A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - Episode 103: “Hitch-Hike” by Marvin Gaye

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

Episode one hundred and three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Hitch-Hike” by Marvin Gaye, and the early career of one of Motown’s defining artists. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Any Other Way” by Jackie Shane. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

A History of Rock Music and 500 songs by Andrew Hickey. Episode 103, Hitchhike, by Marvin Gay. A brief note. This week's episode contains some minor mentions of parental and domestic abuse and some discussions of homophobia. I don't think those mentions will be upsetting for anyone, but if you're unsure, you might want to check the transcript before listening. Today we're going to look at the start of one of the great careers in soul music

and one of the great artists to come out of the Motown Hit Factory. We're going to look at the continued growth of the Motown company and at the personal relationships that would drive it in the 1960s, but would also eventually lead to its downfall. We're going to look at hitchhike and the early career of Marvin Gay. One thing to Chicago, that's the last place my baby, stay. we've not talked about much in the podcast so far, is the way that the entertainment industry, until relatively recently, acted as a safety valve for society. A place where people who didn't

fit in anywhere could build themselves a life and earn a living without playing along with the normal social conventions. And by instinct, temperament and upbringing, Marvin Gay was one of those people. He was always someone who rubbed up against authority. He spent his youths, fighting with his abusive father, and eventually left home to join the Air Force just to get away from his father. But he didn't stay long in the Air Force either. He was discharged due to mental problems, which he later claimed he'd faked, with his honourable discharge stating, Marvin Gay cannot adjust to regimentation and authority. Back in Washington, D.C., where he'd grown up and feeling like a failure, he formed a do-op group called the Marquise. In later years,

In later years, Gay would state that he'd come up with the name as a reference to the Marquis de Sard, but in fact Gay hadn't heard of Desailles at the time. The Marquis were like a million Duwop groups at the time and leaned towards the sweeter end of Duwop, particularly modelling themselves on the moon glows. The group performed around Washington and came to the attention of Bo Diddley,

who was living in the area and friends with the neighbour of the group. Dudley took them under his wing and wrote and produced both sides of their first single, which had another member, Reese Palmer, singing lead. Palmer also claimed that he wrote both songs, but Dudley is credited, and they certainly sound like Didley's work to me. The tracks were originally backed by Didley's band,

but OK, the record label for whom they were recording, asked that one of the two sides, Wyatt Ear, be re-recorded with session musicians like Paramar Francis, who played on almost every R&B record made on the East Coast at the time. Oddly, listening to both versions, the version with the session musicians, sounds rather more raw and Bo Diddley-esque than the one with Didley's band.

The result had a lot of the sound of the records the coasters were making around the same time. At the same You know who I mean Quieter At the same initial session The Marquis also sang backing vocals On a record by Billy Stewart

We've encountered Stuart briefly before His first single, Billy's Blues was the first appearance of the guitar figure that later became the basis for Love is Strange And he played piano in Didley's Band With Didley's band and the Marquise, he recorded Billy's Heartache. However, the Marquis' first record did nothing,

and the group were dropped by the label and went back to just playing clubs around Washington, D.C. It looked like their dreams of stardom were over. But one of the group's members, Chester Simmons, took a job as Bo Diddley's driver, and that was to lead to the group's second big break. Diddley was on a tour with the Moonglows, who, as well as being fellow chess artists,

had also backed Diddley on records like Diddley Daddy. Harvey Fouquhar, the group's leader, was complaining to Diddley about the rest of the group, and in particular about Bobby Lester, the group's tenor singer. He was thinking of dropping the entire group and getting a new, better set of moonglows to work with. Simmons heard Fuqua talking with Didley about this, and suggested that the mark Marquois might be suitable for the job. When the tour hit DC, Fuqua auditioned the marquise and started working with them to get them up to the standard he needed, even while he was still continuing to tour with the original

moon glows. Fuqua trained the Marquise in things like breath control. In particular, he had a technique he called Blow Harmony, getting the group to sing with gentle, breathy, woo sounds, rather than the harder-edged do sounds that most do-op groups used. Fouquard was contemptuous of most do-op groups, calling them gang groups. He taught the Marquis how to shape their mouths, how to use the muscles in their throats, and all the other techniques that most singers have to pick up intuitively or never learn at all. The breathy sound that Fouquhar taught them was to become one of the most important techniques

that Gay would use as a vocalist throughout his career. Fouquhar took the group back with him to Chicago, and they added a sixth singer, Chuck Barkside, who doubled Simmons on the bass. There were attempts to expanding the group still further as well. David Ruffin, later the lead singer of The Temptations, auditioned for the group, but was turned down by Fouquhar. The group, now renamed Harvey and the Moon Glows, cut a few tracks for chess, but most were never released. But they did better as backing vocalists. Along with Etta James, they sang the backing vocals on two hits by Chuck Berry, almost grown and back in the USA.

