Free for All knows the story as well, Stevie Wonder brought Marvin out of depression by challenging him to write a social injustice song. Wonder wrote Living for the City and Marvin wrote this.
A much needed Black Music thread.
- Thread starter Insidious Von
- Start date
One of my favorite 80's r&b tunes. So uplifting. The entire Changes album is fantastic.
Marvin was a major talent....but for me i liked his early stuff.... the 2 minute soul songs.....and this one featuring some great work by the female backup singers
i have mentioned this a few times that my late father listened to this kinda stuff when i was a very young lad...this week 6 years ago he passed away...and i want to be self indulgent with some stuff he listened to....i know because i have some of those records, be it albums or 45.s
I didn't know that your dad helped influence your musical tastes. That's cool.
In his earlier years my dad was into music (Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley etc.) but as he hit middle age not at all. His car radio presets were all news and talk radio.
Born in 1921, my dad hated rock. The only pop songs he liked post 1952 were Elvis's "Love Me Tender" and The Beatle's "Yesterday". To his credit he never told me to "turn that shit off" whether it was Elvis or Little Richard or James Brown, and on, though he wouldn't stay in the same room when I had those records playing on our den stereo...
With my kids it was a condensed musical education from their ages of 10 to 16 or so, with a month or two for each era of music that I would play for them, from the Elvis era, through the British Invasion, then Punk, New Wave, Joy Division, The Smiths, and up to The National. After that their tastes went their own ways. My son is totally into indie rock, and my daughter is totally into hip-hop.
I remember one night in the late 60's my dad and mom were out for the evening. As was my habit I took advantage of their absence to crank my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp 'til it was screaming, while playing along on my Telecaster to the John Mayall "Beano" album. I didn't notice they had come back a bit earlier than usual, and were just watching me wail away at a deafening overdriven level. The look on their faces was like "Who are you, and what have you done to our son?!?"
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