by John Bush
Never overly reliant on the
Holland-Dozier-Holland
machine, Marvin Gaye weathered their departure pretty well, turning to
Norman Whitfield
(for the epochal &I Heard It Through the Grapevine&) as well as
Ivory Joe Hunter
,
Ashford & Simpson
,
Frank Wilson
, and, for two songs, his own pen. One of Gaye's other R&B hits from In the Groove, the impassioned &You,& is in the
Four Tops
style (it's patterned after &Reach Out&), while &Chained& is another brilliant performance and production of a sub-standard tune. The Brill Building standard &Some Kind of Wonderful& and &There Goes My Baby& were early-'60s throwbacks in sound and feel, quite a jarring effect in context. After &I Heard It Through the Grapevine& became one of the biggest hits of 1968, Motown re-released the LP as
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
.