Word: motowners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Motown Beatitudes After listening to the Motown album What's Going On, the Rev. Jesse Jackson informed its creator, Soul Crooner Marvin Gaye, that he was as much a minister as any man in any pulpit. Gaye does not see himself in quite that way, though he does admit to a certain "in" with the Almighty. "God and I travel together with righteousness and goodness. If people want to tag along, they can." While such words would sound intolerably conceited from any other pop star, they come inoffensively from Gaye. Part mystic, part pentecostal fundamentalist, part socially aware ghetto...
...stuff of hit songs and albums, brotherly love has been growing more fashionable for months. But it is decidedly something new for Motown. It was romantic love that turned the Detroit-based soul factory into a multimillion-dollar corporation, and made many of its stars rich. Gaye, for example, started out in 1961 as a Johnny Mathis-type balladeer with a silvery tenor voice and by 1967 had become Motown's No. 1 purveyor of black soul. Neither that success nor his kinship with God has given Gaye a notably pious manner. A gangly, soft-spoken...
...Gold Records. The religion stuck, and so did the singing. In 1961 Berry Gordy, the mogul behind Motown, spotted Gaye in a black club in Detroit. Within a year Gaye had the first of twelve gold records, Stubborn Kind of Fellow, and soon was married to Gordy's sister Anna, living in Gordy's former house in integrated but still fashionable North Detroit...
...sweet pop, soul and public concerts. Partly this was because his favorite singing partner, a pert brunette named Tammi Terrell, collapsed in his arms onstage at William and Mary College and later died of a brain tumor. Beyond that, though, he had simply grown weary of Marvin the Motown Star who, night after night, had to tell jokes, do little dance steps and "put out the grin...
...nearly a year Gaye did not go near the Motown plant. To keep his name before the public, Brother-in-Law Gordy issued an LP of Marvin Gaye Super Hits. Then one morning last winter Gaye showed up with the idea for What's Going On. Beyond its $2,000,000 worth of straight sales, the album also produced three hit singles with combined sales of 4,000,000 copies-the title song, Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues. Such selling power obviously means that a lot of people are willing to tag along behind Marvin...