Move your body

Back to work. Sigh.

After a lovely week of on-off pottering in the garden, and a long Easter weekend in Essex stockpiling more delights for the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, I really do not want to face the same old, same old grind again just yet...

Hey ho. Today would have been the 85th birthday of Mr Marvin Gaye, one of the finest singers to emerge from the Tamla-Motown stable, taken far too soon [he was shot dead by his own father forty years ago yesterday]. His musical legacy includes classic duets with the likes of Tammi Terrell (including Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing and You're All I Need to Get By), Miss Ross (You Are Everything), and of course a huge raft of solo classics such as How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, What's Going On, Mercy Mercy Me, Sexual Healing - and this one:

Marvin Gaye - Got To Give It Up [Notmutleydog71 video mash-up]

That cheered me up. Sort of.

Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. (né Gay, 2nd April 1939 – 1st April 1984)

That's What I Want

And so, farewell, then, Mr Barrett Strong. Who? I hear you ask...

In a long, long writing partnership with the late Norman Whitfield, Mr Strong was a powerhouse songwriter for Motown Records, and many of his creations remain beloved classics to this day. Including these:

Nick Kamen in 1985 Levi's Ad "Laundry Day" [Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through the Grapevine]

Temptations - Papa Was a Rollin' Stone

Paul Young - Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)

Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want)

Edwin Starr - War

Steps - Too Busy Thinking About My Baby

Tina Turner - Ball of Confusion

Temptations - Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)

The Northern Soul dancefloor in Fabulon is filling to the brim as we speak...

RIP, Barrett Strong (5th February 1941 - 29th January 2023)

Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide

It's been quite the week for famous names "dropping like flies", or so it seems...

... icons such as Dame ONJ, Issey Miyake, Raymond Briggs, and, of course that stalwart of the classic Motown era, Mr Lamont Dozier!

Decades before the likes of the BeeGees or Stock Aitken Waterman, Holland-Dozier-Holland was the true "hit factory" - the songwriting partnership that made Tamla-Motown, and launched the careers of gazillions of household-name artists (some of whom, such as Miss Ross, are stil going today) such as Mary Wells, The Temptations, Junior Walker and the All-Stars, Freda Payne, and this lot - a classic selection of H-D-H creations that don't even begin to scrape the surface of the great man's vast repertoire, nor his legacy to the world of music...

The Supremes - Stop! In The Name of Love [The Hollywood Palace, 1965]

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - Nowhere To Run [1965]

Four Tops - Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) [1965]

The Supremes - The Happening [The Ed Sullivan Show, 1967]

Chairmen of the Board - Give Me Just A Little More Time

Marvin Gaye - How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)

Kim Wilde - You Keep Me Hanging On

RIP, Lamont Herbert Dozier (16th June 1941 – 8th August 2022)

As long as you're groovin'

The gorgeous Ipheion uniflorum 'Jessie' in the extensive gardens of Dolores Delargo Towers.

Spring may have suddenly (hopefully temporarily) juddered to a halt, with rain and cold northerly winds descending upon us; but some things never fail to warm the cockles of our hearts - such as our burgeoning garden, and the music of Mr Marvin Gaye (who would have been 80 years old today)...

Here's the one that was shamefully plundered by Messrs Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, Mr Gaye's 1977 funk classic:

Marvin Gaye - Got To Give It Up

I done got myself together baby
And now I'm havin' a ball
As long as you're groovin'
There's always a chance
Somebody watches
Might wanna make romance

Such a talent, sadly missed.

Marvin Gaye (born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr., 2nd April 1939 – 1st April 1984)

Peculiar as can be

Lenny Kravitz is apparently going to play the late, troubled, Marvin Gaye in a new movie about the singer's decline and dramatic death.

Mr K is good-looking and black. That much is true.

However, to my mind his voice is most suited to that style of music called "rock". Mr Gaye's voice simply oozed cool, sexy, soulful smoothness. Will this clash of styles be simply too much, I wonder?

Compare and contrast...

Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way?

Marvin Gaye - Ain't That Peculiar?

More on this story from Rolling Stone