As a session drummer and part-time songwriter, Gaye worked with The Miracles, The Contours, Martha & the Vandellas, and other Motown acts. Most notably, he is the drummer on The Marvelettes' 1961 number one hit "Please Mr. Postman" and Little Stevie Wonder's 1963 number one hit "Fingertips Pt. 2" and co-wrote Martha & the Vandellas' 1964 hit "Dancing In The Street" and The Marvelettes' 1962 hit "Beechwood 4-5789". Popular and well-liked around Motown, Gaye already carried himself in a sophisticated, gentlemanly manner and had little need of training from Motown's in-house Artist Development director Miss Maxine Powell.

In 1961, Marvin released his debut album for the label, The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye, which was full of jazz standards and Broadway theatre standards. However, the album and three subsequent singles that came afterwards, failed to generate an audience and in the fall of 1962, he was convinced to do the R&B-rooted productions that was a staple at Motown releasing his first hit with "Stubborn Kind of Fellow". The single was co-written by Gaye and William "Mickey" Stevenson, who created the title as a sly reference to the sometimes moody Gaye and became a Top 10 R&B record peaking at number eight on the chart. 1963's "Hitch Hike" and "Can I Get a Witness" were his first Top 40 pop hits. These earlier records featured a "churchiness…that was pushed by that urgent Detroit rhythm section". "Pride & Joy" (1963) became a smash hit, but Gaye was discontented with the role he felt Motown Records kept him locked in: a romantic balladeer and crooner, aiming always for chart success in the singles market. He wanted instead to be a pop singer in the vein of Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra but settled for a blend of the styles of those artists with the passionate soul singing of performers such as Jackie Wilson and his role model Sam Cooke. Some of Marvin's famed early material followed including "You Are a Wonderful One", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)", and his first two

1 R&B singles, the Miracles-composed numbers "I'll Be Doggone" and "Ain't That Peculiar". His 1966 album, Moods of Marvin Gaye, made him one of the first R&B artists to have more than five Top 40 hit singles in one record.

A number of Gaye's hit singles for Motown were duets with female artists such as Mary Wells, Kim Weston and Tammi Terrell; the first Gaye/Wells album, 1964's Together, was Gaye's first charting album. Terrell and Gaye in particular had a good rapport, and their first album together, 1967's United, birthed the massive hits "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Your Precious Love". Real life couple Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson provided the writing and production for the Gaye/Terrell records; while Gaye and Terrell themselves were not lovers (though rumors persist that they may have been), they convincingly portrayed lovers on record, indeed Gaye sometimes claimed that for the durations of the songs he was in love with her. On October 14, 1967, Terrell collapsed into Gaye's arms onstage while they were performing at the Hampton University homecoming in Virginia (contrary to popular belief, it was not Hampden-Sydney College, also in Virginia). She was later diagnosed with a brain tumor, and her health continued to deteriorate.

Motown decided to try and carry on with the Gaye/Terrell recordings, issuing the You're All I Need album in 1968, which featured the hits "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "You're All I Need to Get By". By the time of the final Gaye/Terrell album, Easy, in 1969, Terrell's vocals were performed mostly by Valerie Simpson. Two tracks on Easy were archived Terrell solo songs with Gaye's vocals overdubbed onto them.

Terrell's illness put Gaye in a depression; when his Norman Whitfield-produced "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" () became his first

1 hit and the biggest selling single in Motown history to that point, he refused to acknowledge his success, feeling that it was undeserved. Meanwhile, Gaye's marriage was crumbling with Anna and he continued to feel irrelevant, singing endlessly about love while popular music underwent a revolution and began addressing social and political issues.

Tammi Terrell died of brain cancer on March 16, 1970. Gaye subsequently went into self-seclusion, and did not perform in concert for nearly two years. He tried various spirit-lifting diversions, including a short-lived attempt at a football career with the Detroit Lions. He trained hard but the team's managers turned him down without a tryout. He continued to feel pain with no form of self-expression. As a result, he entered the studio on June 1, 1970 and recorded the songs "What's Going On", "God is Love", and "Sad Tomorrows" - an early version of "Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)".

