Marvin Gaye - Legacy

Legacy

A year following his death, Marion Barry, the then-mayor of Washington, D.C. declared April 2 (Marvin's birthday) as "Marvin Gaye Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund Day" in the city on a day after the anniversary of Gaye's death. Since then, a non-profit organization has helped to organize annual Marvin Gaye Day Celebrations in the city of Washington. A year later, Gaye's mother founded the Marvin P. Gaye Jr. Memorial Foundation in dedication to her son to help those suffering from drug abuse and alcoholism; however she died a day before the memorial was set to open in 1987. Gaye's sister Jeanne once served as the foundation's chairperson. During Gaye's 1971-1972 What's Going On period, Jet magazine once named him the "inner city's musical poet". In 2006, an old park that Gaye frequented as a teenager called Watts Branch Park in Washington was renamed Marvin Gaye Park. Three years later, the 5200 block of Foote Street NE in Deanwood, Washington, DC, was renamed Marvin Gaye Way.

Gaye had a total of 13 number-one hits on the Billboard charts in his career ("I'll Be Doggone", "Ain't That Peculiar", "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", "You're All I Need to Get By", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby", "What's Going On", "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)", "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", "Let's Get It On", "I Want You", "Got to Give It Up" and "Sexual Healing") as well as many other top ten hits. Of his thirteen number-one singles, all of which reached that position on Billboard's R&B charts, "Sexual Healing" was his longest-running, at ten weeks, which then set a record as the most weeks spent at number-one for an R&B single of all time after the R&B chart was reinstated in November 1965 and was later overtaken by 1990s singles such as Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and R. Kelly's "Bump n' Grind". Three of the songs ("I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Let's Get It On" and "Got to Give It Up") reached number-one on the Billboard Hot 100, while eighteen songs in general made the top-ten of the Hot 100.

In 1987, Gaye was posthumously inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His ex-wife Anna Gordy and their son accepted on his behalf. Three years later, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame after several letters of support were sent in request for a star, a process that lasted over two years and was supported by celebrities such as Eddie Murphy. Of Gaye, Murphy said in his letter sending his support to honor Gaye with a star, "Marvin is one of the few who neither grows smaller nor larger in death, but maintains a constant, almost life-like presence", and cited Gaye as a "heroic and mystical figure among the elite of our business." In 1996, he was posthumously given the Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. In 2003, he was listed at No. 18 on the Rolling Stone list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Five years later, in 2008, he was listed at No. 6 on its 100 Greatest Singers list. He also listed at No. 20 on VH-1's Greatest Artists in Rock & Roll.

In his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame biography, Gaye is described as having "made a huge contribution to soul music in general and the Motown Sound in particular." The page stated that Gaye "possessed a classic R&B voice that was edged with grit yet tempered with sweetness". The page further states that Gaye "projected an air soulful authority driven by fervid conviction and heartbroken vulnerability" throughout his career. In his Marvin book Mercy Mercy Me: The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye, Michael Eric Dyson described Gaye as someone "who transcended the boundaries of rhythm and blues as no other performer had done before".

The Rock & Roll Hall has listed at least three of Gaye's songs in its list of 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll including "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "What's Going On" and "Sexual Healing". Three of Gaye's albums are listed on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time including What's Going On (#6), Let's Get It On (#165) and Here, My Dear (#456) while four of his hit singles made it to the magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time including "Sexual Healing" (#233), "Let's Get It On" (#168), "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (#81) and "What's Going On" (#4). "What's Going On" was listed on Detroit's Metro Times list at #1 on its list of 100 Greatest Detroit Songs of All Time. In a MusicRadar poll, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", one of his most famous songs, was voted No.1 and greatest Motown song and his "What's Going On" made the top five.

According to several music critics and historians, Marvin Gaye's career "spanned the entire history of rhythm and blues from fifties doo-wop to eighties contemporary soul." Critics stated that Gaye's music "signified the development of black music from raw rhythm and blues, through sophisticated soul to the political awareness of the 1970s and increased concentration on personal and sexual politics thereafter." Due to his influence in R&B and soul music, Gaye has been cited as "the number-one purveyor of soul". Gaye's music has been covered a variety of different artists including James Taylor, Brian McKnight, Chico DeBarge, Michael McDonald, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Aaliyah, A Perfect Circle, The Strokes and Gil Scott-Heron. Other artists such as Maxwell, Nas and Common adapted his early 1970s fashion style of wearing kufis and beanie skull caps and jean outfits which was also later appropriated by Eddie Murphy in his role as James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, while Michael Jackson, who admitted Gaye was an influence on his music and once described his music as "ridiculous" in a good way, in 2001, allegedly was also influenced by Gaye's fashion style in the 1980s adapting the military-styled suits Gaye wore on his final concert tour. According to David Ritz in his 1991 edition of Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, Billboard magazine reported that "since 1983 Marvin's name has been mentioned - in reverential tones - on no less than seven top-ten hit records."