Finding the ‘Real’ Marvin

RETURNING TO THE PAST TO ORCHESTRATE HIS FUTURE

Next year, it’s very likely that you will read more about Marvin Gaye and What’s Going On – but less, perhaps, about Richard Morris and the Originals.

The month of May will mark the 50th anniversary of the album’s release, preceded in January by that of the single. Any fresh analysis follows the selection of What’s Going On to rule Rolling Stone’s recently-updated “500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” while for much of this year, the title track has served as the unofficial theme song of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Whether there is anything new to learn about What’s Going On remains to be seen. It’s hard to imagine any improvement on the late Ben Edmonds’ 2001 book, What’s Going On? Marvin Gaye And The Last Days Of The Motown Sound. It is the most researched, most readable and most remarkable account to date of the album’s making, complete with a timeline assembled with the help of Universal Music’s Harry Weinger.

***The Originals: finally a ‘Real’ hit***

Weinger has relevant credentials of his own, having produced and annotated the definitive reissue – also in 2001 – of What’s Going On. That two-CD set not only featured the album in its original, as-released mix by Lawrence Miles, dating from May 1971, but also Steve Smith’s previously-unissued “alternate Detroit mix,” done one month earlier. The second compact disc included Gaye’s historic – and only – live performance of the album at the Kennedy Center on May 1, 1972, backed by James Jamerson, Robert White, Uriel Jones, Eddie “Bongo” Brown and Jack Ashford, among others, with the Andantes on background vocals.

As for Richard Morris and the Originals, they helped to empower Gaye in the two years leading up to What’s Going On, giving him confidence in the calibre of his new songs and validating his creative instincts. This was especially true of “Baby, I’m For Real,” written by Marvin and wife Anna, and produced by Morris and Gaye with the Originals. It became the group’s greatest hit: five mellifluous weeks at Number One on the Billboard soul charts – 51 years ago this month – and six weeks inside the Top 20 of the pop charts. “Marvin would have to sing all the parts to us,” said the quartet’s Freddie Gorman, speaking to me in 1999 for the liner notes of The Very Best Of The Originals, “and so he found a direction, found the way he wanted to go. That’s a hard job when you’ve been produced by others for so long.”

Both Gorman and Morris knew many of the others. The former was one of the Fidelitones (Brian Holland was another) who, it’s said, recorded for Berry Gordy in the late 1950s. By 1961, Gorman was on the Motown roster as a soloist (“The Day Will Come”) and songwriter, with a piece of such copyrights as “Please Mr. Postman” and “I Want A Guy.”

PRIMING THE PRIMETTES

Morris was involved with the nascent career of the Primettes, supporting their aspirations, writing pre-Motown tracks such as “Tears Of Sorrow,” then facilitating their audition at Hitsville. “Richard was not always the easiest person to get along with,” remembered Mary Wilson in Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, “but because he worked so hard for us, he was easy to forgive.” Raynoma Gordy recalled Morris helping to paint 2648 West Grand soon after its purchase.

***Motown advertises its next success***

The two men had something else in common: time spent toiling for Ed Wingate’s Golden World operation in the mid ’60s, accumulating still more industry experience and credits. Freddie co-wrote the company’s biggest pop hit, “(Just Like) Romeo & Juliet” by the Reflections, while Richard co-authored and co-produced Edwin Starr’s “Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.)” and “Headline News.”

Soon enough, the pair was back at Motown. “At that time,” Gorman told me, “Lamont [Dozier] and I were very good friends, and he was also good friends with Walter [Gaines].” That figures: Dozier and Gaines were previously in the Voicemasters, recording for Anna Records. “Walter had gotten out of the service, and we talked about getting a group together, so Lamont brought me over.” The result was the Originals, comprised of Gorman, Gaines, C.P. Spencer and Hank Dixon; their first Motown session took place in April 1966, adding vocals to a swift-paced Holland/Dozier/Holland track, “Suspicion.” Thereafter, they became background singers on dozens of Motown recordings, including David Ruffin’s “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me")” and Stevie Wonder’s “For Once In My Life.” Morris, meanwhile, was collecting cash and kudos as a songwriter/producer, notably with Martha & the Vandellas’ “Love Bug Leave My Heart Alone” and “Honey Chile.”

For his part, Marvin Gaye was by 1968 rebooting his songwriting skills. There was “Just To Keep You Satisfied,” created with wife Anna and Elgie Stover; then, “You’re The One,” shipshaped by the same team. At that point, he was drawn to the style and sound of the Originals, not a million miles from his own group days with the Moonglows. “In trying to figure out what to do in the future,” Gaye told biographer David Ritz in Divided Soul, “I felt the need to examine my past. When I heard the group, I was excited by their possibilities. I loved the idea of writing for four different voices.”

