The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Marvin Gaye · produced by Marvin Gaye · arranged chiefly by David Van DePitte · Tamla · about 35 minutes
Mode
Soul turned from the three-minute single to a self-produced suite, with jazz-touched percussion, flute and saxophone under strings
Mythos
A soldier come home to a land he cannot recognise, and a prophet’s lament addressed to mother, father, brother
Phase
Nine tracks run together without silence; side one six songs from the street through the addict and the children to the earth, side two three, a long groove, a hymn and the city, closing on the opening theme
Presentation
Album; nine tracks on two sides, about thirty-five minutes; three of the songs also released as singles
Register
One lead voice multitracked into its own choir, bass in long melodic lines, bongos and conga, flute, alto saxophone, strings and horns
Scale
A nation addressed as a family, from one street corner
Governing Proposition
A star singer inside the most controlled hit factory in popular music produces his own record on the war, the street, the addict, the poisoned earth and the unpaid bill, and runs nine songs without silence across two sides so that they are heard as one condition, seen by a man come home who belongs to it. The voice stays tender and unhurried against hard news and is multiplied into its own choir; the record rises often and has never left the air, on a disclosure stated plainly and a myth evoked more than built.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with voices at a party, men greeting one another as if on a street, and an alto saxophone above them. Then the voice enters low and climbs, and its first words are an address (“Mother, mother”). Before a single complaint is made, the street is set and the speaker is placed inside it, among people he knows. And the song does not stop. It runs into the next, and the next, so that each side of the record is heard as one span: nine tracks on two sides, about thirty-five minutes, with no silence between the tracks on either side.
Tamla released the album in May 1971, the title song having come out as a single in January. Marvin Gaye produced it at Motown’s Hitsville studio in Detroit, the title song in 1970 and most of the rest in the spring of 1971, with David Van DePitte as principal arranger. The title song was written by Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Al Cleveland and Gaye. Three songs from the record, the title song, Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) and Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler), reached the American pop top ten and the top of the rhythm and blues chart. A record made as one span also yielded three hits, and that is both its achievement and the measure of how far its parts stand alone.
The order is fixed and it carries the argument. Side one runs the title song, What’s Happening Brother, Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky), Save the Children, God Is Love and Mercy Mercy Me: the street, the returned soldier, the addict, the children, a creed and the earth. Side two has three tracks, Right On, Wholy Holy and Inner City Blues, a long groove, a hymn and the city, and the last of them closes on a return of the opening theme. Heard in order, the war, the drug, the poisoned air and the unpaid bill stop being issues and become one condition, which is what the record knows.
Movement II
The speaker is a man come home. The second track gives him a situation: a veteran back from the war, asking after what has changed, the corner and the ball game, and finding no work. The pattern is among the oldest there is, the homecoming to a house changed in the son’s absence, and the song makes it particular in the small questions of a man catching up. From here the record looks at its country through his eyes, as one who belongs to it and no longer recognises it.
What it brings into the open can be stated and it holds. The war abroad, the policing of the streets, the addiction, the unpaid bills and the poisoned air are one condition, seen whole, and the family is the name the speaker gives the nation he pleads with: mother, father, brother. Inner City Blues puts taxes and “trigger happy policing” in a single breath. The sound discloses as much as the words. A soft, unhurried groove under hard news says that this grief is lived inside ordinary life, at a party and on a corner, not shouted at the country from outside it.
The limits are as plain. The remedy is stated more than examined (“love can conquer hate”), Mercy Mercy Me lists its pollutions more than it shows them, and the sacred songs answer the condition with faith rather than uncovering more of it. The myth is likewise evoked more than built. The homecoming is carried by one song, not by the sequence; the voice addresses its listeners as a prophet addresses his people, but the prophet is a stance of the voice rather than a figure the record makes; and the children, the earth and Jesus on the later tracks are summoned, not constructed. The Archetypal Deep, at 8.3, is the one summit condition the record does not meet.
Movement III
The record’s signature is its voice, and the voice is many. Lead, harmony and counter-voice are all Gaye’s, stacked and set in dialogue, so that the singer is his own choir. In Save the Children the method becomes the meaning: he speaks a line in one voice while singing it in another, the two laid over one another, so that plea and lament sound at once. It is the form of a man arguing with his own despair, and it is the record’s strangest height.
