Taking Sides: Marvin Gaye vs. Curtis Mayfield

"choice of colors" is like (one of) my favorite soul songs ever, it's as otherworldly and ethereal as anything marvin ever did.

the fact that "choice of colors" does it by dizzying shifts in the harmony through the bridge and chorus rather than fancy production tricks makes it even harder to choose between it and what's going on (i can't really pick one off that album)

it'd be easier to do this if i had a better idea of how much of a leading role mayfield had in the impressions (is there a good curtis mayfield bio out there??)

on the funky end of things i'd say marvin slays curtis. but then i've never been big into blaxploitation funk, wasn't crazy about the
superfly sdtk (at least not compared to "got to give it up, pt 1") etc.

yeah i'm no expert in soul either but isn't this the MO of the genre?? even when people are just praying to god "please god, let me get laid tonight"??

vahid: how much curtis have you heard? i mean superfly is about the only "blaxploitation funk" in his catalogue isn't it?

and that covers about 90% of the curtis mayfield cash-in greatest hits comps out there, doesn't it?? or more to the point, it's the famous tracks like "kung fu" and "if there's a hell below" and "future shock" that sort of set the tone.

(yeah on reflection there's a lot of range to "curtis", and "got to find a way" doesn't fit either, and all those albums have ballads, etc)

And isn't James Brown the Godfather of Funk and Sam Cooke the Godfather of Soul?

Oh, and what about the recently deceased Mr Charles, give up some soul love for that man as well!

But Marvin is a truer romantic no question. Marvin is smoother and equally brave and introspective. His most sublime work is visionary and universal.

Curtis could "add a little sugar" like Marvin and Marvin could holler like Curtis.

Dead even tie to me. Both equal and indespinsable.

Al Green and Sly Stone are their only peers from that generation.

i've always carried huge respect for Curtis wrt all the above.

my only reservation is that his vocals - although other-worldly beautiful - don't connect to me as intimately and immediately as Marvin's does. It's tough to explain, but I've always felt there was a certain abstract distance there, so that I could never "touch" him. Ehhh, I can't explain this.

Anyway, I like Curtis as an artist. Marvin as singer.

There's No Place — by a mile. What's Going On? has three unbelievable songs and a bunch of movie music-sounding shit about saving the children and flying in the friendly skies. The most overrated record of all-time, easy.

My favorite Curtis album is Curtis/Live by a long shot.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000ZGO.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Surely Stevie Wonder is comfortably in that class?

it's weird how little there is on ilx about Gaye, one of pop/rock/soul/music's great geniuses imo. painful to contemplate how much great music was lost to cocaine here - and to murder, it should be said, but it's the drugs that brought him there. 44 years old. listening to a live disc now -- Montreaux -- this thread is ridiculously dismissive of Gaye, but Berry Gordy knew he was the kind of artist who could give his throwaways to somebody and make stars out of them, like Duane Allman giving the Layla coda to Clapton.

i remember hearing I Want You for the first time and being like "man what else did Marvin Gaye do in the late 70s?" and figured he must've had a ton of 70s albums i just didn't know about (like Curtis, really), was kind of surprised that In My Lifetime (yeah 80 or 81) and Here My Dear were all that were left for me to discover. well i don't know the '74 live album. Live at the London Palladium is fantastic, though.

i choose marvin, btw, maybe my favorite vocalist of all time, plus "what's going on" is in my top 5 songs ever most days

Detroit, 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAMBM7YaEvQ

11 years later at Holmes-Shavers II his instrument is undiminished & he's writing his own arrangements

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPevEQ5NFlk

and then at at NBA All-Star Game in '83 he really brings it again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNydcwDriuU

omg @ the holmes-shavers clip

it's weird how little there is on ilx about Gaye, one of pop/rock/soul/music's great geniuses imo. painful to contemplate how much great music was lost to cocaine here - and to murder, it should be said, but it's the drugs that brought him there. 44 years old. listening to a live disc now -- Montreaux -- this thread is ridiculously dismissive of Gaye, but Berry Gordy knew he was the kind of artist who could give his throwaways to somebody and make stars out of them, like Duane Allman giving the Layla coda to Clapton.

it bums me out when ppl rip on what's going on the way they did upthread, because while it isn't a "consistent" album in the sense that every song is equally good, there's something so mournful and melancholy about the whole thing that i can forgive the lesser stuff. marvin just sings the hell out of every track, even stuff like "save the children."

"save the children"/"god is love" is the best marvin track to back, i will bring down the sweet mercy of my lord upon thee if u disagree

This thread is weird. The two artists are sufficiently different in approach that a more careful comparison has to be made than appears here.

well, it's a 13-year-old thread. I honestly don't think they compare well - Hayes v Mayfield v White would be the soul contest of '70s auteurs in my mind, Gaye is from a different school. One's more of a frontman, not that Gaye can't play -- he totally can -- but Mayfield, while also a bandleader, is also more a member of the band imo

re: Marvin Gaye's 1983 national anthem, http://grantland.com/features/the-marvin-gaye-national-anthem/

“I just never heard anything so good,” Vandeweghe says. “It was just a moment in time that I don’t think anybody is ever going to forget. Being so close to him when he was singing it you could hear the voice unamplified. Wow, it was something. You get those moments in your life that you’re never going to forget. I don’t remember half the stuff that went on in the game, but I’ll tell you what: I remember that.”

The audience spontaneously clapping along is really something. He also wears those aviators exceptionally well.

Gaye was more behind the scenes as a "player"/instrumentalist, whereas mayfield always had his telecaster and Hayes his piano

Ah, good point. He started as a drummer, didn't he

it bums me out when ppl rip on what's going on the way they did upthread, because while it isn't a "consistent" album in the sense that every song is equally good, there's something so mournful and melancholy about the whole thing that i can forgive the lesser stuff. marvin just sings the hell out of every track, even stuff like "save the children."

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 1 August 2017 03:47 (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I've heard quite a few people over the years argue that it's not all that great which I think is a shame. It was one of the first early '70s canon records I ever bought and it blew me away and even today I can't think of anything that hits the same spot for me.

Yep, he played drums on "Please Mr. Postman."

xp

...and (according to wiki) "Dancing In The Streets"!

Please Mr. Postman? Funny, that was my fave song when I was ten years old. I still think that "What's Going On" suffers from an unequal distribution of quality in between the songs. The first two songs are glorious and sublime but the record does not hold that level.

get out