At the time, Etta and Harvey were in a relationship, and Marvin took note. Being in a relationship with someone else in the industry could be good for your career. Marvin was starting to discover some other things as well, like that he really didn't enjoy being on stage, even though he loved singing, and that the strain of touring could be eased with the use of cannabis.

Marvin didn't want to be on the stage at all, he wanted to be making records. The studio was where he was comfortable. The new Moonglows did release some recordings of their own, one of which Mamalucci had Marvin on lead vocals and was co-written by Marvin and Harvey. Another record that featured Marvin, though not as lead vocalist,

was 12 months of the year, an attempt to recapture the success of the original Moonglose Ten Commandments of Love, on that one Marvin does the spoken recitation at the beginning and end, as well as singing backing vocals. But the moon glows were coming to the end of their career, and Harvey was also coming to the end of his relationship with Etta James. Anna Records, one of the labels owned by members of the Gordy family,

had made a distribution agreement with Chess Records, and Leonard Chess suggested to Harvey that he moved to Detroit and work with Anna as a chess liaison. Soon, Harvey Fouquhar was fully part of the Gordy family and he split up with Etta James and got into a relationship with Gwen Gordy. Gwen had split up with her own partner to be with Harvey

and then Gwen and her ex, Raquel Davis, co-wrote a song about the split, which Etta James sang. Marvin had come with Harvey. He'd sang with him as a solo artist and Harvey thought that Marvin could become a black Frank Sinatra, or better. Marvin was signed to Harvey Records, Harvey's label, but after Harvey and Gwen got together romantically,

their various labels all got rolled up into the Motown family. At first, Marvin wasn't sure whether he would be recording at all once Harvey Records was shut down, but he made an impression on Barry Gordy by gate-crashing the Motown Christmas party in 1960 and performing Mr Sandman at the piano. soon he found that berry gaudy had bought out his recording contract as well as a fifty per cent share of his management and he was now signed with tamla marvin was depressed by this to an extent he saw fouqua as a father figure but he soon came to respect gaudy he also found that gaudy's sister anna was very interested in him and while she was seventeen years older than him he didn't see that as something that should stand in the way of his getting together with the boss's sister

there was a real love between the twenty-year-old marvin gay and the thirty-seven-year-old anna gaudy but gay also definitely realized that there was an advantage to becoming part of the family and berry gaudy in turn thought that having his artists be part of his family would be an advantage in controlling them but right from the start marvin and berry had different ideas about where marvin's career should go marvin saw himself becoming a singer in the same style as nat king cole or Jesse Belvin, while Gordy wanted him to be an R-N-B singer, like everyone else at Motown. While Marvin liked singers like Sam Cuck, he was also an admirer of people like Dean Martin and Perry Como. He would later say that the sweaters he wore in many photos in the 60s were inspired by Como, and that, I always felt like my personality and Perry's had a lot in common. They eventually compromised. Marvin would record an album of old standards, but there would be an arm R&B single on it, one side written by Berry, and the other written by Harvey and Anna.

The soulful Moods of Marvin Gay was only the second album released by Motown, which otherwise concentrated on singles, but neither it nor the single Barry wrote, Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide, had any commercial success. As well as singing on the album, Marvin also played drums and piano, and while his singing career wasn't doing wonderfully at this point, he was becoming known around Motown for turning his hand to whatever was needed, from drumming on a session to sweeping the floor. The most notable thing about the album, though, was that he changed the spelling of his surname, from Gay-spelled G-A-Y to G-A-Y-E. He gave three different reasons for this, at least two of which

were connected. The first one was that he was inspired by Sam Cuck, whose career he wanted to emulate. Buck had added an e to his surname, and so Marvin was doing the same. The second reason, though, was that by this time, the word gay was already being used to refer to sexuality, and there were rumours floating around about Marvin's sexuality, which he didn't want to encourage. He did like to wear women's clothing in private, and he said some things about his experience of gender, which might suggest that he wasn't entirely cis. But he was only interested in women sexually, and was, like many people at the time, at least mildly homophobic.

And like many people, he confused sexuality and gender, and he desperately didn't want to be thought of as anything other than heterosexual. But there was another aspect to this as well. His father was also someone who wore women's clothing, and tied in with Marvin's wish not to be thought of as gay, was a wish not to be thought of as like his father, who was physically and emotionally abusive of him, throughout his life. And his father was Marvin Gay, Senior. By adding the E, as well as trying to avoid

being thought of as gay, he was also trying to avoid being thought of as like his father. While Marvin's first album was not a success, he was doing everything he could to get more involved with the label as a whole. He played drums on records despite never having played the instrument before, simply because he wanted to be around the studio. He played on a record we've already looked at, Please Mr Postman, by the Marvelettes. He played with the miracles on occasion, and he also played on,

I call it pretty music, but the old people call it the blues, by Little Stevie Wonder. And on, that's what girls are made for by the spinners, the group known in the UK as the Detroit Spinners. and he both co-wrote and played drums on Beachwood 45789 by the Marvelettes, which made the top 20. But this kind of thing ended up with gay being pushed by Barry Gordy in the direction of writing, which was not something he wanted to do.

