For this Motown Monday, I reached way back to 1964 and found this classic Marvin Gaye hit.

He was the perfect interpreter according to Nickolas Ashford who cowrote his chart topping duets with Tammi Terrell who stated "Marvin could take what you thought was a so so lyric and after he did ti, you'd ask 'Oh did I write that?' He had that about him, He's interpret my material like he'd written it himself, improvising and improving the original concept."

Here he took "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" written by Holland-Dozier-Holland and turned it into a #6 pop hit battling the Beatles and Beach Boys for chart superiority. This song was his biggest hit at time, the highest he had gotten before that was the #10 showing of "Pride And Joy" where Martha & The Vandellas handled the background vocals.

He did not improve on that chart record until 1967 when he got to #5 with "Your Precious Love" and finally got his chart topper in 1968 with the smash "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" that spent seven weeks at the top of the Hot100 AND the R&B listing. America was truly united behind him at that time.

Usually if you had a hit R&B it did not translate to an automatic hit on the pop charts and vice versa, but Marvin, through Motown was able to bridge that gap.

It was not until he was emancipated in 1971 that his socially conscious music was to again unite black and white with "What's Going On" a #1 R&B for five weeks and #2 for three weeks on the Hot100 blocked by the one two punch of The Temptations "Just My Imagination" and then Three Dog Night "Joy To The World" that conspired to keep him off the top.

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