April 1, 1984, 40 years ago: Singer Marvin Gaye is shot and killed -- by his father, of all people -- a day before what would have been his 45th birthday.
Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. was born on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C., the son of a Pentecostal minister who beat him and the other children. His love of music developed early, and he formed one doo-wop singing group, then another, before his father kicked him out of the house. He found the U.S. Air Force no better than an abusive father, and faked mental illness, getting a general discharge.
He returned to Washington, and formed The Marquees. Harvey Fuqua, lead singer of The Moonglows, heard them, took them to Chicago, and hired them for Chess Records, renaming them the New Moonglows, singing backup on Chuck Berry's "Back in the U.S.A." and "Almost Grown."
In 1960, Fuqua took Gaye to Detroit, and introduced him to Berry Gordy Jr., who had just founded Motown Records. At the time, "gay" still usually meant "lightly happy" rather than "homosexual," but this was changing. But there were other reasons to change his name: He wanted to distance himself from his father's name, and it was a tribute to someone else who had put an E on the end of his name: Sam Cooke.
While Marvin could sing and play piano, Gordy was impressed with his drumming, and put him on sessions with The Miracles (led by Smokey Robinson) and The Marvelettes. The Miracles' "Shop Around" very nearly became the 1st Motown song to hit Number 1. When The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" did, in December 1961, Marvin Gaye was the drummer on the recording.
In 1962, Marvin played drums on a song he co-wrote for The Marvelettes, "BEechwood 4-5789," a song that came out just before telephone numbers were converted to all-number. And he had his 1st hit as a singer, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow." In 1963, he broke into the Top 40 with "Hitch Hike," and then the Top 10 with "Pride and Joy" and "Can I Get a Witness."
Starting in late 1962, he was one of the acts on the Motortown Revue, which toured all over the country, and even allowed its performers on ABC-TV's American Bandstand. In 2002, the NBC 1960s tribute series American Dreams recreated one of these Bandstand performances, with Usher playing Marvin singing "Can I Get a Witness."
By this point, Marvin was married to Anna Gordy, Berry's sister, and his love songs like "Pride and Joy" had been written about her. But things were already complicated. According to official Motown releases, they had a son, named Marvin Pentz Gaye III (with the E on the end). But that was a half-truth: Marvin Jr. was the father, but the mother was Denise Gordy, Berry's and Anna's 16-year-old niece, and Marvin and Anna subsequently adopted the baby.
This wasn't a traditional infidelity: Anna couldn't have children, and everybody agreed to it beforehand. But Anna was still only 16. Had it been revealed at the time, it would have destroyed Marvin, much like the revelation of marriage to his 13-year-old cousin while still married to someone else derailed the career of Jerry Lee Lewis.
By 1965, Motown was more than keeping up with rock and roll's "British Invasion," and Marvin's contributions that year included "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar." And he recorded a series of hit duets with Supremes lead singer Diana Ross, Kim Weston, and especially Tammi Terrell. Tammi was married, but the musical chemistry between them was such that rumors of an affair between them persist to this day. No evidence of them being anything more than close friends has ever been discovered.
In 1968, the Detroit Tigers won the American League Pennant. Their broadcaster, Ernie Harwell, was asked to select the National Anthem singers for the World Series games in Detroit. For Game 3, he selected Margaret Whiting, a white Detroit native known for singing standards. For Game 4, he selected Marvin, who sang it straight, and got a nice hand. For Game 5, he selected José Feliciano, a blind Puerto Rican known as a great virtuoso on Spanish-style classical guitar.
So Harwell, a 50-year-old white man from the South, and a Marine who served in World War II, and an ordained minister and a published songwriter, selected 3 performers: 1 white, 1 black, 1 Hispanic. Feliciano sang the Anthem with a totally different arrangement, and the NBC switchboard was flooded with nasty calls, almost destroying Feliciano's career. Marvin's performance was forgotten.
But the world was changing, and Marvin thought his music should change with it. But Berry Gordy was a control freak, and he thought having black singers address social ills would hurt Motown's profile. He began to relent in 1968, letting The Supremes sing "Love Child" (which hit Number 1) and "Living In Shame."
But Marvin wasn't allowed to sing about social ills. At the end of the turbulent year of 1968, he had the Number 1 song in the country, and it was a spectacular recording, but it was "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," a traditional love song. In 1969, he had a hit with "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby." This was a decent song, and, with its line of, "I ain't got time to do no studying once I get out of class," it would have been a fine start for an 18-year-old rookie singer at Motown. Marvin Gaye was 30 years old.
The year 1970 would prove to be a turning point. Tammi Terrell died from a brain tumor, and Marvin couldn't handle it. And his brother Frankie Gaye -- he, too, became a singer and added the E -- returned from serving in Vietnam, and told Marvin of the awful things he had experienced there. Marvin knew that Berry had complete creative control. But he also knew that something had to be done.