To turn possibility into reality, Gaye got in touch with Richard Morris. “I’d known him, of course,” the producer told Ben Edmonds, “and I’d seen him around Golden World a few times, but we didn’t get really tight until he called me and asked if I would help him produce some of his songs. I had a producer’s contract, and he wanted to figure out how to put his material together.” Morris went to the star’s Detroit home, where he heard the first iteration of a song then called “The Bells.” Gaye brought over arranger Paul Riser, and the three men sketched out the studio session.

On June 5, 1968, the instrumental track was put on tape, then lead and background vocals were added over the next nine days with Bobby Taylor and…the Originals. (Apparently, the Vancouvers weren‘t available.) Edmonds speculated that Taylor was given a shot with the song because Motown needed an immediate follow-up to his group’s first hit, “Does Your Mama Know About Me.”

Still, the result did not pass muster at the next Quality Control meeting, and “The Bells” underwent at least one makeover. “I’m almost certain it started off as another song,” Paul Riser confirmed during my research into “Baby, I’m For Real” for The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits, “and was taken in another direction by Marvin and Richard Morris. Once all the music production was done, they’d say, ‘Hey, we can rewrite this.’ They’d do that a lot of times at Motown.”

With a reconfigured song, Gaye and Morris put just the Originals in the spotlight. “Our habit of switching leads is what gave Marvin the idea that ‘Baby, I’m For Real’ was for us,” Walter Gaines told Edmonds. “He already knew what our individual parts would be, and he began running them down to each of us immediately. He sounded so good himself showing us, that we knew it could be a big record.” Freddie Gorman validated as much. “When we started harmonising together,” he said, “we were just swept by the sound, right off. Marvin said it sounded like we were from the same family.”

Yet for all that fellowship, “Baby, I’m For Real” was still considered out of sync with the marketplace. “I remember when it was presented to the company, everybody loved it,” recalled Gorman, “but for some reason – I guess because of the doowop element – they didn’t feel it was time for it.” Two other tunes by the Originals were tapped for release as singles during the first half of 1969, but neither caused chart ripples. It was only when the group’s Green Grow The Lilacs album emerged in July that side one, track three – yes, “Baby, I’m For Real” – activated interest. “It was picked from the album immediately by radio stations,” said Gorman. “In Detroit first.” The believers were R&B stalwart WCHB and clear-channel pop powerhouse CKLW. Motown swiftly shipped it out on seven-inch and watched as airplay and sales projected the record onto the Billboard Hot 100. “When we did get a hit,” chuckled Freddie Gorman, “we were ready.”

David Ritz was convinced that as Gaye listened to the Originals, he began hearing his own voices: “By rehearsing and recording the group, he realised that he himself could – and would – sing all four parts.” The star started the last year of the ’60s as a triumphant interpreter of the work of others, with “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” ruling the world. By its end, “Baby, I’m For Real” bore witness to his more personal ambitions in music.

As the ’70s dawned, those ambitions became clearer. As Freddie Gorman said, “He found a direction, found the way he wanted to go.” And so to What’s Going On…

West Grand Blog is taking a break next week for Thanksgiving. See you on the other side, with luck.

P.S. For those who happen to take a second reading of the above (thank you, thank you), you may notice changes referring to the Originals in back of Bobby Taylor’s first recorded version of “Baby, I’m For Real.” That’s because new information has come to my attention, courtesy of the above-mentioned Harry Weinger (thank you, thank you). Always happy to update WGB, because with Motown, there’s always more to learn.

Music notes: Bobby Taylor’s 1968 rendering of “Baby, I’m For Real” (a/k/a “The Bells”) stayed in the vault until 2004’s Motown Sings Motown Treasures compilation. After the Originals made it entirely their own, the remakes followed, including one by Esther Phillips on her 1972 album, From A Whisper To A Scream. Motown teens 21st Creation tackled the song in 1978, followed some years later by Sherrick, onetime singer of Kagny & the Dirty Rats, also a Motown act. The most successful remake? That was by Midwest trio After 7, whose 1992 version was a Top 5 R&B hit. The most expected? Well, perhaps that by the Originals themselves (minus Freddie Gorman) for Hamilton Bohannon’s Phase II Records, for their 1981 album, Yesterday And Today. Most of these can be heard in the latest West Grand Blog playlist via Spotify. The 21st Creation take is on YouTube, linked here.