YEAR
1987
INDUCTED BY
Ashford & Simpson
CATEGORY
Performers
Marvin Gaye sang to survive.
Gaye’s singing nurtured the soul—both the audience’s and his own. He used his honeyed tenor to explore sexuality and social issues on such sprawling concept albums as the intensely exploratory What’s Going On.
Marvin Gaye
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Michael Hill
Marvin Gaye embarked on his solo career in 1962, having already played drums for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, as well as other Motown acts.
That was when everyone at Motown pitched in to do a little of everything: Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, for example, contributed backup vocals to Gaye’s chart debut, “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” which reached the R&B Top Ten in late 1962.
In November of that year, Gaye set off on Motown’s first package tour, the Motortown Revue, which also featured the Supremes, Mary Wells and Little Stevie Wonder. Forty-five Motowners hit the road in a caravan of one bus and five cars for a tour that opened at the Howard Theater, in Gaye’s hometown, Washington, D .C ., and climaxed, approximately 25 one-night stands later, in a ten-day run at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre.
