And that makes it all the more special.Tony Terry is an R&B/new jack swing singer from Washington, DC. Hearing the instrumental made me fall in love with this musically sensuous Latin jazz soul/funk groove all over again. And by using unusual melodic voicing’s that are more chord oriented,the range of emotion projected through the instrumentation allows the lyric of the song to be a lot more open to interpretation than the original words might’ve been. This version focuses in on Marvin as an instrumentalist. While I always loved the “sea of Marvin’s” vocal harmonizing that was present on the vocal hit version of this song,understanding the lyrics as I do now make them come off more as a tortured inner dialog than a beautiful vocal statement. As the intro to the song repeats,the Moog is really pushed up as a boiling round bass line until the main chorus fades out the song-this time with the Moog solo accompanying Watts flute soloing. On these choruses,Marvin’s Moog solos play in and around the chords of the melody in a similar manner to a bop jazz era pianist. The chorus develops into a mix of jazzy piano voicing’s,elaborate string arrangements and the equally complex bass improvisations-so much so they aren’t always easy to hear for some people. And it just opened up a whole new groove as it went along.Ī slow crawling,percussive samba opens the album with rather Asian sounding chimes playing a similar melody to Marvin’s round and bubbling synthesizer. In the end,this was a totally different way of re-imagining the song on both the harmonic and melodic level. Then he realized he could use it to create his own musical world where Ernie’s solo’s just hadn’t worked for him. Initially he did this only in order to cover the out of tune orchestrations that weren’t settling well with him. Apparently Marvin was fascinated by the range of sounds this electronic instrument was capable of if multi tracked in the same way he did his vocals on the sung version of the song. One Motown engineer Marvin was working with at that time was named Calvin Harris. But he noticed the horns and strings were out of tune in some spots where he Watts’ solo wasn’t quite enough to compensate. And the subtext Henrique provided for me courtesy of Michael Eric Dyson’s book on Marvin called Mercy Mercy Me. It would seem that while recording this instrumental with writer/producer Leon Ware,Marvin had intended flutist Ernie Watts to play the main melodic solo. In an effort to stop getting the singer confused with the song,focusing on Marvin as a musical figure is a good way to go. Including one of my favorites “After The Dance”. This 1976 Marvin Gaye album featured two of it’s songs in instrumental reprises. It was my friend Henrique who I wanted to thank most for helping me on that level. That book overly personalized Marvin’s 70’s albums for me to the point where the lyrics became uncomfortably subjective. It was an equal source of heartbreak after reading David Ritz biography of Marvin entitled Divided Soul. When I first heard this album,it was a literal love affair for me in terms of appreciating it musically. It was through a Facebook post of his that I was made aware that today was the 40th anniversary of the release of Marvin Gaye’s album I Want You. Wanted to start this by giving thanks to two people who helped make today’s Anatomy of THE Groove occur.
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