Then, on October 14, 1967, during a concert at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, Tammi Terrell collapsed in Marvin Gaye’s arms on stage.
She was 21 years old.
Doctors found a brain tumor.
Over the next two and a half years, Tammi Terrell underwent eight brain surgeries. She continued to record with Gaye when she could—her voice still present on albums, though sometimes she was too ill to come to the studio, and session singer Valerie Simpson stood in for her vocal parts on some tracks. Gaye later denied this, insisting Tammi sang everything attributed to her. The truth has never been fully settled.
Tammi Terrell died on March 16, 1970. She was 24 years old.
The effect on Marvin Gaye was devastating.
He blamed himself, in ways that those close to him found difficult to fully understand. He had not been responsible for her illness. He had not done anything to cause it. But the logic of grief doesn’t always follow the logic of facts, and Gaye was already prone to depression in ways that made him vulnerable to the most self-punishing interpretations of any painful event.
He stopped performing. He retreated. He fell deeper into cocaine, which he had first tried in the early 1960s. He became almost reclusive.
He also became determined never to duet again with any female singer. This was a promise he would eventually break, but the promise itself tells you something about how he understood Tammi Terrell’s loss—as connected to him, as something he had to carry.