Third Man Books reissues “Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On? and the Final Days of the Motown Sound” by Ben Edmonds
The 2x GRAMMY® Award-nominated music critic’s lengthy out-of-print historical past piece explores the making of Gaye’s landmark 1971 album
Third Man Books is proud to announce its publication of “Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On? and the Final Days of the Motown Sound” by 2x GRAMMY® Award-nominated author Ben Edmonds.
Initially printed in 2001 and lengthy out-of-print, Edmonds’s acclaimed in-depth historical past of Gaye’s landmark 1971 album is obtainable now at Third Man Information digital and bodily storefronts and booksellers in every single place.
With a profession that exemplified the maturation of romantic Black pop into a complicated kind spanning social and sexual politics, Marvin Gaye was one of the crucial constant and enigmatic of the Motown hitmakers.
Gaye’s dedication and imaginative and prescient resulted not solely in inspirational, pioneering grooves however in a milestone canon of songs that each challenged America and proved amongst soul music’s most enduring our bodies of labor.
Named by Rolling Stone atop 2020’s “The five hundred Biggest Albums of All Time”, “What’s Going On” really established Gaye as a novel and maverick musical expertise.
His dedication and imaginative and prescient resulted in an inspirational and pioneering assortment that, within the period of Vietnam and the civil rights protests, requested America to take an extended arduous take a look at itself.
Ben Edmonds examines intimately the making of this legendary work — initially rejected by Motown’s quality-control division — interviewing lots of the artists and report firm staff closest to the singer, to reach at a deeper understanding of what the album means.
It’s, with out query, one of many best tales ever instructed.
As Edmonds writes within the introduction, “This isn’t merely a couple of singer and a report album. It’s the story of an concept, fashioned out of the combined ethers of social anger and religious longing, that Marvin Gaye articulated with a forged of good accomplices, and fought to get recorded and launched. From that concept, and with that assist, and out of that wrestle, one thing was original that continues to the touch souls extra profoundly than even its creator might have imagined.”
About The Creator:
Ben Edmonds, as an editor at Creem journal (1971-1975), performed a pivotal function in shaping the narrative of music tradition.
Edmonds – whose insightful articles additionally graced the pages of Rolling Stone and MOJO, for which he served as a US correspondent – was the recipient of two ASCAP Basis Deems Taylor Awards honoring his music criticism in addition to two GRAMMY® Award nominations for his contributions to albums by The Pretenders and Phil Ochs.
Tragically, pancreatic most cancers claimed Edmonds’s life in 2016.
“MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band”, co-written by Edmonds with Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki, was printed posthumously in 2024 by Hatchette Books.
The “Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On? and the Final Days of the Motown Sound” is obtainable now to cop on ThirdManRecords.com
