Any Country That Could Produce Marvin Gaye Has Reason to Hope
It was 37-years ago this Monday that Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father, Marvin Gay, Sr. Things had been terrible between them for all of the younger Marvin's life. It had become worse over the previous several months. One layer of the tragedy was that Marvin Gaye was in the middle of a remarkable comeback. His "Sexual Healing" had broken him back onto the charts with a vengeance. Not long before he died, I saw him give a show on Boston Common that damn near melted the golden dome atop the State House. Of course, his place in the pantheon had been sealed by "What's Goin' On?", the 1971 masterpiece that Berry Gordy originally didn't want to release.
For years, in bits and pieces of another album, recorded between "What's Goin' On?" and "Let's Get It On," kept popping up. Finally, this month, that whole record, "You're The Man," was released. It is the best record of 2019 and it would have been the best record of 1972, too. Slate has a good history of this "lost" classic. Apparently, Gaye bagged the project because the title track flopped as a single. It's too bad, because this record, together with "What's Goin' On?", can be seen as one man's unique vision of this country at that fraught time in history.
In fact, said title track, which flopped because Americans are idiots, sounds like a sequel or a separated conjoined twin of "Inner City Blues" from the previous record-albeit with some signifyingly prescient lines about how we may need "a lady president" and, most tellingly, about how, "Demagogues and minority haters/should never be elected, now or later." The musicianship is impeccable, and the themes carry on from the album Gaye had fought so hard to release. ("I Want To Come Home For Christmas" is sung from the point of view of a POW.) And, if there was any remaining doubt, James Jamerson remains a bass guitar god.
I ran an errand between NCAA tournament games on Sunday and, on Sirius XM's essential Outlaw Country channel, Alamo Jones introduced me to Steve Earle's latest, a tribute to the late Texas musical craftsman Guy Clark, who appeared in this feature a couple of times his own self. Once, in an interview connected to a similar project he'd done with the songs of Townes Van Zandt, I asked Earle what it was like to try on TVZ's classic "Pancho and Lefty."
"Well," said Earle. "I did it first because it's like being in jail. Your first day, you walk up to the biggest guy and punch him in the mouth, and then you get to keep your radio."
Earle does the same thing here. With a crackerjack backing band, he takes on Clark's classics as well, including "L.A. Freeway," "She Ain't Goin' Nowhere," and "Desperadoes Waiting For A Train." He has a great deal of fun with "Sis Draper," a slice of life charmer about an itinerant Arkansas fiddle player, and with "Rita Ballou," which contains my favorite Clark lyric: "Lord, you'd think there's less fools in this world." Earle's voice is rougher than Clark's was, and less intimate, but he sings these songs with the looseness and respect that they deserve. Any country that can produce Steve Earle, Guy Clark, and Marvin Gaye has reservoirs of grace that are causes always for hope.
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