Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: "Your Precious Love"

November 11, 1967 (1 week)

She was only getting started and yet it was already the beginning of the end. The photogenic Tammi Terrell was just twenty-two years old and had only just begun recording with Marvin Gaye. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" gave them their first hit together. But then on the night of October 14, 1967, she collapsed into the arms of her partner while they were on stage in while performing a concert at a university in rural Virginia. The song they were in the midst of dueting on was "Your Precious Love".

I had long known about Terrell's tragically brief life and recording career but I always assumed that the night she passed out as a result of a brain tumor was only just before her untimely death. In fact, she endured an extended period of treatment, worsening health and sporadic recording sessions for close to three years before she met her end. She carried on as best as she could with the not yet volatile Gaye being her anchor. The pair even recorded "Ain't Nothin' Like the Real Thing" the following year, giving them a third classic duet on the bounce.

The 'Ain'ts' ("...No Mountain High Enough" and "...Nothin' Like the Real Thing" respectively) have remained fixtures of the Motown sound ever since the sixties but the hit they bookend isn't as well remembered. "Your Precious Love" failed to make it on to the utterly brilliant Hitsville U.S.A. Motown box set back in 1992 even though compilers felt the need to make room for the nondescript Syreeta Wright number "I Can't Give Back the Love I Feel for You" instead. As a Canadian, I'm happy they included Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers' "Does Your Mama Know About Me" but it too is not in the same league as Gaye and Terrell at their very best. (Still, at least "Does Your Mama Know..." was a hit which is more than can be said for Wright's contribution)

Not as immediate as either of the 'Ain'ts', the charms of "Your Precious Love" do not fully reveal themselves until it's been heard three or four times. Motown founder Berry Gordy had pushed for Gaye to become the label's male sex symbol but, as Ian MacDonald points out in his mostly harsh essay on the singer, he only really fitted into this role in a pairing. Even then, it's the jauntier singles - along with the 'Ain'ts', his memorable duet with Kim Weston "It Takes Two", also included on Hitsville U.S.A. - do not do this position justice. It is only beginning with "Your Precious Love" that Marvin Gay the Ladies Man arrives. As MacDonald argues, much of what Gaye recorded in the seventies was under the influence of cocaine which reduces love to lust; as such, his work with Terrell is a rare case of Marvelous Marvin in romance mode. (A very different side of his feelings did end up on the extraordinary but notorious divorce album Here, My Dear which, sadly though unsurprisingly, came from a time of unaccustomed unpopularity)

With many of her colleagues bellowing out in full gospel mode around this time — including Gladys Knight with "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", a future solo hit for Marvin Gaye — Terrell is closer to Diana Ross' brand of  delicate vocals, though not quite as fragile sounding. With her precarious health, her delivery becomes rather poignant, as if she wasn't physically capable of utilizing a much fuller range. Rather than the two them trading lines, he takes first verse, the two of them take the chorus together and she solos just after that. It's almost as if they spliced their parts together from separate sessions. Yet, it sounds far less contrived than your typical back-and-forth duet. With all due respect to former partners Weston and Mary Wells, Gaye never sounded so fluid than when he was paired with Terrell.

Not surprisingly, this review is a a one and done for Tammi Terrell. Rather more unexpectedly, Marvin Gaye won't be coming along again in this blog for quite some time. Such apparently sure fire number ones as "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "What's Going On", "Mercy, Mercy Me", "Let's Get It On", "I Want You", and "Got to Give It Up" all came up short. (While the rest all ended up becoming sizable hits in Canada, it is a travesty that "What's Going On" and "I Want You" only peaked at numbers seventy-six and forty-five respectively) In bypassing his peak, my reviews will only cover his early period in which he specialized in duets and his brief early eighties' commercial renaissance. Where once he had been a reliable partner for the ailing Terrell, he lacked similar stability in during his mental decline. He may have professed the benefits of Sexual Healing but what he really needed was some of that Precious Love they once sang of so beautifully.

Score: 9