Some of you want more: Marvin Gaye - That Stubborn Kinda' Fellow (Classic R&B US 1963)

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That Stubborn Kinda Fellow is an album by Marvin Gaye, released on the Tamla label in 1962. The LP yielded several hit singles including "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", "Hitch Hike" and "Pride and Joy" and helped to establish Marvin as a rising star on the R&B music scene.

An unreleased single, "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)", became a popular standard and was later covered by British singer Paul Young and his version became a hit in the UK in 1982.

One of the most gifted, visionary, and enduring talents ever launched into orbit by the Motown hit machine, Marvin Gaye blazed the trail for the continued evolution of popular black music. Moving from lean, powerful R&B to stylish, sophisticated soul to finally arrive at an intensely political and personal form of artistic self-expression, his work not only redefined soul music as a creative force but also expanded its impact as an agent for social change.

Man, I’d totally forgotten how much fun this record is. One of the real joys of the Complete Motown Singles series is that you don’t just get to hear the obscure novelties and hidden gems; by putting the familiar, heard-it-a-million-times numbers in their proper context, they shine even brighter than before. And that’s the case here.

This was Marvin Gaye’s first hit record, and not coincidentally it’s also his first proper R&B outing, following four singles of decidedly drippy fare (and of varying but generally unimpressive quality).

Up until this point, Marvin Gaye’s ambition in life was pretty much to be the new Nat King Cole. His first two records ((I’m Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over and Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide) were fairly turgid, both born of a battle for Gaye’s musical soul, the result of Marvin himself being at odds with his label, who wanted him to ditch the standards, get up and dance to a backbeat; nobody had been satisfied with the finished product. Things had then reached a nadir with a genuinely horrible whitebread rendition of Mr Sandman at the start of the year. His last record, the endearing Shirelles pastiche Soldier’s Plea, while hardly pulling up any trees, was nonetheless a step in the right direction, a step away from the musical wilderness back towards the pop world.

This one, though, blows all of those previous mis-steps away. It brings with it the arrival of the Marvin Gaye we all know today – and he’s such a new character that it’s virtually a début single. It’s a real breath of fresh air; not in terms of quality, since Motown were already releasing some damned fine sides in the summer of 1962, but more in terms of bringing something new to the mix: a charismatic male solo star. Someone with enough pop appeal to distinguish him from the rougher, bluesier male vocalists on Motown’s books like Henry Lumpkin or Singin’ Sammy Ward, but with enough R&B edge to make him quite different from the dapper, clean-cut image put forward by Eddie Holland or Mickey McCullers.

This record represented a victory for Motown boss Berry Gordy Jr., who’d insisted all along that Marvin was a star in the making, that he’d rack up big sales and crazed fans if he just did what he was obviously born to do. Acquiescing to Gordy’s wishes can’t have been easy for Marvin Gaye, who by most accounts felt as though he was “selling out” by doing this record (lots of them also mention pressure from fiancée Anna Gordy, Berry’s big sister, who wasn’t keen to see her husband-to-be struggling to pay the bills, let alone buy her fancy stuff). There had even been dark mutterings in the corridors of Hitsville about preferential treatment for the boss’ brother-in-law; were it not for Gaye’s relationship with Anna, it’s tempting to ask whether the moody, difficult, jobbing session drummer from Washington DC would have been quite so readily accommodated at Motown.

But the real pressure came from within. Four flops in a row, and an album that gathered no plaudits and sat languishing on the shelves, hadn’t done wonders for Marvin’s self-esteem; he must have been entertaining doubts about whether he would really make it in the industry. Back in 1962, the supper-club circuit didn’t take kindly to performers – and particularly black performers – cutting loose and making young, noisy records. Marvin must have known that doing a raucous R&B platter like this would put paid to his ambitions of MOR jazz-lite crooner stardom, and he still chose to do it, without the benefit of hindsight to reassure him that his decision would lead directly to I Heard It Through The Grapevine and What’s Going On, as well as a parallel career as one half of Motown’s greatest ever duo, performing to packed, adoring houses every night. He wasn’t to know any of that, and he still did it anyway – because deep down he must have known Gordy was right, that if he deigned to do R&B, he’d be bloody good at it. When he took the plunge, he did it wholeheartedly, co-writing this song (the first time he’d performed his own material on a Motown 45) and giving it his all.

