"Marvin Gaye needs no introduction. The soul king and Motown hit-maker topped the R&B charts in the 1960s and continued to release records in the ‘70s and into the early ‘80s until his tragic death in 1984.Marvin Gaye was born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. in the nation's capitol in 1939. He began his singing career in church (his father was Reverend Marvin Gay, Sr., an ordained minister in the conservative Christian sect House of God) and later began playing piano and drums. Music was an escape for Gaye during his childhood, which was marred by daily physical abuse from his father, and after being discharged from the U.S. Air Force he moved back to Washington D.C. and took up music full-time, playing in various doo wop groups. Berry Gordy, Jr. took notice of Gaye and signed him with Motown in 1961; Gaye began his solo career as a session drummer for acts like Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and married Gordy's sister Ana later that year.Marvin Gaye and Motown endured an ongoing battle--Gaye's artistic ambitions vs. Motown's desire for him to produce commercially successful music--from the beginning. He didn't score his first Top ten until 1963's ""Pride and Joy"" and one year later Together, a collection of duets with Mary Wells, became his first charting album. Gaye continued to churn out charting hits like ""How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)"" (1965) and also produced some of the greatest R&B duets in history with Tammi Terrell, like ""Ain't No Mountain High Enough"" (1967) and ""You're All I Need to Get By"" (1968). Terrell passed away from a brain tumor in 1970 and her abrupt death marked a difficult time in Gaye's personal life, despite the simultaneous success of his biggest hit and calling card, 1968's ""I Heard It Through the Grapevine."" While Gaye's marriage floundered, he also found his Motown hits to be meaningless in the face of the social change swirling around him. In 1970 he secluded himself, and when he emerged with the self-produced What's Going On, he revealed music which tackled subjects like Vietnam, poverty and drug use.In 1973 Gaye went an entirely different direction with the sexually charged Let's Get It On and subsequently spent the years leading up to the mid-'70s in divorce court. As per court mandates, Gaye recorded 1978's My Dear so his ex-wife could earn the royalties but the bitter album proved so personal that Anna Gordy nearly sued him. Gaye remarried but drug problems plagued him and tax issues forced the singer to flee to Europe in 1981. 1982's Midnight Love was a triumph with ""Sexual Healing"" despite his increasingly erratic behavior. After moving home to reconcile his life, Gaye and his father engaged in a bitter quarrel that resulted in Marvin Sr. shooting and killing his son in 1984."