For Diana Ross, 1973 was the yr of Contact Me In The Morning, her first solo Prime 10 album on each side of the Atlantic. It arrived within the wake of her Oscar-nominated starring position in, and soundtrack for, Girl Sings The Blues. For Marvin Gaye, it was the yr of his R&B chart-topping Let’s Get It On LP, within the slipstream of his personal film rating journey, Hassle Man. However when the outdated Motown mates mixed forces, 1973 was additionally about Diana & Marvin.
The duets challenge, launched on October 26 that yr, arrived simply two months after Let’s Get It On and, though his first with Diana, it was Gaye’s sixth collaborative document. An early double-header with Mary Wells had been adopted by one with Kim Weston after which no fewer than three magical mixtures with the ill-starred Tammi Terrell.
Diana & Marvin had been mooted as early as 1970, when Ross was newly solo and Gaye was nursing the emotional wounds of Terrell’s tragic loss of life. Recordings started the next yr, by which period Marvin was creating his What’s Going On masterwork. Diana was on her personal tight schedule of album releases, movie work, TV specials and, at 27, being mom to her first baby.
Maybe unsurprisingly given the sporadic nature of its making, the duets LP had a number of producers, with credit for Hal Davis, Berry Gordy and his spouse Margaret, Bob Gaudio of the 4 Seasons (throughout their transient time within the Motown orbit), and Ashford & Simpson. It was launched with Let’s Get It On nonetheless at No.1 within the R&B chart and Contact Me In The Morning, which had led that checklist in August, nonetheless in its Prime 20.
Simply after the brand new album’s emergence in December 1973, Diana instructed Paul Gambaccini in Rolling Stone: “I’ve loved Marvin for years and wanted to record with him. We did a great number of songs together during the last year and a half, so many that I didn’t know which ones would be selected for the album. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know which one was the single until you told me.”
That choice as the primary US 45 was considered one of its few originals, “You’re A Special Part Of Me.” It didn’t fairly stay as much as the Money Field assessment that boldly acknowledged “it shouldn’t take more than two or three weeks before this becomes the best selling song in the country,” but it surely did turn into a considerable No.4 R&B and No.12 pop hit within the US.
Because it climbed, Billboard greeted the album’s look by admiring the “gentle magic to the musical blend of the two voices.” The journal reserved particular reward for Mel Bolton and Marilyn McLeod’s “Love Twins” and the duo’s remake of Wilson Pickett’s 1971 soul chart-topper “Don’t Knock My Love” (of which Ross reportedly disapproved as a canopy selection). One other spotlight was “My Mistake (Was To Love You),” written by Hitsville stalwarts Gloria Jones and Pam Sawyer.
There was additionally nice admiration for the track craft of masterful soul authors Thom Bell and Linda Creed, whose work for Philly soul hitmakers the Stylistics was plundered for each of the album’s best-known tracks, actually from a world standpoint. Delicate reworkings of “You Are Everything” and “Stop Look Listen (To Your Heart)” each turned 1974 UK hits and ensured that Diana & Marvin turned a gold-selling fixture on the British charts that yr, with an mixture 36 weeks within the Prime 40, the final of them as late as February 1975.
Within the US, the album solely made No.26 pop, going as excessive as No.7 R&B. That was one thing of a disappointment given Motown’s intensive merchandising marketing campaign for the document, described by gross sales director Phil Jones in Money Field as “perhaps the biggest in the company’s history.”
A 2001 expanded reissue of Diana & Marvin added 4 bonus cuts, of which “Alone,” “The Things I Will Not Miss,” and “I’ve Come To Love You So Much” had been from the 1972 periods and “I’ll Keep My Light In My Window” was taped in 1978. Initially launched by soul duo Caston & Majors, the Ross-Gaye model of that tune was on Motown’s multi-artist 1979 album Pops, We Love You, devoted to Berry “Pops” Gordy, Sr.
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