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Marvin Gaye - Distant Lover

A core of honest blues records continues to find its way to market, records in the tradition and lineal descent of the Bessie Smiths, the Lonnie Johnsons, the Big Bills, the Tampa Reds, the Pinetop Smiths. But the pseudo-sophistication, sentimentality, and commercial tinge of our poorer pop records have come to infect the blues market as well. Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, Nat Cole, the Ink Spots, and other stylists in the new urban and urbane manner (all originally rhythm and blues favorites, later become idols of the pop market) have left their influence and brought about a shift in emphasis. Where rhythm and blues records were once almost unfailingly stamped with the honest sensuality, social identification, and strong, steady beat of the unadulterated Southern blues, they have more and more been vitiated by the prurience, fatuity, and lack of pulse of the bad Tin-Pan Alley products.

Because collectors are conscious of this vitiation and because hot jazz records... are a separate entity, available as jazz for jazz fans, few buyers look to the rhythm and blues genre for hot items. With a little investigation, however, the hot may be separated from the hoke.

Vocal blues are subdivided into the saccharine blues ballad, the insinuating double-entendre blues, the shout blues, the primitive Southern blues, the torch blues, and still other sub-types. A current vocal vogue is the schmaltzy recitation of interpolated lyrics right in the middle of a torch ballad. This trend has been carried to an extreme where the side consists wholly of a recitation of Edgar Guest type poetry to a background of organ music. Even Tin Pan Alley tunes are offered in the blues and rhythm manner. Most popular are the riff instrumentals, with a unison phrase dominating, and solos at a minimum. These may be slow ("Long Gone"), medium ("The Hucklebuck"), or fast ("Perdido"); whatever the tempo they must be danceable. Almost as successful are instrumentals in which one solo instrument leads the way while the band riffs or sustains chords in back. The lead in such cases may be a tenor sax, amplified guitar, or a piano. Trumpet leads are rare, trombones rarer, and clarinet leads are virtually unknown.


Marvin Gaye - Distant Lover
  • Released: 1973
  • Song written by: Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy Fuqua, Sandra Greene
  • Producer: Marvin Gaye

"Marvin Gaye was a major force... a singer of rare sensitivity, a versatile pianist, expert drummer, writer of startling originality and producer capable of seamlessly integrating a multitude of melodic strands. Beyond his great popularity, his impact on artists of his generations and generations to come is enormous."

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Location: United States

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