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The Very Best of Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye - The Very Best of Marvin Gaye Audio CD

A fair review of the Marvin Gaye "The Very Best of Marvin Gaye" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Marvin Gaye reviews here, or go back to the Marvin Gaye tabs.

Band: Marvin Gaye
Title: The Very Best of Marvin Gaye
Rating:

Release Date: 2000-09-16
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: I Heard It Through the Grapevine 2: What's Going On 3: Sexual Healing 4: You Are Everything - Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross 5: It Takes Two 6: Let's Get It On 7: Abraham, Martin and John 8: Too Busy Thinking About My Baby 9: How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You) 10: Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) 11: Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart) 12: You're All I Need to Get By 13: Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing 14: Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) 15: Onion Song 16: You Ain't Livin Till Your're Lovin 17: Good Lovin' Ain't Easy to Come By 18: That's the Way Love Is 19: Got to Give It Up, Pt. 1 20: When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You 21: Can I Get a Witness 22: Lucky, Lucky Me

Some people....
After all, the Amazon page does list all 22 tracks on it, and 22 songs are not nearly enough to give one the breadth and scope of a talent like Marvin Gaye. If you're an avid oldies collector, then you should skip over "The Very Best of Marvin Gaye". But the thing is: It is NOT a "greatest hits" set, it is a "very best of. . . . ", and those are always subject to the label owner's A/R department, and the marketing execs. As this compilation shows, this label's people are obviously not music fans or even chartologists. The songs on this compilation cannot be denied as being "among the best" of Marvin. "The Very Best of"?? Purely subjective. This disc would only be useful to plug holes in another single-disc compilation someone might have as their only Marvin Gaye album. As anyone familiar with the ways of the greedy record companies will tell you, that is enough reason for a disc like this to even exist. But if you already own one of the fine double disc comps, such as "Anthology", or the wonderful boxed set "The Master", there's no reason for you to even consider purchasing this.

NO ONE ELSE LIKE THE WONDERFUL MARVIN GAYE!!!
I have been searching for a track off this cd for a while and was pleased to find it available here. This cd is great. Abraham, Martin, & John by Marvin Gaye is a beautiful song and no one else can deliver this song like Marvin Gaye. Wonderful! .

A gem
The recording and sound transfer does justice to Gaye's clear vocals. Any lover of Motown, Marvin Gaye, or soulful music has to have this CD compilation. Besides having all the essential hits "What's Going on?", "I Heard it Through the Grapevines", etc. it has two additional gems that you won't find anywhere else. There is a beautiful rendition of "You Are Everything" that Marvin did with Diana Ross and a very rare Marvin Gaye cover of "Abraham & Martin & John" which is the best version of the song I have ever heard. Even if you have all of Marvin Gaye's hits on other collections, buy this disc if only for those two inclusions. Just wonderful!.

Some Are Way Too Easy To Please
From 1962 to the time of his tragic death in April 1984 he had 60 R&B singles hits, most of which also scored on the Billboard Pop Hot 100 for Motown's Tamla subsidiary. Let's begin by acknowledging that Marvin Gaye was one of THE most important singing artists/stylists of the 1960s/70s and early 1980s.

Following his death, three more would make the R&B charts, including My Last Chance, released in 1990 on Motown. He was also inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame in 1987, and in 1996 was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

So, in putting together a 22-selection CD under the title "The Very Best Of" the producers certainly had a wealth of material to choose from among his hit records. So what do they do? Include six tracks [4, 7, 11, 14, 20, and 22] that were not hits or even the B-sides of hits, and one [track 16] which was the flip of a hit - 1960's Keep On Lovin' Me Honey with Tammi Terrell [# 11 R&B/# 24 pop]. Which they do NOT include, by the way. Nor do they provide liner notes or discography of the contents.

Here's a man with a background that could fill several books and they can't find someone to give us a few pages of information. For example, it might have been of interest to some to know that, on both Good Lovin' Ain't Easy To Come By and The Onion Song the female vocalist was actually Valerie Simpson, as Tammi was too ill at the time to complete the sessions [although she is credited on the records]. That also applied to the late 1969 hit What You Gave Me, also not included here.

I like Marvin Gaye's music as much as the next person, but some people are obviously way to easy to please. Companies like Motown, MCA, BMG, etc. , have to learn that the buying public demands a bigger bang for their buck these days, especially when something is hailed as "The Very Best Of" or "The Greatest Hits Of. "

Quality outfits like Ace Records of London, Rhino, Varese-Sarabande, Eric, and Bear of Germany know this and go out of their way to provide us with detail-filled liner notes and, for the most part, the singles that made these people stars in the first place.
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For Brits, this is the best single CD of Marvin's music
One advantage that this has over the double CD (Very best of, which was compiled in America but released in both the UK and USA) is that it includes three UK top ten hits that are not on the double CD, these being Onion song (supposedly with Tammi Terrell, though Tammi was too ill to record the song and a sound-alike substituted), You are everything (with Diana Ross) and Abraham Martin and John (which was an American hit for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, not Marvin Gaye). You cannot fit all of Marvin's hits on a single CD but this collection has most of the essentials from a British perspective.

There is no room on this CD to explore Marvin's career in depth or to explore the many American hits that didn't chart in Britain, but it does contain all his important British hits (some minor hits have been omitted) and on that basis, it provides an excellent overview of Marvin's career. Nevertheless, before buying this, you may wish to compare it with the double CD, Very best of (now re-issued as Gold).

You can see a complete list of all Marvin Gaye discography, or go back to the Marvin Gaye tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.