The heights are frequent, and most of them are warm. The title song lifts at once, the counter-voices rising behind the lead. Flyin’ High reaches a dreamy, drugged height that is also dread, the addict’s elevation heard from inside. Wholy Holy, a slow hymn of stacked voices, is the summit of the warm kind, and Inner City Blues reaches the cold kind at the close. Right On stays level for most of its length, God Is Love passes before it rises, and What’s Happening Brother has warmth more than height. The record rises on six or seven of its nine tracks, in beauty and lament, seldom in grandeur.
Under the voices, the making is light and exact. The rhythm section plays fluidly, the bass in long melodic lines under music that never settles on the one, and the hand percussion carries the pulse that ties each side together. Van DePitte’s strings and horns colour the groove without swamping it, and the segues are made with care. The faults fall on a share of the record: the strings thicken toward easy gloss in God Is Love and in parts of Save the Children, and the dense mix sometimes blurs the voices it layers. God Is Love, under two minutes, restates the title song’s material as a creed; in the run of the side it serves as a link.
Movement IV
The inheritance is Motown’s. The company made three-minute singles, written and produced by its own teams, sung by artists who did not choose their material, and it kept social comment off the label. Against that, a star singer produced his own record, wrote or co-wrote its songs, set them as a continuous suite with segues and a reprise, loosened the arrangements with bongos, conga, flute and free saxophone, and made his subject the war, the street and the earth. The stake was the standing of a star the system had made, set against the system’s way of making records.
Right On opens the second side as the record’s longest track by far, a flute-led Latin groove that takes about a fifth of the running time. It is the record’s loosest passage, and the one that shows most plainly what the turn allowed: length, improvisation, a groove left to run. It is also the one place where permission shows more than compulsion. The groove is loosely shaped, the voice’s law of tender witness slackens, and the record would survive its shortening. Wholy Holy follows, slow and stacked, and the side recovers its gravity.
The path was partly proven. Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions had made the conscious soul song, Isaac Hayes the long-form soul album in 1969, and rock the concept album; Sly Stone was moving the same way in the same years, and Stevie Wonder’s turn at Motown came alongside. What this record did was join those moves inside the most controlled hit factory in popular music, and keep both its public and its label. The reach followed. Motown ceded creative control to its artists, with Wonder’s records of 1972 to 1976 as the great result; the conscious soul album became a form of the decade; and a line runs from here to neo-soul and to political hip-hop, which has sampled and cited the record continually.
Movement V
Inner City Blues ends the record in the city. A low, circling bass moves under strings that never resolve, and the voice sets taxes, policing and the cry of the title side by side. It is the coldest height of the record and the most direct of its disclosures. Then, in the last minute, the opening theme returns. The party on the street where the record began and the holler of the city are found to be one place, and the circle closes: the community the voice speaks from is the community driven to the cry.
The record holds a great deal for thirty-five minutes. Consciousness, in a voice that witnesses, despairs and prays; the family, in the address to mother, father, brother and in the children of Save the Children; the state and history, in the war, the veteran, the police, taxes and the space programme set against the poor; labour as its absence, the soldier without work; the natural order in Mercy Mercy Me; the sacred in God Is Love and Wholy Holy; the city in Flyin’ High and Inner City Blues. One voice and one continuous sound join them. But they arrive one per song, and the ecology and the sacred are stated more than held. The Encompassed, at 7.8, is set there.
Its later life has been continuous. The title song and Inner City Blues have never left broadcast, the album is heard whole and not only through its singles, and it has been reopened at each return of its subjects, each war and each cycle of protest against the police. The 2001 Deluxe Edition published an earlier Detroit mix, so that the released record can now be heard against an alternative. Some of its surface is of its years, in the string writing and the gloss of the mix, and its words say on the tenth hearing what they said on the first. Much of what renews it is the world, which has kept returning to the condition the record named in 1971, between a party on a street and a holler in the city.