The results sing for themselves. This is a great pop record, still full of joy and youthful energy almost fifty years later. The tune is a winner, a really catchy bit of work full of very tiny changes to keep the listener’s interest, all bolstered by some killer hooks. The band are on fine form, opening the record with a drum fill before settling into a steady backbeat that drives the song like a train; there’s even a busting Beans Bowles jazz flute solo amongst the fine horn work in the middle eight, aping the very first Motown single, Marv Johnson’s Come To Me a million years before.

The best thing here, though, are the vocals. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, who filled in for the Andantes on backing vocals at Motown during the summer of 1962, and who seem to have recorded their accompaniment live with Gaye in the studio, are a natural fit with Gaye’s newfound persona, both in voice and attitude; according to Reeves in the liner notes to The Complete Motown Singles: Volume 2, one-time lead Vandella Gloria Jean Williamson ad-libbed the sensational “Doo-doo-doo-OW!” opening hook. There’s a real excitement running through the record, a frisson of energy caused by the interplay between Gaye and his newfound backing group; such was the effect that even after finishing their duties as backup singers and embarking on their own hitmaking career, the Vandellas were still co-opted into appearing on numerous Gaye singles in the future, in an attempt to get lightning to strike again. It never quite worked the same, though not for want of trying.

But if the Vandellas are the best thing on it, then by far the most interesting thing about this record is Marvin Gaye himself. The lyrics, all about Marvin not giving up the chase for a girl despite her hostility, are supposedly semi-autobiographical – Gaye was already becoming known even at this early stage as a dogmatic, moody prima donna, and this was a way to both emphasise his phlegmatic qualities and poke fun at his image – and the raw, half-screamed feel he brings to his delivery is a really weird one to quantify, with hints of both desperation and resentment mixed up with the overridingly positive lyrical message of refusing to quit.

The nature of his vocal has prompted much debate. Was Marvin singing himself raw, wearing his heart on his sleeve, desperate for a hit? Was he turning in a sloppy, undisciplined, even jokey take as a way of sticking two fingers up to the label, angry with himself for betraying his principles? Was he simply breaking through, revelling in finding his element at last? All three theories have been widely advanced since this record was released, and we’ll never know for sure whether any of them is close. For me, it’s more the third – he sounds excited despite himself, feeding off the energy from the Vandellas and the band, knowing he was making something good.

This is one of the most important of all Motown records, not just because it’s so much fun, or because audiences have had so much fun with it (the record shot up the charts, landing Marvin in the R&B Top Ten and the Pop Top 50, a very useful calling card – and of course, there’s the oft-repeated (though probably apocryphal) story that hearing this blasting from his car radio caused Phil Spector to veer off the road) – but because it marks the start of Marvin Gaye’s career proper. If he was going to make a living and carve out a life from music, it would be this sort of music. Stubborn he may have been, but he was also pragmatic, and now he’d discovered something he was really good at; for twenty more years, listeners worldwide would be the beneficiaries. 
[Source: http://motownjunkies.co.uk]

01."Stubborn Kind of Fellow" (Gaye, William "Mickey" Stevenson, George Gordy)
02."Pride and Joy" (Gaye, Stevenson, Norman Whitfield)
03."Hitch Hike" (Gaye, Stevenson, Clarence Paul)
04."Got To Get My Hands on Some Lovin'" (Gaye, Stevenson)
05."Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)" (Gaye, Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong)
06."Soldier's Plea" (Stevenson)
07."It Hurt Me Too" (Gaye, Stevenson, Junior Knight)
08."Taking My Time" (Stevenson)
09."Hello There Angel" (Stevenson)
10."I'm Yours You're Mine" (Stevenson, Anna Gordy Gaye)

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Tamla Motown Records 

Marvin Gaye - Moods of Marvin Gaye (Great R&B US 1966)

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Moods of Marvin Gaye is a 1966 album by Marvin Gaye released on the Tamla label.

The album's plan was to establish the singer as a strong albums-oriented artist, as well as a hit maker, although Gaye was still uncomfortable with performing strictly R&B. He had begun work on a standards album around this time after meeting musician Bobby Scott. However, sessions were unsuccessful. As a matter of fact, Gaye would successfully complete a standards album only in his later years, an album which would be released after his death (That album would be Vulnerable released in 1997). For the time being, Gaye was winning more fans and had become a crossover teen idol. Six songs from Moods of Marvin Gaye were released as singles: impressively, all reached the Top 40 on the R&B singles chart and four of them reached the Top 40 on the Pop Singles Chart, a rare feat for a solo R&B artist even at that time.

Gaye also scored his first two #1 R&B singles, "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar", both co-written by Gaye's friend, Berry Gordy's right-hand man Smokey Robinson. [Wikipedia]

After Marvin Gaye recorded tributes to Broadway and Nat King Cole in the previous two years, Motown fans may have had their suspicions raised by an LP titled Moods of Marvin Gaye. Yes, there are a few supper-club standards to be found here, but Gaye moves smoothly between good-time soul and adult pop. Most important are his first two R&B number ones, "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Particular," both from 1965 and both produced by Smokey Robinson. Berry Gordy's right-hand man also helmed "Take This Heart of Mine" and "One More Heartache," another pair of big R&B scores, and just as good as the better-known hits. 

As for the copyrights not owned by Jobete, the chestnut "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)" certainly didn't need another reading, but Gaye's take on Willie Nelson's after-hours classic "Night Life" was inspired. Marvin Gaye was improving with every record, gaining in character and strength of performance, and Moods of Marvin Gaye is a radically better record than its predecessors.

Biography:
One of the most gifted, visionary, and enduring talents ever launched into orbit by the Motown hit machine, Marvin Gaye blazed the trail for the continued evolution of popular black music. Moving from lean, powerful R&B to stylish, sophisticated soul to finally arrive at an intensely political and personal form of artistic self-expression, his work not only redefined soul music as a creative force but also expanded its impact as an agent for social change.

Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. (in the style of his hero Sam Cooke, he added the "e" to his surname as an adult) was born April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C. The second of three children born to the Reverend Marvin Gay, Sr., an ordained minister in the House of God -- a conservative Christian sect that fuses elements of orthodox Judaism and Pentecostalism, imposes strict codes of conduct, and observes no holidays -- he began singing in church at the age of three, quickly becoming a soloist in the choir. Gaye later took up piano and drums, and music became his escape from the nightmarish realities of his home life -- throughout his childhood, his father beat him on an almost daily basis. 

After graduating from high school, Gaye enlisted in the U.S. Air Force; upon his discharge, he returned to Washington and began singing in a number of street-corner doo wop groups, eventually joining the Rainbows, a top local attraction. With the help of mentor Bo Diddley, the Rainbows cut "Wyatt Earp," a single for the OKeh label that brought them to the attention of singer Harvey Fuqua, who in 1958 recruited the group to become the latest edition of his backing ensemble, the Moonglows. After relocating to Chicago, the Moonglows recorded a series of singles for Chess, including 1959's "Mama Loocie." While touring the Midwest, the group performed in Detroit, where Gaye's graceful tenor and three-octave vocal range won the interest of fledgling impresario Berry Gordy, Jr., who signed him to the Motown label in 1961.

While first working at Motown as a session drummer and playing on early hits by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, he met Gordy's sister Anna, and married her in late 1961. Upon mounting a solo career, Gaye struggled to find his voice, and early singles failed. Finally, his fourth effort, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow," became a minor hit in 1962, and his next two singles -- the 1963 dance efforts "Hitch Hike" and "Can I Get a Witness" -- both reached the Top 30. With 1963's "Pride and Joy," Gaye scored his first Top Ten smash, but often found his role as a hitmaker stifling -- his desire to become a crooner of lush romantic ballads ran in direct opposition to Motown's all-important emphasis on chart success, and the ongoing battle between his artistic ambitions and the label's demands for commercial product continued throughout Gaye's long tenure with the company.

