The Motown singer who blew the roster away: “I’d never even dared to dream”
In addition to churning out as many hit records as humanly possible, Berry Gordy’s Motown label was also in the business of monopolising the musical talent of Detroit. As the years marched on and the label grew exponentially, more and more now-iconic stars passed through the doors of Hitsville USA, but one particular voice always stood out from the rest.
Motown’s roster of artists during its 1960s golden age was unparalleled by any other label across the musical landscape, which is an even more impressive fact when you take into account that Gordy’s company was still relatively new and didn’t have the years or budget afforded to more established, major labels. While that roster was focused almost exclusively on conjuring up chart-topping hits, it took a special kind of artist to maintain that level of success over multiple years.
After all, Motown released well over one hundred top-ten hits during that brief ten-year period between its formation and the dawn of the 1970s. Among them, there were a multitude of performers who could, in all honesty, be considered one-hit wonders, who were quickly dropped from Gordy’s favour the moment they stopped creating hits.
On the other end of the spectrum, there were figures like Marvin Gaye, whose extensive string of hits was utterly essential in carving out the legendary ‘Motown sound’.
It was back in 1960, when Motown was still in its Tamla formative years, that Gaye signed up to the label, and his vocal prowess quickly saw him become one of Gordy’s greatest weapons. Countless hits ensued, including 1968’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ which, despite initially being blocked from release by the Motown boss, became the label’s biggest selling hit to date.
It was Gaye who also perfected the art of the duet alongside Tammi Terrell, and opened the floodgates for Motown’s politicised output with one of the greatest albums of all time, What’s Going On. In other words, then, Marvin Gaye was one of Motown’s defining characters, and nobody else on the roster was in any doubt over his credentials.
“One of my favourite artists ever was Marvin Gaye,” Smokey Robinson once declared. In addition to fronting The Miracles, Robinson was also a key songwriter at Motown, and that led to an incredible partnership with his fellow vocalist. “Marvin Gaye was my brother, but Marvin was always late for everything,” Robinson shared. “If my session was going to start at seven o’clock that evening, I’d tell Marvin it was gonna start at five. He’d still be late.”
Inevitably, though, Gaye made up for that lack of time-keeping in his performance. “I didn’t too much mind,” Robinson continued, “because I knew that when I showed him my song, and he started to sing it, I used to tell him all the time, ‘You Marvin-ised my song, man.’ He would do stuff, vocally, that I’d never even dared to dream could be a part of that song. You would always say, ‘Kill it.’ He would kill it.”
That Robinson-Gaye partnership produced some enduring Motown masterpieces, including the top-ten track ‘I’ll Be Doggone’, but, as Robinson affirmed, whatever track Marvin Gaye lent his voice to took on an entirely new dimension. Throughout Motown’s history, his vocal power remained largely unmatched and, whichever way you spin it, the label simply wouldn’t have sounded the same without him.
