Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye was an American singer, songwriter, and producer whose two-decade career on Motown Records produced one of the most-iconic American R&B and soul-music bodies of work in late-20th-century music history — shaping the development of American soul, funk, and R&B genres. He was born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C., into a difficult family environment — his father Marvin Sr. was a strict Pentecostal-religious preacher, and the father-son tension would shape Gaye's life and tragic death.

His Motown career began in 1961 when he was signed to the Detroit label by Berry Gordy. The 1963 single "Pride and Joy" was his first top-10 R&B chart hit, but his commercial peak began with the 1968 single "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" — which spent seven weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the American songs of the late 1960s.

His 1971 album What's Going On — which Berry Gordy opposed at Motown but which Gaye released against label objections — became one of the American albums of the early 1970s. The title track and the singles "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" addressed the Vietnam War, the environmental movement, and the American urban poverty crisis — making the album one of the foundational documents of socially-conscious American R&B.

His subsequent 1970s peak produced the 1973 album Let's Get It On (whose title-track has been continuously cited as one of the American R&B songs), the 1976 album I Want You, and the 1982 final album Midnight Love (which produced his final hit "Sexual Healing," winning him his only two Grammy Awards). On April 1, 1984 — one day before his 45th birthday — Gaye was shot and killed by his father at the family Los Angeles home, after an family dispute. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

His name Marvin is from the Old Welsh Merfyn, possibly meaning "sea-eminent" or "famous mariner." Marvin has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.