With 1964's Together, a collection of duets with Mary Wells, Gaye scored his first charting album; the duo also notched a number of hit singles together, including "Once Upon a Time" and "What's the Matter With You, Baby?" As a solo performer, Gaye continued to enjoy great success, scoring three superb Top Ten hits -- "Ain't That Peculiar," "I'll Be Doggone," and "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)" -- in 1965. In total, he scored some 39 Top 40 singles for Motown, many of which he also wrote and arranged. With Kim Weston, the second of his crucial vocal partners, he also established himself as one of the era's dominant duet singers with the stunning "It Takes Two." 
However, Gaye's greatest duets were with Tammi Terrell, with whom he scored a series of massive hits penned by the team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, including 1967's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Your Precious Love," followed by 1968's "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "You're All I Need to Get By." The team's success was tragically cut short in 1967 when, during a concert appearance in Virginia, Terrell collapsed into Gaye's arms on-stage, the first evidence of a brain tumor that abruptly ended her performing career and finally killed her on March 16, 1970. Her illness and eventual loss left Gaye deeply shaken, marring the chart-topping 1968 success of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," his biggest hit and arguably the pinnacle of the Motown sound.

At the same time, Gaye was forced to cope with a number of other personal problems, not the least of which was his crumbling marriage. He also found the material he recorded for Motown to be increasingly irrelevant in the face of the tremendous social changes sweeping the nation, and after scoring a pair of 1969 Top Ten hits with "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" and "That's the Way Love Is," he spent the majority of 1970 in seclusion, resurfacing early the next year with the self-produced What's Going On, a landmark effort heralding a dramatic shift in both content and style that forever altered the face of black music. A highly percussive album that incorporated jazz and classical elements to forge a remarkably sophisticated and fluid soul sound, What's Going On was a conceptual masterpiece that brought Gaye's deeply held spiritual beliefs to the fore to explore issues ranging from poverty and discrimination to the environment, drug abuse, and political corruption; chief among the record's concerns was the conflict in Vietnam, as Gaye structured the songs around the point of view of his brother Frankie, himself a soldier recently returned from combat.

The ambitions and complexity of What's Going On baffled Berry Gordy, who initially refused to release the LP; he finally relented, although he maintained that he never understood the record's full scope. Gaye was vindicated when the majestic title track reached the number two spot in 1971, and both of the follow-ups, "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)," also reached the Top Ten. The album's success guaranteed Gaye continued artistic control over his work and helped loosen the reins for other Motown artists, most notably Stevie Wonder, to also take command of their own destinies. Consequently, in 1972, Gaye changed directions again, agreeing to score the blaxploitation thriller Trouble Man; the resulting soundtrack was a primarily instrumental effort showcasing his increasing interest in jazz, although a vocal turn on the moody, minimalist title track scored another Top Ten smash.

UK EP 1966

The long-simmering eroticism implicit in much of Gaye's work reached its boiling point with 1973's Let's Get It On, one of the most sexually charged albums ever recorded; a work of intense lust and longing, it became the most commercially successful effort of his career, and the title cut became his second number one hit. Let's Get It On also marked another significant shift in Gaye's lyrical outlook, moving him from the political arena to a deeply personal, even insular stance that continued to define his subsequent work. After teaming with Diana Ross for the 1973 duet collection Marvin and Diana, he returned to work on his next solo effort, I Want You; however, the record's completion was delayed by his 1975 divorce from Anna Gordy. The dissolution of his marriage threw Gaye into a tailspin, and he spent much of the mid-'70s in divorce court. To combat Gaye's absence from the studio, Motown released the 1977 stopgap Live at the London Palladium, which spawned the single "Got to Give It Up, Pt. 1," his final number one hit.

