It Took Two: Marv Gaye’s Duet Legacy | The New Yorker

Contents:

• IT TOOK TWO: MARV GAYE’S DUET LEGACY
• THE UNTOLD TTH OF MARV GAYE
• MARV GAYE'S 10 GREATT SONGS EVER, RANKED

IT TOOK TWO: MARV GAYE’S DUET LEGACY

Marv Gaye / Tammi Terrell. Most listeners will be satisfied enough wh a bt-of pilatn to ver the work that Gaye and Terrell did together. That clus four songs om 1965-1966 sgl, cludg the non-LP B-si "Baby Don'tcha Worry, " all of which were also released as duets wh add Gaye vols; sounds like they're tryg to make her a mi-Mary Wells on "Hold Me Oh My Darlg.

" There are also ne prevly unreleased Terrell solo tracks (though all of the songs were also featured, wh Gaye on duet vols, on the Gaye-Terrell LPs).

Marv Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s h spir our Motown duets playlist. Marv Gaye & Tammi Terrelll photo: Gill Petard/Redferns. On the Billboard Hot 100 for September 9 1967, Marv Gaye and Tammi Terrell had the hight new entry of the week, at No.

THE UNTOLD TTH OF MARV GAYE

“What we acplished was to create two characters and let them sg to each other, ” Gaye later told wrer David Rz.

MARV GAYE'S 10 GREATT SONGS EVER, RANKED

Gaye practilly owned the duet format on Motown.

The story of Motown tryg to fd Marv Gaye a duet partner, which hovers the background of the new reissue “Marv Gaye & His Women, ” is one of the great melodramas of Amerin pop mic—vexed, tragic, ultimately triumphant, and wh a fillip of false optimism at the end. When Gaye first started at Motown the early sixti, he wasn’t particularly terted the sound of Young Ameri.

” They also saw him, their grand visn, as a half of a powerhoe duet team; Berry Gordy’s md, duet albums doubled the potential ctomer 1964, the label paired Gaye wh Mary Wells, then the queen of Motown. While the rerd helped to tablish Gaye, the softer tone diluted Wells’s inty, and she left the label. Motown moved Gaye along to Kim Wton; “It Tak Two” was a massive h but Wton, too, parted the label.

Motown, now flailg a b, put Gaye wh a third sger, Oma Page (sometim misintified as Oma Heard): they rerd a few sis that went fourth time was the charm.

In 1966, Gaye was paired wh Tammi Terrell, who had been a teen-age sger for Jam Brown. Mdful of Gaye’s track rerd, they had both sgers rerd versns and then mixed them together.

The rult—phed along by Terrell’s crystal-clear vols and Gaye’s imable batn of softns and urgency—went top twenty, and they followed up wh songs like “Your Prec Love” and “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You. When Terrell died, 1970, Gaye was eply prsed by her loss, and he turned away om sgg and performg, only to emerge wh “What’s Gog On. ” Once Gaye was reëstablished as a solo star, the label took one more shot, pairg him wh Diana Ross for two albums.

“Marv Gaye & His Women” was origally released 1973; even then, was a substute for (and an update of) “Marv Gaye and His Girls, ” om 1969. “It Tak Two” is a ebullient sgle that hts at what might have been had Wton stayed at Motown; and the Ross sis both build on the Terrell era and gture toward Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, who had replaced Gaye and Terrell as the domant duet act soul addn to llectg all of Gaye’s important duets, the album also serv as a remr of the way romantic duets were once central to pop.

That’s the lson of the Gaye llectn and any other top-notch duet: two heads (or voic) are not necsarily better than one, but they are more tertg, and more rewardg, and more than the sum of their parts. Facebook (MarvGaye). Marv Gaye.