Marvin Gaye

📍Deanwood, Washington, DC 20019, USA

“I was born in Washington, DC, in 1939 and grew up first in the Southwest neighbourhood and then in the East Capitol Dwellings in the northeast of the city, the public housing I called Simple City. My father was a minister in the House of God, a strict Pentecostal church that kept its own rules, and my mother, Alberta, worked as a domestic. Home could be hard; my father was severe, and I lived for the moments when I could sing. Church is where I found my voice. I sang solos in my father's congregation and learned piano and drums there. Outside the church, the streets of DC in the 1950s were full of doo-wop: groups singing on corners and in hallways, chasing the perfect harmony. At Cardozo High I sang in groups with friends, and after a short spell in the Air Force I formed the Marquees, which brought me to Harvey Fuqua. He took me into his new Moonglows and then to Detroit. At Motown I became a hit-maker and a duet partner, and later, with What's Going On, I wrote about the things I had seen growing up: poverty, war and the longing for peace and love. Those songs carried my mother's faith and my neighbourhood's struggles. In DC the stretch of parkland along Watts Branch, near where I grew up, was renamed Marvin Gaye Park, a green place for the community I came from.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Marvin Gaye nunarmag.com nrpa.org marvingaye.net