Marvin Gaye was an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of hits, earning him the nicknames "Prince of Motown" and "Prince of Soul".
The Moonglows were an American R&B group in the 1950s. Their song "Sincerely" went to number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and number 20 on the Billboard Juke Box chart.
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of motor and town, has become a nickname for Detroit, where the label was originally headquartered.
Berry Gordy III, known professionally as Berry Gordy Jr., is an American record executive, record producer, songwriter, film producer and television producer. He is best known as the founder of the Motown record label and its subsidiaries, which was the highest-earning African-American business for decades.
"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is a pop/soul song written by Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson in 1966 for the Tamla label, a division of Motown. The composition was first successful as a 1967 hit single recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and became a hit again in 1970 when recorded by former Supremes frontwoman Diana Ross. The song became Ross's first solo number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
"Stubborn Kind of Fellow" is a 1962 song recorded by Marvin Gaye for the Tamla label. Co-written by Gaye and produced by William "Mickey" Stevenson, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" became Gaye's first hit single, reaching the top 10 of the R&B chart and the top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1962.
United is a studio album by soul musicians Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, released August 29, 1967 on the Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol produced all of the tracks on the album, with the exception of "You Got What It Takes" and "Oh How I'd Miss You". Fuqua and Bristol produced "Hold Me Oh My Darling" and "Two Can Have a Party" as Tammi Terrell solo tracks in 1965 and 1966, and had Gaye overdub his vocals to them in order to create duet versions of the songs.
You're All I Need is the second studio album by soul musicians Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, released in August 1968 on Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records. Highlighted by three hit singles written by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, You're All I Need was recorded throughout 1966 and 1967 and features two Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits, "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "You're All I Need to Get By". It peaked at #60 on the U.S. Billboard 200 Album Chart. You're All I Need was the two singers' final collaboration effort, as Terrell would become ill following recording, before succumbing to a brain tumor in 1970.
That Stubborn Kinda Fellow is the second studio album by Marvin Gaye, released on the Tamla label in 1963. The second LP Gaye released on the label, it also produced his first batch of successful singles for the label and established Gaye as one of the label's first hit-making acts in its early years.
Frederick Earl "Shorty" Long was an American soul singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer for Motown's Soul Records imprint. He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1980.
Marvin Gaye at the Copa is a live album recorded at the exclusive New York club, the Copacabana, where singer Marvin Gaye performed in August 1966, over a year following The Supremes' ballyhooed 1965 performance there. Marvin was only one of just a few R&B musicians after Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson to perform at the club where performers such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra had performed at regularly. Marvin was the second act from Berry Gordy's fabled Motown label following the Supremes to perform at the nightclub and would be followed by The Temptations in 1968 and Martha (Reeves) and the Vandellas that same year. According to the liner notes later on, Marvin's performance there was a success, however, an ongoing feud between Gaye and his brother-in-law, Motown recording boss Gordy, was said to have been one of the reasons why the album was eventually shelved with the duo fighting over how the album was to be produced. The album had been scheduled for release in January 1967 as Tamla 273 before its permanent shelving. In 2005, Hip-O Select Records, a Motown-associated label created to re-release or release unreleased material from Motown's vaults re-mastered sessions from this album and released it that year.
"Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide" is the debuting single for singer Marvin Gaye, released as Tamla 54041, in May 1961. It was also the first release off Gaye's debut album, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye, in which most of the material was the singer's failed attempt at making an 'adult' record compared to Motown's younger R&B sound.
Gwen Fuqua was an American businesswoman, songwriter and composer, most notably writing hit songs such as "Lonely Teardrops", "All I Could Do Was Cry" and "Distant Lover". She acquired her full name after marrying Harvey Fuqua and kept the name after their divorce.
The Gordys are an African-American family of businesspeople and music industry executives. They were born to Georgia-reared parents Berry "Pops" Gordy Sr. and Bertha Fuller Gordy and raised in Detroit, where most of the siblings played a pivotal role in the international acceptance of rhythm and blues music as a crossover phenomenon in the 1960s. The accomplishment is attributable to the creation of Motown, a company founded by the seventh-oldest sibling, Berry Gordy Jr.
Anna Records was a short-lived record label, known as a forerunner of Motown, founded by sisters Anna and Gwen Gordy and Roquel Billy Davis in 1959 and located in Detroit, Michigan. Gwen Gordy and Davis had written hit songs for Jackie Wilson and Etta James prior to founding the label. Anna Records recorded acts like David Ruffin, future lead singer of the Temptations, Joe Tex, Herman Griffin, Johnny Bristol and his partner Jackey Beavers, and future Motown hit-making songwriter-producer Lamont Dozier. They hired future Motown star Marvin Gaye as drummer for the label.
Paul Riser is an American trombonist and Motown musical arranger who was responsible for co-writing and arranging dozens of top ten hit records. His legacy as one of the "Funk Brothers" is similar to that of most of the other "Brothers", as his career has been overlooked and overshadowed by the stars of Motown that became household names. Some of the Funk Brothers he worked with include: Earl Van Dyke, Johnny Griffith, Robert White, Eddie Willis, Joe Messina, Dennis Coffey, Wah Wah Watson, James Jamerson, Bob Babbitt, Eddie Watkins, Richard "Pistol" Allen, Uriel Jones, Andrew Smith, Jack Ashford, Valerie Simpson, Eddie "Bongo" Brown, Benny Benjamin, Cornelius Grant, Joe Hunter, Richard "Popcorn" Wylie, Marcus Belgrave, Teddy Buckner and Stevie Wonder.
Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr., known professionally as Junior Walker, was an American multi-instrumentalist who recorded for Motown during the 1960s. He also performed as a session and live-performing saxophonist with the band Foreigner during the 1980s.
James Nyx Jr., sometimes credited as James Nyx, was an American songwriter for the Motown label. He co-wrote "Inner City Blues " which became a #9 hit for Marvin Gaye in 1971.
Harvey Fuqua was an American rhythm and blues singer, songwriter, record producer, and record label executive.
Anna Ruby Gaye was an American businesswoman, composer and songwriter. An elder sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy, she became a record executive in the mid-to-late 1950s distributing records released on Checker and Gone Records before forming the Anna label with Billy Davis and sister Gwen. Gordy later became known as a songwriter for several hits including the Originals' "Baby, I'm for Real", and at least two songs on Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album. The first wife of Gaye, their turbulent marriage later served as inspiration for Gaye's album, Here, My Dear.
