Marvin Gaye & Barrett Rude Jr. (+ W. Kim Heron)

Started this post way back on Nov 18, but got no further than this link:

Marvin Gaye: a life marked by complexity
April 8, 1984
BY W. KIM HERON
Free Press Staff Writer

Only getting back to it now (Nov 30). The point I was going to make was the parallel themes in the lives of Marvin Gaye and Barrett Rude Jr. I think I started this post on the day that I'd finished Part One of Fortress of Solitude: just after the shooting. I still think the parallels are there--in the religious upbringing, the relationship with the (live-in) father, the coke, the deadly confrontation. But it was only after reading the brilliant Part Two that I realized Lethem sort of set us up with the cliffhanger ending to Part One.

Also wanted to put up this Marvin-related link:

music box

Pop, jazz, and classical.

"Let's Get It On" … Again
The remix of Marvin Gaye's classic is better than the original.
By David Ritz
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004, at 3:40 AM PT

PS: The W. Kim Heron obit/profile was quite a find. Had no idea Heron used to write for the Free Press. I've been following his work in the Metro Times over the past few years. See, for example, the following two MT pieces, which are two of my favorites (in fact, I blogged them before, here):

• Musician interrupted
  The story of Griot Galaxy & a renaissance for Faruq Z. Bey
  by W. Kim Heron
  6/25/2003
  



• The kiss, the wall & other true tales
  Combing Detroit archives for the seeds of racism, urban crises, social
  movements and economic travail.
  by W. Kim Heron
  5/15/2002
  

As I wrote 17 months ago, the Griot Galaxy/Faruq Bey profile is fascinating for its portrait of
'post-riot' Detroit at odds with what you usually hear--Detroit as a boho's paradise. (Came across this related and similarly fascinating site earlier this year: )

And the latter "new school Detroit historians" piece led me to start reading Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis. I still haven't picked it up again after dropping it 1/2 way through. (Googling for the Amazon link led me to this study guide, which would be of use if I do get around to revisiting the book.)

PPS: The author of the Slate piece also authored a biography of Marvin: Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye