| What's Going On | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | August 29, 2006 | |||
| Studio | Bismeaux Studio Westlake Recording Studios | |||
| Genre | Hip hop Jazz | |||
| Length | 39:49 | |||
| Label | Shout! Factory | |||
| Producer | Anthony Marinelli Shawn Amos | |||
| Dirty Dozen Brass Band chronology | ||||
| ||||
What's Going On is an album by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, released on the Shout! Factory label on August 29, 2006. It is a track-by-track remake of the 1971 Marvin Gaye album of the same name. [1]
Marvin Gaye originally conceived of his 1971 album What's Going On as a response to the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. [1] The idea of remaking What's Going On originated with Shawn Amos, who was then the vice president of artists & repertoire at Shout! Factory. Amos had previously heard many stories about how most of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's members had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. While he was on a flight in October 2005, Amos listened to one of Gaye's songs. He subsequently sat down with the band and talked about what was happening in their lives. During this conversation, he mentioned the timelessness of Gaye's What's Going On album, and suggested that the band should cover it. The band's members decided that this would be a good idea, and initially sought to have Amos produce the album. Amos then called up his production partner, Anthony Marinelli, and the two of them went on to produce the album. [2]
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band's decision to remake Gaye's album was influenced by Hurricane Katrina, the government's response to the storm, and the ongoing Iraq War. The group's saxophonist, Roger Lewis, told NPR that he had been interested in covering Gaye's music for a while already, and that when Katrina hit, it seemed like the "...perfect time to do it". [3] Lewis further explained,
"[Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On] asked the question 30 years ago: 'What's going on?' What's going on with the Vietnam War and all that b------- we were going through back then - racial prejudice and selfishness and greed and everything? We still have the same social problems that we had back then. It's still the same b-------. We still got war going on, we still got prejudice, we still got drugs. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is caught in the middle. Who really knows what's going on?" [4]
The members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band were initially uncertain about whether they could successfully remake Gaye's highly regarded album. This was partly because they lacked a bass guitarist who could replicate James Jamerson's famous Motown-style electric bass playing on the original album. Instead, the band decided to develop their own style in which to play Gaye's songs. As Lewis explained to The Times-Picayune , "We don't play exactly like Marvin Gaye's arrangements. You're supposed to take the music to another level, and we came up with our own ideas about how to do it." [1]
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band recorded What's Going On at two different studios: Austin, Texas's Bismeaux Studio, owned by Ray Benson, and Westlake Recording Studios in Hollywood, California. They began recording at Westlake with an attempt at recording their version of the title track from Gaye's album, featuring Chuck D performing his original lyrics. The band spent a total of three days recording at Westlake, where most of their sessions, according to Marinelli, focused on "conceptualizing and getting those basic tracks". They then traveled to Bismeaux Studio, where they recorded for five days using Pro Tools and the studio's Automated Processes, Inc. recording equipment. Next, they traveled back to Hollywood to mix the album with Pro Tools at Marinelli and Clint Bennett's Music Forever studio. [2]
What's Going On was released on August 29, 2006, on Shout! Factory, exactly a year after Hurricane Katrina first hit New Orleans and 35 years after Gaye's album was first released. Part of the proceeds from sales of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's album were donated to Tipitina's Foundation. [4]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [5] |
| The Age |  [6] |
| The Cairns Post | [7] |
| The Independent | [8] |
| Orlando Sentinel | [9] |
| The Palm Beach Post | B+ [10] |
| PopMatters | 8/10 [11] |
| RapReviews | 8/10 [12] |
| Slant Magazine | [13] |
| Times Colonist | 4/5 [14] |
Thom Jurek of AllMusic gave What's Going On 4.5 stars out of 5, concluding that it was "...the most fitting tribute yet to Gaye, because not only does it prove the timelessness of the music itself, it echoes that what is indeed goin' on (Gaye's dedication to Detroit as its decline became a reality with no onlookers interested in doing anything) is even more true today than it was in 1971." [5] Sam Chennault of SF Weekly also reviewed the album favorably, describing it in 2007 as "perhaps the most fitting tribute to the [Hurricane Katrina] victims" and as "alternately brooding and invigorating". [15] The Washington Post 's Mike Joyce gave the album a generally favorable review, writing, "The music, for the most part, is so ingeniously arranged that the album colorfully accommodates several guest vocalists -- too many, in fact -- without robbing listeners of the pleasure of hearing the band swagger and shout or slide into a welcome instrumental interlude." [16]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Featuring | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "What's Going On" | Chuck D | 4:29 | |
| 2. | "What's Happening Brother?" |
| Bettye LaVette | 2:52 |
| 3. | "Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky)" | 5:07 | ||
| 4. | "Save the Children" |
| 5:14 | |
| 5. | "God Is Love" |
| Ivan Neville | 4:30 |
| 6. | "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" | Gaye | G. Love | 3:23 |
| 7. | "Right On" |
| 4:28 | |
| 8. | "Wholy Holy" |
| 3:36 | |
| 9. | "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" |
| Guru | 6:10 |
| Total length: | 39:49 | |||
Marvin Pentz Gay Jr., who also spelled his surname as Gaye, was an American singer and songwriter. 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 successes, earning him the nicknames "Prince of Motown" and "Prince of Soul".
What's Going On is the eleventh studio album by American soul singer Marvin Gaye. It was released on May 21, 1971, by the Motown Records subsidiary label Tamla. Recorded between 1970 and 1971 in sessions at Hitsville U.S.A., Golden World, and United Sound Studios in Detroit, and at The Sound Factory in West Hollywood, California, it was Gaye's first album to credit him as producer and to credit Motown's in-house session musicians, known as the Funk Brothers.
Aaron Joseph Neville is an American R&B and soul singer. He has had four platinum albums and four Top 10 hits in the United States, including three that reached number one on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. "Tell It Like It Is", from 1966, also reached the top position on the Soul chart for five weeks.
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"What's Going On" is a song by American singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye, released in 1971 on the Motown subsidiary Tamla. It is the opening track of Gaye's studio album of the same name. Originally inspired by a police brutality incident witnessed by Renaldo "Obie" Benson, the song was composed by Benson, Al Cleveland, and Gaye and produced by Gaye himself. The song marked Gaye's departure from the Motown Sound towards more personal material. Later topping the Hot Soul Singles chart for five weeks and crossing over to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, it would sell over two million copies, becoming Gaye's second-most successful Motown song to date. It was ranked at number 4 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of all Time in 2004 and 2010.
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"Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" is the second single from American singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye's 1971 album, What's Going On. Following the breakthrough of the title track's success, the song, written solely by Gaye, became regarded as one of popular music's most poignant anthems of sorrow regarding the environment. Led by Gaye playing piano, strings conducted by Paul Riser and David Van De Pitte, multi-tracking vocals from Gaye and the Andantes, multiple background instruments provided by the Funk Brothers and a leading sax solo by Wild Bill Moore, the song rose to number 4 on Billboard's Pop Singles chart and number one for two weeks on the R&B Singles charts on August 14 through to August 27, 1971. The distinctive percussive sound heard on the track was a wood block struck by a rubber mallet, drenched in studio reverb. The song also brought Gaye one of his rare appearances on the Adult Contemporary chart, where it peaked at number 34. In Canada, "Mercy Mercy Me" spent two weeks at number 9.
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What's Going On may refer to:
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