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| Birth Name(s) : Marvin Gaye |
Date of Birth: N/A |
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Full Marvin Gaye Biography
The Moonglows, Martha and the Vandellas, Tammi Terrell, The Originals, Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Diana Ross, Harvey Fuqua
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on April 2, 1939 at Freedman's Hospital. He was the first son and second eldest of four children to minister Rev. Marvin Pentz Gay, Sr and schoolteacher/domestic maid Alberta Cooper. Sisters Jeanne and Zeola, younger brother Frankie and Marvin lived in the segregated section of Washington, D.C.'s Deanwood neighborhood in the northeastern section of the city. As a teen, he caddied at Columbia Country Club just outside of D.C. in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Gaye's father preached in a Seventh-day Adventist Church sect called the House of God, which went by a strict code of conduct and mixed teachings of Orthodox Judaism and Pentecostalism. As a child growing up in his father's church, Marvin started singing and playing instruments in the choir. After dropping out of Cardozo High School, Gaye joined the United States Air Force. He was discharged because he refused to follow orders.
Tammi Terrell died of a tumor on March 16, 1970. Devastated by her death, Marvin was so emotional at her funeral that he'd talk to the remains as if she were going to respond. Gaye subsequently went into seclusion, and did not perform in concert for nearly two years. Gaye told friends that he had thought of quitting music, at one point trying out for the Detroit Lions (where he met acquaintances Mel Farr and Lem Barney), but after the success of his productions with the Originals, Gaye was confident to make his own musical statement. As a result, he entered the studio on June 1, 1970 and recorded the songs "What's Going On", "God is Love", and "Sad Tomorrows" - an early version of "Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)".
The cover of Marvin Gaye's In Our Lifetime album where Marvin openly complained of Motown's rush-release of the album leaving to his exit out of the label a year later.
When the tour ended, he isolated himself by moving into his parents' house. He threatened to commit suicide several times after numerous bitter arguments with his father, Marvin, Sr. On the E! True Hollywood Story about Gaye, singer Little Richard revealed that Gaye had premonitions of his murder in his final years of life. On April 1, 1984, one day before his forty-fifth birthday, Gaye's father shot and killed him after an argument that had started after Marvin's parents argued over misplaced business documents. Marvin, Sr. later was sentenced to six years of probation after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Charges of first-degree murder were dropped after doctors discovered Marvin, Sr. had a brain tumor. Spending his final years in a retirement home, he died of pneumonia in 1998. After some posthumous releases cemented his memory in the popular consciousness, Gaye was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He later was inducted to Hollywood's Rock Walk in 1989 and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990.
Throughout his long career, Gaye scored a total of forty-one Top 40 hit singles on Billboard's Pop Singles chart between 1963 and 2001, sixty top forty R&B singles chart hits from 1962 to 2001, eighteen Top Ten pop singles on the pop chart, thirty-eight Top 10 singles on the R&B chart (according to latest figures from Joel Whitburns Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004, 2004), three number-one pop hits and thirteen number-one R&B hits and tied with Michael Jackson in total as well as the fourth biggest artist of all-time to spend the most weeks at the number-one spot on the R&B singles chart (52 weeks). In all, Gaye produced a total of sixty-seven singles on the Billboard charts in total spanning five decades including five posthumous releases.
The year a remix of Marvin's "Let's Get It On" was released to urban adult contemporary radio, "Let's Get It On" was certified gold by the RIAA for sales in excess of 500,000 units, making it the best-selling single of all time on Motown in the United States. Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" holds the title of the best-selling international Motown single of all time, with high sales explained by a re-release in Europe following a Levi's 501 Jeans commercial in 1986.
In 2005, rock group A Perfect Circle released "What's Going On" as part of an anti-war CD titled eMOTIVe. The next year, it was announced that rock group the Strokes was going to cover Marvin's "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" on their next album. In October 2005, a discussion was delivered at Marvin's hometown of Washington, D.C.'s City Council to change the name of a park located at Marvin's childhood neighborhood from Watts Branch Park to Marvin Gaye Park and was soon offered so for $5 million to make the name change a reality. The park was renamed on April 2, 2006 on what would've been Marvin's sixty-seventh birthday.
The last major single released before his death, from the album Midnight Love - 232 KB
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