As a result of a 1976 court settlement, Gaye was ordered to make good on missed alimony payments by recording a new album, with the intention that all royalties earned from its sales would then be awarded to his ex-wife. The 1978 record, a two-LP set sardonically titled Here, My Dear, bitterly explored the couple's relationship in such intimate detail that Anna Gordy briefly considered suing Gaye for invasion of privacy. In the interim, he had remarried and begun work on another album, Lover Man, but scrapped the project when the "Ego Tripping Out" lead single -- a telling personal commentary presented as a duet between the spiritual and sexual halves of his identity, which biographer David Ritz later dubbed the singer's "divided soul" -- failed to chart. As his drug problems increased and his marriage to new wife Janis also began to fail, he relocated to Hawaii in an attempt to sort out his personal affairs.

In 1981, longstanding tax difficulties and renewed pressures from the IRS forced Gaye to flee to Europe, where he began work on the ambitious In Our Lifetime, a deeply philosophical record that ultimately severed his longstanding relationship with Motown after he claimed the label had remixed and edited the album without his consent. Additionally, Gaye stated that the finished artwork parodied his original intent, and that even the title had been changed to drop an all-important question mark. Upon signing with Columbia in 1982, he battled stories of erratic behavior and a consuming addiction to cocaine to emerge triumphant with Midnight Love, an assured comeback highlighted by the luminous Top Three hit "Sexual Healing." The record made Gaye a star yet again, and in 1983 he made peace with Berry Gordy by appearing on a television special celebrating Motown's silver anniversary. That same year, he also sang a soulful and idiosyncratic rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the NBA All-Star Game; it instantly became one of the most controversial and legendary interpretations of the anthem ever performed. And it was to be his final public appearance.

Gaye's career resurgence brought with it an increased reliance on cocaine; finally, his personal demons forced him back to the U.S., where he moved in with his parents in an attempt to regain control of his life. Tragically, the return home only exacerbated his spiral into depression; he and his father quarrelled bitterly, and Gaye threatened suicide on a number of occasions. Finally, on the afternoon of April 1, 1984 -- one day before his 45th birthday -- Gaye was shot and killed by Marvin Sr. in the aftermath of a heated argument. In the wake of his death, Motown and Columbia teamed up to issue two 1985 collections of outtakes, Dream of a Lifetime -- a compilation of erotic funk workouts teamed with spiritual ballads -- and the big band-inspired Romantically Yours. (Vulnerable, a collection of ballads that took over 12 years to complete, finally saw release in 1996.) With Gaye's death also came a critical re-evaluation of his work, which deemed What's Going On to be one of the landmark albums in pop history, and his 1987 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame permanently enshrined him among the pantheon of musical greats. [AMG] 

  Credits:
• Lead vocals - Marvin Gaye 
• Background vocals - Martha and the Vandellas, The Temptations, The Supremes, The Four Tops, The   Andantes, and The   Miracles  
• Instrumentation - The Funk Brothers 

01. "I'll Be Doggone" Warren Moore, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Tarplin 2:47 
02. "Little Darling (I Need You)" Holland-Dozier-Holland 2:35 
03. "Take This Heart of Mine" Moore, Robinson, Tarplin 2:49 
04. "Hey Diddle Diddle" Johnny Bristol, Harvey Fuqua, Gaye 2:30 
05. "One More Heartache" Moore, Robinson, Bobby Rogers, Tarplin 2:42 
06. "Ain't That Peculiar" Moore, Robinson, Rogers, Tarplin 3:00 
07. "Night Life" Walt Breeland, Paul Buskirk, Willie Nelson 3:05 
08. "You've Been a Long Time Coming"   Holland-Dozier-Holland 2:13 
09. "Your Unchanging Love" Holland-Dozier-Holland 3:13 
10. "You're the One For Me" Morris Broadnax, Clarence Paul, Stevie Wonder 3:24 
11. "I Worry 'Bout You" Norman Mapp 3:24 
12. "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer 4:30 

Bonus:
13. "When I Had Your Love" 2:28
14. "Pretty Little Baby" 2:37
15. "I'll Take Care of You" 2:47

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