Troubleman marvin gaye
TRACK OF THE WEEK
DAY & DATE: Released as a single (Tamla 54228) on Tuesday, November 21, 1972.
SONGWRITER:Marvin Gaye.
PRODUCER:Marvin Gaye.
BACKSTORY: According to this Marvin Gaye knock – a Top 10 success on the nation’s pop charts during January 1973 – there are three things to be sure of: taxes, death and trouble. The film for which it was the title song attracted plenty of the last: it was not famous at the box-office nor among critics. Trade magazine Variety called Trouble Man an “inner-city crime potboiler,” noting that it seemed longer than the 99-minute running time, while the New York Times called it one of the ten worst movies of 1972.
Yet time has been kind. As a anthem, “Trouble Man” has since been performed and recorded by an eclectic mix of artists, while a 40th anniversary deluxe edition of the soundtrack album revealed hitherto-unknown depths to the music and its making. “It is simultaneously the epitome of cold and sensitivity,” said Lenny Kravitz of the score in the reissue manual. “Marvin’s compositions for this film are among his finest work; they tap my soul every hour I listen.” The movie’s director, Ivan Dixon, shot Troub By the prior 1970s, Marvin Gayewas very much his own male, making music only on his terms. Especially after the massive success of his 1971 landmark albumWhat’s Going On, and the not inconsiderable matter of a new $1 million deal with Motown that gave him greater imaginative control than he’d ever had. What Gaye did next, far from trying to repeat the sound of his last album, was to branch out into a movie soundtrack. This is the story of Trouble Man. Now in full production control and writing almost all of the material himself, Gaye seized the opportunity to write for a low-budget blaxploitation crime thriller starring Robert Hooks and directed by Ivan Dixon. Trouble Man hoped to follow in the footsteps of Shaft, Superfly and other successes. Click to load video If the picture is little remembered today, the soundtrack has outlived it and stands tall as a rather underrated part of Gaye’s body of work. It’s also the perfect convert of pace in between the ecologically aware What’s Going Onand the romantically focused Let’s Get It On of just nine months later. Trouble Man was released on December 8, 197 It’s easy to neglect how quickly love faded from the scene—how in the proverbial blink of an eye, the whole flower power, make-love-not-war trip of the 1960s disintegrated into the cynical, Nixonian dystopia of the initial 1970s. Nothing exposed that move quite like blaxploitation films, a genre made primarily by and for Dark people, often with brief money or studio backing. Depending on one’s politics, the films either showed the reality of existence in the ghetto or pointlessly glorified violence, complicated drugs, and immorality. Into this scene stepped Marvin Gaye in 1972. Gaye was fresh off recording one of the strongest social and political statements ever made by a player (1971’s What’s Going On) when he began function on a soundtrack for the movie Trouble Man. Although the film was panned—the New York Times called it “horrible”—the soundtrack survived. And, while it is not as renowned as Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly or Isaac Hayes’s Shaft, it deserves to be in the equal category as those seminal soundtracks. Though he was primarily a soul artist, Gaye was able to stretch his musical legs with Trouble Man. The opening track, “Main Theme From Trouble Man,” starts .
‘Trouble Man’: Marvin Gaye Goes To Hollywood
Marvin Gaye
Trouble Man
Track number Play Loved Track identify Artist name Buy Options Duration Listeners 1 Play track Main Theme From Trouble Male (2) 2:30 4,729 listeners 2 Compete track T Plays It Cool 16,102 listeners 3 Play track Poor Abbey Walsh 4:11 15,530 listeners 4 Play track The Interval In (Police Shoot Big) 1:57 12,789 listeners