Gaye wanted to release "What's Going On" (). Motown head Berry Gordy refused, however, calling the single "uncommercial". Gaye refused to record any more until Gordy gave in, and the song became a surprise hit in January of 1971. Gordy subsequently requested an entire album of similar tracks from Gaye.

The What's Going On album became one of the highlights of Gaye's career, and is today his best known work. Both in terms of sound (influenced by funk and jazz) and lyrical content (heavily political) it was a major departure from his earlier Motown work. Two more of its singles, "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" and "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", became Top 10 pop hits and

1 R&B hits. The album became one of the most memorable soul albums of all time, and, based upon its themes, the concept album became the next new frontier for soul music. It has been called "the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music, delivered by one of its finest voices."

Even before Gaye died and was honored for his musical accomplishments, there had already been tributes to the singer. In 1983, the British group Spandau Ballet recorded the single "True" as a partial tribute to both Gaye and the Motown sound he helped establish. A year after his death, The Commodores made reference to Gaye's death in their 1985 song "Night Shift" as did the Violent Femmes in their 1988 song "See My Ships". Former Motown alum Diana Ross also paid tribute with her Top 10 pop single "Missing You" (1985) while the soul band Maze featuring Frankie Beverly recorded the tribute song, "Silky Soul" (1989), in honor of their late mentor. He was also mentioned in the next-to-last choral verse of George Michael's record, "John & Elvis are Dead", featured on his album, Patience.

In 1995, certain artists including Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Speech of the group Arrested Development and Gaye's own daughter Nona, paid tribute to Gaye with the MTV-assisted tribute album, Inner City Blues: The Life and Times of Marvin Gaye, which also included a documentary of the same name that aired on MTV. In 1999, R&B artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Brian McKnight and Will Downing paid their respects to Gaye in a tribute album, Marvin Is 60. In October 2001, an all-star cover of "What's Going On", produced by Jermaine Dupri, was issued as a benefit single, credited to "Artists Against AIDS Worldwide". The single, which was a reaction to the tragedy of the September 11, 2001 attacks as well as to the AIDS crisis, featured contributions from a plethora of stars, including Christina Aguilera, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Mariah Carey, Destiny's Child, Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, Nelly Furtado, Alicia Keys, Aaron Lewis of the rock group StainD, Nas, *NSYNC, P. Diddy, ?uestlove of The Roots, Britney Spears, and Gwen Stefani *. The "What's Going On" cover also featured Nona, who sang one of the song's memorable lines, Father, father/we don't need to escalate.

As noted, Gaye helped give rise to the "singer-songwriter" in African American and encompassing black music. In addition, Gaye's music was often used as one of the reference point for what became known as neo soul in the late-1990s: a nostalgic-based sound that seeks to duplicate a 1970s soul music feel, while adding hip hop and contemporary R&B elements to the mix. Though his work is widely influential, it eventually became a neo-soul cliché to cite Gaye, Stevie Wonder, or Donny Hathaway as an influence, regardless of whether or not the citing artists' music actually reflected the qualities and creativity inherent in Gaye's work.

Gaye can also be seen as a groundbreaker to many self-made black singers and musicians, who took his examples that he brought out in his music, including multitracked vocals and personal self-expression through music. These examples led to the diverse careers of Michael Jackson, Prince, Luther Vandross, Lionel Richie and Babyface, to name a few. To this day, modern pop and R&B stars name Gaye as a huge influence, including Usher, Mary J. Blige, Janet Jackson, R. Kelly, and Alicia Keys.

As a hitmaker, Gaye scored an impressive total of 41 Top 40 hit singles on Billboards Pop Singles chart from 1963 to 2001, sixty Top 40 R&B singles chart hits from 1962 to 2001, eighteen Top 10 pop singles on the pop chart, thirty-eight Top 10 singles on the R&B chart (according to latest figures from Joel Whitburns Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004, 2004), three number-one pop hits and thirteen number-one R&B hits (the fourth biggest male artist to have the most

1 hits on the R&B chart only behind James Brown and Stevie Wonder) and tied with Michael Jackson in total as well as the fourth biggest artist of all-time to spend the most weeks at the number-one spot on the R&B singles chart (52 weeks). In all, Gaye produced a total of sixty-seven singles on the Billboard charts in total spanning five decades.