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Marvin Gaye has served as the coked-out patron saint for countless soul men who rightfully hear in his voice and music something sonically special and painfully honest. In his nearly forty-five year lifetime, Gaye rose from wannabe lounge lizard worshipping at the altar of Frank Sinatra to become one of the most distinctive vocalists of his generation. Coming out of the Motown music factory in the sixties, Gaye not only made hit singles (“Hitchhike,” “If This World Was Mine”), but also forced the label to think beyond their 7-inch singles mentality when he crafted the brilliant concept album What’s Going On in 1971. A hard-hitting aural statement that was sung in the softest voice,What’s Going On was as powerful as Martin Luther King marching through Selma, as strong as a Malcolm Xspeech, and as rousing as a Molotov cocktail thrown from a moving car during yet another civil unrest.
More than four decades later, Gaye’s song cycle that includes the endearing title track, “Mercy Mercy Me” and “Inner City Blues” remains a rhythmic blueprint for others to follow. While some artists might’ve slacked on their studio pimpin’ after making a masterpiece such as this, Gaye continued to create thrilling albums for Motown that ranged from the jazzed-out blaxploitation soundtrack Trouble Man, the sexed-out Let’s Get It On and the ass-out Here, My Dear. Through it all, cocaine was his main man, that good shit that would get the creative juices flowing. “I’m passionate about good cocaine,” he once said. As documented in David Ritz’s brilliant Divided Soul as well as the recently released After the Dance by Jan Gaye, brother Marvin’s problem was all too real when it came to his mind games. But when it came to music, his genius was on point no matter how numb his tongue might’ve been.
Of course, showbiz being what it has always been, Gaye didn’t receive a nod from the gatekeepers until he left Motown and released his least ambitious album Midnight Love in 1983, for which he won a Grammy. A year later, caught-up in the haze of a coke addiction that some say contributed to his brutal murder at the hands of his father, the troubled man was gone, but his zooted spirit sniffed on in the imaginations of soulful upstarts. Unfortunately, much like Charlie Parker’s romantic hop-head behavior that encouraged a generation of jazz junkies to spike themselves as they searched for genius within the head-nodding solitude of their heroin habits, Gaye’s powdered adventures inspired legions of white line sniffers searching for the true essence of soul music at the end of their straws or rolled-up hundred dollar bills.
For some artists, issues with drugs could be the end of their careers, while other more complex cats like D’Angelo,Robin Thicke, who even made a song called “Cocaine,” and The Weeknd, get a creative pass and their drug use has become a part of their tortured mythology. Singer/songwriter El DeBarge was yet another Marvin Gaye worshipper who would go on to struggle with his quite publicized bouts with Bolivian marching powder.
Many of us grew up watching El back when he and his siblings were signed to Motown and recorded majestic ballads (“All This Love,” “Stay With Me”), as well as the reggae tinged post-disco show stopper “Rhythm Of The Night.” Hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the DeBarges (Bunny, Randy, Mark and El) were church kids raised on hymns and AM radio; the Carpenters were a big influence on their sound. Their big brother Bobby, who was the lead singer in Switch (founded by boyhood friend Gregory Williams), had laid the falsetto wailing groundwork for the family on classic tracks “There Will Never Be” and “I Call Your Name.”
http://www.soulhead.com/2015/08/10/sleptonsoul-el-debarge-heart-mind-and-soul-by-michael-a-gonzales/
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