Divided Soul by David Ritz

Author:David Ritz [David Ritz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2012-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

18

GETTING IT ON

“She seemed not to be the daughter of a mortal man, but of God,” Dante quoted Homer when he wrote La Vita Nuova in 1292.

“I saw her as more than a real girl,” Gaye said of the woman who would become his second wife. “She suddenly appeared as a gift of God.”

Dante was speaking of Beatrice, the lady who stood in the center of his poetry, an erotic figure whom he’d later transform into his holy guide.

Marvin was speaking of Janis Hunter, the girl he would sing to and about for the rest of his days, the woman who would inspire, enrage, and preoccupy him in a manner bordering on madness.

“She was the figure in my fantasy come to life,” Marvin told me, “the one I watched dancing round and round in my imagination, whirling from man to man. I’d never encountered a more beautiful creature in my life. I had to have her.”

Janis was the daughter of close friends of Ed Townsend, the man with whom Gaye was collaborating on “Let’s Get It On.” Through Townsend, Jan’s mother Barbara brought her daughter to the Motown studio to meet Marvin. Janis’s father was Slim Gaillard, the legendary jazz entertainer of “Flat Foot Floogie” fame. With a white mother and black father, Janis had the light, red-boned complexion of the dream girls of Marvin’s youth. With long, lustrous black hair, a wide, sensuous mouth, dark, radiant eyes, a slender, slightly freckled nose, and a fine figure, she appeared as a stunning apparition of unspoiled beauty. Her shy, soft-spoken personality touched Gaye’s heart.

“I was a gentleman about it,” he said. “That first night I treated her and her mother with absolute respect.”

“Marvin has been accused of giving only eighty percent of his effort when he sings,” commented Curtis Shaw, the man who would become Marvin’s attorney. “His talent allows him to get away with that. Marvin wasn’t a singer who liked to exert himself. But that night, with Jan listening, he gave a hundred percent. Listen to ‘Let’s Get It On’ and you’ll hear what I’m talking about.”

“When the session was over,” reported Art Stewart, who was there as Marvin’s chief engineer, “all of us walked Barbara and Jan to their car. As they drove away, Marvin turned to Ed and me and said, ‘That’s the finest woman I’ve ever seen.’”

“My greatest concern,” Gaye said, “was her age. Sixteen is very, very young, especially when you consider the fact that, at the time, I was a thirty-three-year-old man married to a fifty-year-old woman. Wasn’t that something? My wife was seventeen years older than I was and this girl was seventeen years younger. I worried how everyone would react—my family, my friends, my fans. I worried about the law, although Jan’s mother, who’s a wonderful woman, encouraged the relationship.”

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