Episode 103: “Hitch-Hike” by Marvin Gaye

A history of folk music and 500 songs.

By Andrew Hickey.

Episode 103

Hitchhike by Marvin Gaye.

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 Gaye.

I'm going to Chicago.

That's the last place, my baby.

Stay.

I'm packing up my bags.

Gonna leave this old town right away.

Hitchhiking, hitchhiking.

I've got to find that girl.

If I have to hitchhike around the world.

Hitchhiker, hitchhiked.

One thing 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 Gaye was one of those people.

He was always someone who rubbed up against authority.

He spent his youth 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, DC, where he'd grown up, and feeling like a failure, he formed a doo-op group called the Marquis.

In later years, Gay would state that he'd come up with the name as a reference to the Marquis Dessard, but in fact, Gay hadn't heard of Dessard at the time.

The Marquis were like a million doo-wop groups at the time, and leaned towards the sweeter end of Doo-Wop, particularly modelling themselves on the Moonglows.

The group performed around Washington and came to the attention of Beau Diddley, who was living in the area, and friends with a neighbour of the group.

Diddley took them under his wing and wrote and produced both sides of their first single, which had another member, Rhys Palmer, singing lead.

Palmer also claimed that he wrote both songs, but Diddley is credited, and they certainly sound like Diddley's work to me.

The tracks were originally backed by Diddley's band, but Oke, the record label for whom they were recording, asked that one of the two sides, Wyatt Earp, be re-recorded with session musicians like Paramar Francis, who played on almost every R and 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 bow-diddley-esque than the one with Diddley's band.

The result had a lot of the sound of the records the Coasters were making around the same time.

the gun.

When you see him,

you better run.

You know who I mean.

At the same initial session, the Marquise also sang backing vocals on a record by Billy Stewart.

We've encountered Stewart briefly before.

His first single, Billy's Blues, was the first appearance of of the guitar figure that later became the basis for Love is Strange, and he played piano in Diddley's band.

With Diddley's band and the Marquis, he recorded Billy's Heartache.

However, the Marquis's 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.

I got a baby

Harvey Fouquir, 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 Fouquir talking with Diddley about this, and suggested that the Marquis might be suitable for the job.

When the tour hit DC, Fouquis auditioned the Marquis 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 moonglows.

Fouquis trained the marquees 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 doo-wop groups used.

Fouquir was contemptuous of most doo-op groups, calling them gang groups.

He taught the marquees 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 Fouquir taught them was to become one of the most important techniques that Gay would use as a vocalist throughout his career.

Fouquet 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 at 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 Fouquir.

The group, now renamed Harvey and the Moonglows, 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.

Oh, well, oh, well, I feel so good today.

We just touched ground on an international runway.

Jet

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, Mama Lucy, had Marvin on lead vocals and was co-written by Marvin and Harvey.

mum

mama.

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 Moonglow's Ten Commandments of Love.

On that one, Marvin does the spoken recitation at the beginning and end, as well as singing backing vocals.

Our love will be clear.

We'll drink a toast

to all anxiety.

Then you married

on

But the Moonglows 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 move to Detroit and work with Anna as a chess liaison.

Soon Harvey Fouquet 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 signed 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 Berry Gordy by gate crashing the Motown Christmas party in 1960 and performing Mr.

Sandman at the piano.

Soon he found that Berry Gordy had bought out his recording contract, as well as a 50% share of his management, and he was now signed with Tamla.

Marvin was depressed by this to an extent.

He saw Fouquet as a father figure, but he soon came to respect Gordy.

He also found that Gordy'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 Gaye and the thirty-seven year old Anna Gordy, but Gay also definitely realised that there was an advantage to becoming part of the family, and Berry Gordy, 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 and B singer, like everyone else at Motown.

While Marvin liked singers like Sam Cooke, 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 sixties 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 RB single on it, one side written by Berry, and the other written by Harvey and Anna.

The soulful moods of Marvin Gaye was only the second album released by Motown, which otherwise concentrated on singles, but neither it nor the single Berry wrote, Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide, had any commercial success.

If you

wanna leave me

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 Cook, whose career he wanted to emulate.

Cook 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 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 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 Sr.

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 Marvelette.

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.

I was sitting on my bathroom the public day,

playing my

back in a normal way.

Some people just slipped ahead and gathered around,

and time to figure out what I was putting down.

I called it pretty music of the whole in the pump of the

pop.

And on That's What Girls Are Made For by the Spinners, the group known in the UK as the Detroit Spinners.

To

love

and to miss.

That's what girls are made for.

You gotta hug them,

then you kiss them.

You gotta love them, love and you miss them.

And he both co-wrote and played drums on Beachwood 45789 by the Marvelettes, which made the top 20.

I've been waiting,

sitting here so patiently

for

you to come over and have this dance with me.

And my number is Beach145789.

145789.

You can call me up and have a date, any old time.

But this kind of thing ended up with Gay being pushed by Berry 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 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 Berry Gordy.

By this point, Motown 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 Berry Gordy suggested a few extra chords they could stick in, and the result was stubborn kind of fellow.

Wow!

Woo!

Wow!

Say yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can hear what he meant about that starting out with the jazz feel, most notably with Beans Bowles' flute part.

But the finished product was very much an RB 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 and B chart, making the RB 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 and 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 Motor Town Review, along with the Contours, The Supremes, The Marvelettes, 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 desire to be a Sinatra-type crooner, 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 Newly Showtune, but sticking in interpolations inspired by Ray Charles.

what kind

I wanna tell y'all, just like Uncle Ray would say, right here,

yeah, baby,

yeah,

yeah, I wanna know.

I swear I wanna know now

what kind of fool

I am.

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, give them the funk they wanted.

It wasn't my first choice, but there's integrity in the idea of pleasing your own people.

Secretly, I yearned to sing for rich Republicans in Tuxes and Tales at the Copa Cabana.

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 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.

Wonder'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 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, yeah, I've got to find that girl.

If I have to hitchhike, round the world.

Hitchhiking, hitchhike, baby.

Come on, John, hitchhike.

Hitchhiker.

Hitchhike, baby.

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.

We're 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.

Hitchhiker.

I'm backing up my role.

I'm gonna leave this whole town right away.

Hitchhiking hitchhikes.

Hitchhikes.

I'm not the following.

If I have to hitchhike all around the world, like

Chicago cinnamon, that's what the sun.

On the highway

tight.

But while Martha and the Vandelas 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 Sol.

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 into a huge row, which ended up with Anna hitting Gay on the head with her shoe heel.

And while he 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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