MARVIN GAYE: THAT STUBBORN KINDA' FELLOW (1962)
1) Stubborn
Kind Of Fellow; 2) Pride And Joy; 3) Hitch Hike; 4) Got To Get My Hands On Some Lovin'; 5)
Wherever I Lay My Hat; 6) Soldier's Plea; 7) It Hurt Me Too; 8) Taking My Time;
9) Hello There Angel; 10) I'm Yours, You're Mine.
General verdict: Three great
singles in a pool of personal charisma, with delicious Vandella coating on top.
Perhaps not so stubborn after all: dismayed by
his failure as an attractive modern day interpreter of Irving Berlin and Cole
Porter, Marvin Gaye had no choice but to give up and start writing and singing
«simplistic» love songs for teenage audiences — the right choice, as it turned out. Most of the songs on this LP,
coming fresh on the heels of his two big chart successes (title track and
ʽHitch Hikeʼ), are co-written by Marvin himself and one or two different Motown
professionals (most commonly Mickey Stevenson and/or George Gordy), and
although it is impossible to tell who contributes what, I would guess that
Marvin is responsible for the «soul» of the songs, whereas the professionals
get busy packing them into catchy formats — a damn good balance that, if we are
allowed to run a bit ahead, would be somewhat shattered in the future, once
Marvin had wrestled complete creative freedom from his superiors.
It is difficult to explain — difficult to
understand, even — what exactly makes Gaye's early successes fundamentally, or
even superficially, different from the «average goodness» of contemporary
Motown product. Marvin was certainly far from the only great singer on the
label (Smokie Robinson? Eddie Holland?), though arguably the most passionately
energetic; and catchy or not, the tunes are hardly free from the general
shackles of the pop-meets-R&B formula. Yet there is an urban legend about
Phil Spector losing control of his car in excitement when he first heard ʽStubborn
Kind Of Fellowʼ over the radio — and he'd already been quite an established
figure in the production business at the time. Perhaps he was just jealous that
somebody else had finally managed to
satisfy his gold standard for aural excitement. But how?
One major circumstance, if I am getting this
right, is that somehow, in those early days at least, Marvin's singing style
worked much better as part of a call-and-response session than directly on its
own: small wonder that in the upcoming years, he'd be having some of his
biggest successes with duet albums (Mary Wells, Kim Weston, and particularly
Tammi Terrell). On ʽStubborn Kind Of Fellowʼ, he is backed by the earliest and
freshest incarnation of Martha & The Vandellas (still known as The
Del-Phis) — and «backed» is an understatement, since their participation on the
song is every bit as strongly emphasized, even if it is largely restricted to
ooh-wows, yeah-yeah-yeahs, and parrot-echoing some of Gaye's lines. Their
interaction creates an atmosphere of playful seductiveness — neither a polite,
gallant, sentimental romance, nor a showcase of cocky sexual bravado, but
rather something in between: the best type of love song for those who wish to
avoid excessive sugar-sweetness, yet do not want to limit themselves to pure
animal lust, either. From a certain point view, those "say yeah yeah yeah,
say yeah yeah yeah"'s do precisely the same thing for the American (or
African-American, whatever) pop market as "she loves you yeah yeah
yeah" did for the British one — in a slightly less frenzied, more relaxed
manner, but still far more vivacious than the honey-mouthed Smokey Robinson's.
It does not hurt, either, that occasionally
these songs were equipped with unforgettable musical moves — like that
knock-on-the-door rousing pattern that opens and guides ʽHitch Hikeʼ, whose
excitement would penetrate all the way to New York's underground five years
later (when Lou Reed nabbed it for the purposes of his own sexual provocations
with ʽThere She Goes Againʼ). Message-wise, it repeats the intentions of
ʽStubborn Kind Of Fellowʼ all over again ("I've got to find that girl if I
have to hitch hike 'round the world"), but music-wise, it builds up even
higher upon that playful vibe, and now The Vandellas are all but teasing the
lead singer, always on the horizon but steadily out of immediate reach with
their parrot-echoing. (One reason why, in this particular case, The Rolling
Stones could not outdo the original: they had to supply the backing vocals
themselves, and, well, let's just put it mildly that they weren't... umm, girly enough to nail it. For that
matter, Martha and The Vandellas' own version was fatally flawed as well,
because... well, goddammit it, it's a 100% heterosexual song anyway).
Completing the holy trinity of «Marvin and The
Vandellas» is ʽPride And Joyʼ, an even bigger commercial success on which the
lead singer's stubborn hitch-hike is finally rewarded, as symbolized by the
song's forceful blues-rock stomp (is it a coincidence that pretty much the same
stomp would later also be selected by Stevie Ray Vaughan for his own ʽPride And
Joyʼ, or is it just something that goes naturally and predictably with feelings
of pride and joy?). It's fun, but the stomp itself is not nearly as impressive
as the main melodic hook of Marvin's fourth great single, one that,
unfortunately, came out a little too late to be included on the album, and
somehow fell through the LP cracks in the process — but for every possible
reason, ʽCan I Get A Witnessʼ should
necessarily be a bonus track on every reasonable edition on this album. Earl
Van Dyke's twin-chord-based piano riff is the perfect minimalist setting, and
Marvin's obsessed, broken-up, yet interminable rant where it is barely possible
to distinguish between verse, bridge, and chorus still remains one of the most
brilliantly constructed melodic monologues in the history of R&B. On this
song, he is backed by Holland-Dozier-Holland and The Supremes instead of The
Vandellas, but here what matters is the rapid-fire monologue delivery, not so
much the interplay (which makes perfect sense: this is one rant that should be
delivered outside the immediate presence of your partner), and this is also why
The Stones had their own field day with the song, whose spirit was perfectly
re-conveyed by the young Mick Jagger in his own way.
It should not be surprising that most of the
other songs do not rise to the level of the big singles, since, at best, they
recycle the style of the singles with weaker hooks (ʽGet My Hands On Some
Lovin'ʼ), and at worst, put Marvin into smooth and sentimental Miracles
territory, which happens to be more questionable in general and somewhat
redundant for us listeners in particular — we already have one Smokey Robinson,
why should we need another one on songs like ʽHello There Angelʼ? Occasional
experiments like ʽSoldier's Pleaʼ, set to the somber melody of a slow military
march, are nice, but you could have such stuff from Elvis without bothering to
recapture it from Motown. Yet this is precisely what is to be expected from the
era: throughout the Sixties, Marvin Gaye would largely remain a «singles
artist» like most of his brothers and sisters in Motown arms, and most of these
LPs may only be judged by the quality and quantity of the guiding missiles.
Personally, I'd say that three out of ten — considering the fairly pleasant and
generally tasteful nature of the remaining filler — is fairly impressive.
This is a vast improvement over Soulful Moods. Torch ballads were never his strength. There needs to be an element of silent danger and smoldering anger for his true soul to come out in the music. I like to think of him as the James Bond of soul, slick and cool but deadly.
ReplyDeleteAs far as this record, I love the arrangements, they are more engaging that the "classic" Motown sound of the mid to late 60s. I love the horns, especially on Wherever I Lay My Hat, a road dog song in the Wanderer/Gentle on My Mind tradition. This is contrast to Soldier's Plea, which begs the girl to be faithful when Hat does the opposite. It's an illustration of Marvin's best quality: inhabiting his songs with strong and often morally ambiguous characters.