Gaye felt a part of his father was "enjoying the whole thing". By the time I was twelve, there wasn't an inch on my body that hadn't been bruised and beaten by him." He stated what made the beatings worse was his father prolonging the time before punishing Marvin, making him remove his clothes, and having him hear his father's belt buckle loud enough before he received the punishment.
He disappeared on Saturday mornings when it was time to go to church." Jeanne Gaye explained that between the ages of 7 well into his teenage years, young Marvin's home life "consisted of a series of brutal whippings." Gaye explained his father's abuse to author David Ritz years later, stating "It wasn't simply that my father beat me, though that was bad enough. Gaye's sister recalled that Marvin would "constantly provoke Father. According to his sister, Jeanne, Gaye suffered at the hands of his father, who would strike him for any shortcoming, including putting his hair brush in the wrong place or coming home from school a minute late. Gaye's relationship with his father was troubled from childhood. The joy of music was the joy of God." At times, Gaye's father would force his children to answer Biblical questions, disciplining them if they answered wrong. Every member was blessed with a good voice. The Sabbath was his day, it was God's day, and it was also a day for singing. Father anointed converts with olive oil and baptized them in the river. He later explained, "We kept the Sabbath in the purest sense. Gaye remembered the family having to observe an extended Sabbath starting from "Friday night at sundown" into Saturday. The House of God took its teachings from Hebrew Pentecostalism, advocated strict conduct, and adhered to both the Old and New Testaments. Marvin began singing church solos at the age of four. Marvin Gaye and his five siblings were brought up in a strict religious Pentecostal sect known as the House of God by their minister father Marvin Gay Sr. 3.1.1 Birth and adoption of Marvin Gaye III.While the newer compilation has the advantage of licensing Gaye's post-Motown smash "Sexual Healing" (which is missing from Anthology), it unfortunately contains 13 fewer tracks, making Anthology the preferred alternative if you can track it down.
Unfortunately, Anthology has since gone out of print, to be replaced by the two-disc Very Best of Marvin Gaye. It's a rich, engaging listen from top to bottom, even with around 2 1/2 hours of music.
If this disc can't reproduce the flowing, carefully calibrated moods of his albums from the period, it does touch upon every major facet of his '70s work - the urgent social commentary, the smoldering eroticism, the soul-baring confessions. Disc Two covers Gaye the visionary auteur, beginning with material from his epochal What's Going On LP. Kicking off with his first hit "Stubborn Kind of Fellow," Disc One traces Gaye's rise to stardom as part of the Motown hit machine, featuring 20 solo cuts from the '60s as well as seven of his most important duets with Tammi Terrell, Kim Weston, and Mary Wells. It's well-nigh impossible to encapsulate a career as lengthy and trailblazing as Gaye's on just one disc Anthology hits all the high points of the Motown years in a more concise fashion than the collector-oriented box set The Master, making it the best summation of Gaye's career yet released. Even so, it still stands as a near-definitive document. That first Anthology featured nothing from Let's Get It On or afterward the newest Anthology adds even more from that era while subtracting a bit from Gaye's earlier years, including a few of his numerous duets. The 1995 version of Anthology was remastered and slightly retooled from the 1986 reissue, which was in turn updated from the original triple-LP set Motown released in 1974.