Act III · The Twelve
Nine tracks in about thirty-five minutes, and the segues complicate the subtractive test: the record is built to be heard as one span a side, so a track slight alone is often a passage. The frame is compelled. The title song must open, its party voices setting the street before the voice enters; Inner City Blues must close, its last minute returning the opening theme. What’s Happening Brother, the veteran home and out of work, and Flyin’ High, the addict, are each required. The test bites twice. God Is Love, under two minutes, restates the title song as a creed and could go with little loss beyond a link; Right On, the longest track by far, is permitted more than compelled.
Score: 8.4 / 10
What the record brings into the open can be stated, and it holds: in the America of 1971 the war abroad, the policing of the streets, the addiction, the unpaid bills and the poisoned air are one condition, seen whole by a man come home who belongs to it, and the family is the name he gives the nation he pleads with. “Mother, mother” opens the plea; Inner City Blues sets taxes and “trigger happy policing” in one breath. Sound discloses as much as words: a soft groove under hard news says the grief is lived inside ordinary life. Held from the top because the remedy is stated more than examined (“love can conquer hate”), Mercy Mercy Me lists more than it shows, and the sacred tracks answer with faith.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Elevation is warm and frequent, and it is the record’s characteristic mode. The title song lifts at once: the alto saxophone over the party voices, then the voice entering low and climbing, counter-voices rising behind it. Flyin’ High reaches a dreamy, drugged height that is also dread. Save the Children is the strangest height, Gaye speaking a line in one voice while singing it in another, plea and lament at once. Wholy Holy, a slow hymn of stacked voices, is the summit of the warm kind; Inner City Blues reaches the cold kind. Right On stays level for most of its length, and God Is Love passes before it rises. Six or seven of nine tracks rise, in beauty and lament, seldom in grandeur.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth is evoked richly and built in part. The built frame is the return: a soldier comes home to a land he cannot recognise, the old pattern of the homecoming to a house changed in the son’s absence, made particular in What’s Happening Brother by a man asking after the corner and the ball game and finding no work. The second frame is the prophet’s lament: the voice addresses mother, father, brother as a prophet addresses his people, and the sequence passes from witness through creed and hymn to the holler of the close. What holds the axis below the gate: the homecoming is carried by one song more than by the sequence, the figures of side two are evoked rather than built, and the prophet is a stance of the voice more than a figure.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The inheritance is Motown’s: the three-minute single, written and produced by the company’s teams, sung by an artist who did not choose his material, with social comment kept off the label. The turn is large. A star singer produced his own record, wrote or co-wrote its songs, set them as a continuous suite with segues and a reprise, gave the arrangements a looseness of bongos, conga, flute and free saxophone, made his own voice a layered choir, and made the subject the war, the street and the earth. Held from the top because the path was partly proven: Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions had made the conscious soul song, Isaac Hayes the long-form soul album in 1969, and rock the concept album. The swerve joined them inside the hit factory.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The sequence is counted here, once. Change the form and the record loses its central claim, that the troubles are not separate issues but one condition: the unbroken flow across each side, the recurring melodic material and the closing return of the opening theme make war, addiction, ecology, faith and the city one span heard in one breath. The tenderness of the setting against the hardness of the subject is itself the knowledge, a protest that does not shout. The voice in dialogue with itself, plainest in Save the Children, is the form of a man arguing with his own despair. Held from the top because three of the songs stood alone as singles, and Right On and God Is Love serve the flow more than they enact it.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Evidence over fifty-five years. The record has been reopened at each return of its subject, each war and each cycle of protest against the police, and its songs have been re-recorded, sampled and performed by musicians of every later generation; the title song is a standard. The making has been reopened too: the 2001 Deluxe Edition published an earlier Detroit mix, so the released record can be heard against an alternative. The formal yield is real: the bass lines, the layered vocals and the percussion repay close listening, and the recurrence of material across the suite is heard more on return. The semantic yield is narrower. The words say on the tenth hearing what they said on the first, and much of the renewal comes from the world changing around the record.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is soul and the popular album of its decade. The intrinsic force is high: the record showed that a soul singer inside the hit system could make an album as one statement, produced by himself, on public subjects, and keep both his public and his label, and it made the album, not the single, the unit of serious Black popular music. Credit is shared: Mayfield, Hayes and Sly Stone were moving the same way in the same years, and Stevie Wonder’s turn at Motown came alongside. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Motown’s ceding of creative control to its artists, whose great result is Wonder’s records of 1972 to 1976; the conscious soul album of the 1970s; Gaye’s own later records; and a line to neo-soul and political hip-hop, which has sampled and cited it continually.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Survival is weighed over fifty-five years. The form is whole: the record survives as released, continuously in print and reissued. Presence is continuous and of the widest kind. The title song and Inner City Blues have never left broadcast, the album is heard whole and not only through its singles, it is played again at every return of its subjects, and it stands at or near the head of most retrospective lists of popular albums, which is presence, not proof. The fabric bears some date: the string writing and the gloss of the Motown mix are of their years, and a few lines name the moment. The subjects have not dated, and the hand-played sound carries little of the era’s technology. A tenth below Kind of Blue at 9.0, twelve years older.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere. The making is load-bearing. Gaye’s vocal production is the record’s signature: lead, harmony and counter-voice all his, stacked and set in dialogue, so that the singer is his own choir. The rhythm section plays light and fluid, the bass in long melodic lines under music that never settles on the one, and hand percussion carries the pulse that ties the suite together. David Van DePitte’s arrangements let strings and horns colour the groove without swamping it, and the segues are made with care. The faults fall on a share: Right On is loosely shaped, the strings thicken toward gloss in God Is Love and parts of Save the Children, and the dense mix sometimes blurs the voices it layers. Under Kind of Blue at 9.3; a tenth under Low at 9.0.
Score: 8.9 / 10
One law governs the record: a witness’s voice, unhurried and tender, carried by one continuous groove against news that is hard. The two most distant elements are the party chatter that opens the title song and the cold, unresolving close of Inner City Blues, with Wholy Holy, a hymn, between them. They obey the same law: the party is the community the voice speaks from, the holler is what that community is driven to, and the hymn is what it holds to in between. The voice never changes register to suit its subject, and that constancy is the law. Held from the top because the range is moderate, one tempo band, one palette and one lead voice, and narrowness is not coherence. Right On, a Latin groove with a looser law, strains it a little.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, in a voice that witnesses, despairs and prays. The family is held, in the address to mother, father, brother and in the children of Save the Children. The state and history are held: the war, the veteran, the police, taxes, the space programme set against the poor. Labour is present as its absence, the soldier without work. The natural order is held in Mercy Mercy Me, the sacred in God Is Love and Wholy Holy, the city in Flyin’ High and Inner City Blues. That is more than Remain in Light holds at 7.6. What sets the figure, the lowest on the sheet: the orders arrive one per song, not integrated in any one place, and the ecology and the sacred are stated more than held.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
Pressure on Tradition, The Imperishable and The Made at 8.9, then The Sublime at 8.8. A record that made the album the unit of serious Black popular music and moved a hit factory to cede control to its artists; fifty-five years of the widest presence, its title song never off the air; a making whose signature is one voice set as its own choir over a light, fluid groove; and warm elevation on six or seven of nine tracks.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.8: consciousness, the family, the state, the war, the earth, the sacred and the city are held and joined by one voice, but they arrive one per song, and the ecology and the sacred are stated more than held. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 8.3, a homecoming built in one song and a prophet’s address that is a stance of the voice, the figures of the second side evoked rather than built; then The Inevitable at 8.4, with Right On’s long groove and the brief creed of God Is Love permitted more than compelled.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.7, The Made at 8.9, The Inner Law at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on one axis: Pressure on Tradition at 8.9 and The Imperishable at 8.9 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment at 8.7 and The Swerve at 8.7 clear it by two tenths, but The Archetypal Deep at 8.3 falls short. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.3, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.8. Four of the five summit conditions are met; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate, and the aggregate, at 8.6, stands below it as well.
Basis · the stereo LP as released by Tamla in May 1971, nine tracks in their original order on two sides, run together without silence across each side, about thirty-five minutes; produced by Marvin Gaye, arranged chiefly by David Van DePitte, recorded at Hitsville in Detroit; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. The 2001 Deluxe Edition with its earlier Detroit mix and live material, the 2011 anniversary set and the singles are evidence for the record’s return, reach and survival, not the object. Songs are cited by title, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the session players and who played what, the label’s first response to the title song, the family history behind the frame of the returning soldier, the individual track timings and later studies of the album, are not given.