Frankie Christian “Bubby” Gaye, born November 16, 1975—also the son of Marvin Gaye and Janis Hunter—had the unusual experience of living with his father in London and Belgium during the European years. After his parents’ separation, Gaye had taken Bubby with him to Europe, and the child lived abroad for a significant period before being reunited with his mother. He eventually settled in Rhode Island.
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PART NINETEEN: WHAT THE VOICE LEFT BEHIND
Let’s get something straight about the scope of what was lost.
Marvin Gaye was not simply a popular entertainer. He was one of the central figures in the history of American music—a voice that helped define what soul music was and could be, a craftsman who brought to recorded music a combination of technical excellence and emotional authenticity that very few artists have ever matched.
Consider the arc.
He started as a studio drummer earning five dollars a week.
He became Motown’s top male solo artist through sheer commercial force—”Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” “Hitch Hike,” “Pride and Joy,” “How Sweet It Is,” “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”—hits that moved millions of people and defined the sound of Black popular music in the 1960s.
He reinvented himself, at enormous personal and professional risk, with *What’s Going On*—a protest album about war and poverty and pollution and spiritual crisis that Motown’s founder told him was the worst thing he had ever heard, and which became one of the greatest albums in the history of recorded music.