature end to his magnificent career. In 1987, Gaye was posthumously inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Marvin Gaye was a major influence on countless artists throughout the years he was making music and even after he died. He is put in a league with other titans of R&B like Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and the Jackson 5. Motown wouldn't be what it is today if it wasn't for the smooth melodic sound of Marvin Gaye's voice. His legend will live on.

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