Even more important, he now had an ally: Stevie Wonder, now 20, was also ready to move on to topical material. Together, Marvin and Stevie went on strike, and Berry relented. He let Stevie record "Higher Ground," and that was the start of a bunch of great songs about issues. And he let Marvin record "What's Going On," which became the title track to a landmark album that also included "Inner City Blues" and the environmental song "Mercy Mercy Me."
The title track included Lem Barney and Mel Farr of the NFL's Detroit Lions singing backup. Marvin had been so disillusioned by his career, and perhaps inspired by Paper Lion, the film based on writer George Plimpton's book about trying out for the Lions, that he asked them for a tryout. They turned him down, fearing that injuries could hurt his music career. But when "What's Going On" the single hit Number 2 and sold over 1 million copies, everyone who played or sang on it, including Barney and Farr, received gold records.
Berry Gordy saw that he was wrong, and Marvin and Stevie were right. He began to move Motown from Detroit to Los Angeles, which had become the center of the recording industry on planet Earth. But Marvin and Anna split up, and he began seeing Janis Hunter, who became the mother of his daughter Nona, who became a singer and actress, and his son Frankie, named for his brother.
Berry wasn't the only one who saw the light: What's Going On sold over 2 million copies within a year of its release. It is often rated as one of the Top 10 rock and roll albums of all time. Even my father, a fan of classical, folk and country music, admitted (years after Marvin's shocking death) that this album made him a fan of Marvin's.
Having gotten that out of his system, on August 28, 1973, Marvin released Let's Get It On, another concept album, one about... getting it out of your system. The title track became his 2nd Number 1 hit. He had a 3rd in 1977, "Got to Give It Up." This song inspired many other performers, from Michael Jackson, whose 1st solo Number 1, "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," was very close in lyrics and style; to Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I., whose 2013 chart-topper "Blurred Lines" was so close to it that, 2 years later, a court awarded $7.4 million in royalties/damages to Marvin's children.
In spite of this success, Marvin had become, to borrow the title of David Ritz's posthumous biography of him, a divided soul. His divorce from Anna had cost him a lot of money, and so had his increasing cocaine habit. He moved to Europe, where he was already popular, and lived and toured there.
In 1982, having kicked drugs for the moment, a deal was made to release Marvin from his Motown contract. He signed with CBS Records, and recorded the album Midnight Love, including the single "Sexual Healing." It was a smash, and he was back in the spotlight, winning his 1st 2 Grammy Awards, and being invited to sing the National Anthem before the NBA All-Star Game at The Forum outside Los Angeles. He made it sound like a gospel song. It had been 15 years since he sang it straight at the World Series, and Jose Feliciano hadn't. Times had changed, and everyone loved Marvin's new version.
But the comeback was all too brief, as he fell back on cocaine, and suffered bouts of paranoia. He had bought his parents a house in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. But his father had never really changed, and was always arguing with everyone else in the family, including Marvin and his mother Alberta.
On April 1, 1984, at that house, an argument between Marvin Gay Sr. and Marvin Gaye Jr. turned into a shoving match, and Marvin Jr. got the upper hand, beating his father severely.
It was understood among Marvin Jr. and his siblings that if any of them ever tried to get revenge on their father for the abuse they'd suffered, the father would take it to the next level and kill them. After Alberta separated the Marvins, Marvin Sr. did just that: He went to get a gun, a .38 pistol that Marvin Jr. had bought him to protect the house from intruders, walked back into Marvin Jr.'s room, and, at 12:38 PM Pacific Time (3:38 in New York, their native Washington, and Detroit), calmly shot him in the chest.
Brother Frankie lived in a smaller house on the property, and he found Marvin, and heard his last words: "I got what I wanted. I couldn't do it myself, so I had him do it. It's good. I ran my race. There's no more left in me." At 1:01 PM, he was pronounced dead.
Since it happened on April 1, many people's reaction was that it couldn't be real, that it had to be the sickest April Fool's joke of all time. It wasn't.
Marvin Gay Sr. was examined, and found to have a brain tumor. It was small and benign, and removed. Given this, and the amount of drugs that Marvin Gaye Jr. had in his system at the time of the shooting, a deal was reached: Marvin Sr. pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter. He was given a 6-year suspended sentence and 5 years' probation.
Later in 1984, The Commodores paid tribute to Marvin, and to Jackie Wilson, who had worked with Berry Gordy Jr. before Motown was founded, with the song "Nightshift." And Diana Ross recorded "Missing You." Both hit the Top 10.
Alberta died in 1987, Marvin Sr. in 1998, Frankie in 2001, Anna Gordy Gaye in 2014, and Janis Hunter in 2022. Berry Gordy Jr., Denise Gordy and Janis Hunter are still alive. Marvin Jr. has 2 grandchildren through Marvin III, including Marvin IV, and 3 through Nona. The younger Frankie Gaye is not known to have any children.