At that time in Motown there was a strict demarcation, and the only person who was allowed to write and perform and produce was Smokey Robinson. Everyone else was either a writer-producer or a song. singer, and Marvin knew he wanted to be a singer first and foremost. But Marvin's own records were flopping, and it was only because of Anna Gordy's encouragement that he was able to continue releasing records at all. If he hadn't given up himself, he would almost certainly have been dropped by the label, and indirectly, his first hit was inspired by Anna. Marvin's attitude to authority was coming out again in his attitude towards Motown and Barry Gordy. By this point, Motown has been. Mowtown

had set up its famous charm school, a department of the label that taught its singers things like elocution, posture, how to dress, and how to dance. Marvin absolutely refused to do any of that, although he later said he regretted it. Anna told him all the time that he was stubborn, and he started thinking about this, and jamming with Mickey Stevenson, the Motown staff songwriter and producer with whom he worked most closely, and who had started out as a singer with Lionel Hampton. The two of them came up with what Marvin later described as a basic jazz feeling, and then Barry Gordy suggested a few extra chords they could stick in, and the result was stubborn kind of fellow. You can hear what he meant about that starting out with the jazz feel,

most notably with Bean's Bulls as flute part, but the finished product was very much an R&B record. Marvin sounds more like Ray Charles than Sinatra or Como, and the backing vocals by Martha and the Vandellas are certainly not anything that you would have got behind a crooner. The record went right up the R&B chart, making the R&B top ten, but it didn't cross over to the pop audience that Gay was after. He was disappointed because what he wanted more than anything else was to get a white audience, because he knew that was where the money was. But after getting an R&B hit,

he knew he would have to do as so many other black entertainers had and play to black audiences for a long time before he crossed over. And that also meant going out on tour, something he hated. At the end of 1962, he was put on the bill of the Motetown review, along with the contours, the Supremes, the Marvellette, Little Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells and The Miracles. On the live album from that tour, recorded at the Apollo, you can hear Gay still trying to find a balance between his desire to be a Sinatra tectrine, appealing to a white audience, and his realization that he was going to have to

appeal to a black audience. The result has him singing, What Kind of Fool Am I? The Anthony Newley Show tune, but sticking in interpolations inspired by Ray Charles. This was a real concern for him. He would later say, commercially though, I learned quickly that it was primarily my people who were going to support me. I vowed always to take care of them, given the funk they wanted. It wasn't my first choice, but there's integrity in the idea of pleasing your own people. Secretly, I yearn to sing for rich Republicans in tuxes and tails at the Copacabana, no matter. He hated that tour, but some of the musicians on the tour thought it was what made him into a star. Specifically, they knew that gay had stage fright, hated being on stage,

and would not put his all into a live performance, unless they put little Stevie Wonder on before him. Wunder's performances were so exciting that Gay had to give the audience everything he had or he'd get booed off the stage, and Gay started to rise to the challenge. He would still get stage fright and tried to get out of performing live at all,

but when he turned up and went on stage, he became a captivating performer. And that was something that was very evident on the first recording he made after. coming off the tour. The Apollo recording we just heard was from the last week of the tour, and two days after it concluded, on December the 19th, 1962, Marvin Gaye was back in the studio, where he felt most comfortable, writing a song with Mickey Stevenson and Clarence Paul. While there were three writers of the song, the bulk of it was written by Gay, who came up

with the basic groove before the other writers got involved, and who played both piano and drums on the record. Hitchhike became Gay's first real crossover hit. It made number 12 on the R&B chart, but also made the top 40 on the pop chart, largely because of his appearances on American Bandstand, where he demonstrated a new dance he'd made up, involving sticking your thumb out like a hitchhiker, which became a minor craze among bandstand's audiences, were still in the period where a novelty dance was the most important thing in having a hit. The song also became the first Marvin Gay song to get covered on a regular basis. The first cover version of it was by the Vandellas, who sang backing vocals on Marvin's version, and who used the same backing track for their

own recording. This was something that happened often with Motown, and if you listen to albums by Motown artists in the 60s, you'll frequently hear a hit single with different vocals on it. But while Martha and the Vandellas were the first to cover Hitchhike, they were far from the only ones. It became a favourite for white rock groups like the Sonics or the Rolling Stones to cover, and it would be the inspiration for many more rock records by people who wanted to show they could play soul. By June 1963, Marvin Gay was a bona fide star, and married to Anna Gordy. He was even able to buy his mother a house. But while everything seemed to be going swimmingly, as far as the public were concerned,

there were already problems. At their wedding reception, Gay and Anna got to be. into a huge row which ended up with Anna hitting Gay on the head with her shoe heel. And while he'd bought the house for his mother, his father was still living with her, and still as toxic as he had ever been. But for the moment, those things didn't matter. Marvin Gay was on top of the world and had started a run of singles that would come to define the Motown sound. And he was also becoming a successful songwriter. And the next time we look at him, it'll be for a classic song he wrote for someone else.

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