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PEARSON: Like Gaye's life, PBS profile too brief

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 4, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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The talented and complicated Marvin Gaye performs a few years before his death in 1984.

Photo by Jim Britt / Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The talented and complicated Marvin Gaye performs a few years before his death in 1984.

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Prime choice

American Masters: Marvin Gaye

* When and where: 9 p.m. Wednesday, KRMA-Channel 6

Soul singer Marvin Gaye was known for his ability to wring emotion both raw and romantic from R&B lyrics.

American Masters shows why as it profiles the talented singer whose short, turbulent life ended abruptly in 1984 when his father fired a bullet into his chest. Marvin Gaye was 44.

Using interviews with a host of Gaye's colleagues at Motown Records - Smokey Robinson, Mary Wilson, Gladys Knight - as well as family members, we learn he was raised in a strict Pentecostal home in Washington, D.C., finally rebelling against his father (an itinerant preacher with whom he had a lifelong turbulent relationship) at 17 and joining the Air Force.

Upon his honorable discharge, he performed with several singing groups, finally landing at Motown in Detroit as a studio musician.

While there, he married Anna Gordy, the sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr., who was 15 years his senior. He eventually released a string of hit singles and albums.

Gaye could be extremely competitive ("Don't let that blind sucker go on before me!" he once said of Stevie Wonder on a concert tour), but his biggest arguments were reserved for Berry Gordy. The Motown chief had found a formula that worked, and when Gaye wanted to record his seminal protest album, What's Going On, in the early '70s, Gordy was having none of it.

Marvin prevailed, of course, and the album proved the biggest seller in the company's history.

While American Masters refrains from true depth - there's old interview footage with Gaye and a brief archival clip of Berry Gordy - it packs a lot of music into an hour's time, including Gaye's work with Tammi Terrell.

The weakness is that the show does a better job of charting Marvin Gaye's transition from soul balladeer to social activist than explaining the nature of his creativity.

Nor does it explain why his descent into drugs devastated his personal life (thanks to his father, he was always insecure) but not his music.

One only wishes it was longer. Like Marvin Gaye's life, this excursion is melodic and much too brief.