Anna Gordy Gaye

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (June 2009)

Anna Gordy Gaye (born December 12, 1922) is an American songwriter and composer, known as the elder sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy and the first wife of soul legend Marvin Gaye, who used their troubled marriage as the focal point of his critically acclaimed 1978 effort, Here, My Dear,^[1] an album from which Gordy agreed to receive royalties due to their divorce court proceedings.

Biography

Early life

Born Anna Ruby Gordy in Detroit, Michigan to Berry Gordy Sr. and Bertha Ida (née Fuller) Gordy. Shortly before her birth, her family had moved to Detroit to get away from racial tension in Georgia; Anna was born shortly after the Gordys had migrated. She was the third eldest of eight (Fuller, Esther, Anna, Loucye, George, Gwen, Berry and Robert). Most of the Gordy siblings got involved in the music business in the late 1950s forming several production companies in Michigan. Berry, in particular, gained success writing hit songs for Jackie Wilson and a popular Detroit-based vocal group called The Miracles. In 1959, Gordy's brother formed Motown Records and within a few months, Anna, sister Gwen and Billy Davis formed Anna Records, the label would be the national distributor for Barrett Strong's local Tamla single, "Money (That's What I Want)", which in turn became a top forty hit and became Motown's first hit single.

Marriage to Marvin Gaye and later career

In 1960, Harvey Fuqua and one of his proteges, Marvin Gaye, moved from Chicago to Detroit shortly after Fuqua disbanded his version of the legendary doo-wop group The Moonglows. Fuqua had gotten acquainted with Anna's sister Gwen Gordy and introduced Gordy to Gaye, who then introduced the singer to Motown president Berry Gordy. While performing at the annual Christmas party at Motown's Hitsville U.S.A. studios, Anna and Marvin met. In her book, Berry, Me and Motown, Raynoma Liles Gordy said Fuqua and Gaye concocted a plan to date Anna and Gwen with Fuqua dating Anna and Gaye dating Gwen. However, Gaye wanted to do a switch, which Fuqua agreed on. The plan, according to Liles, worked when Marvin and Anna got involved in a serious relationship and Harvey and Gwen also began dating. Prior to them dating, Marvin signed with Motown Records as a solo artist, staff writer and sometime session musician in December 1960. In later documentaries on her ex-husband's life, Gordy would often say that she played hard-to-get with Gaye, who she said kept showing up at her house at a certain time. When Gaye didn't show up one day as Anna had expected, she started to get concerned until Marvin suddenly cocked his head to the side and asked "you missed me, didn't you?" After that, the 21-year-old Gaye and the 38-year-old Gordy started dating.

Despite snickers over the couple's seventeen-year age difference, Gaye and Gordy openly carried on an affair, and their affair later inspired some of Gaye's early hits. Gaye's 1962 single, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", was based on an argument Gaye and Gordy had, leaving Gordy to ask Gaye "what makes you so stubborn?" Always motivated by personal experiences, Gaye wrote "Stubborn Kind of Fellow", with extra composition by Anna's brother George and Mickey Stevenson. The song became a hit. Another Anna-inspired single came in 1963 with "Pride & Joy", Gaye's first top 10 pop hit, followed by 1964's "You're a Wonderful One". In Gaye's earlier Motown career, Gaye bluntly told Motown executives, Berry Gordy in particular, that he wanted to be a standards performer, having no desire to have a career in the pigeonholed R&B genre. Anna Gordy was said to have been the defining factor in Motown's decision to try the standards route with Gaye as the singer's first album, 1961's The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye, featured mainly standards and jazz covers with two rhythm and blues tunes, one co-written by Anna, to compromise. As Berry Gordy predicted, however, the album failed and Gaye, realizing he was connected to the Gordy family, decided to use the leverage to get fame from singing R&B though he privately chided at the demands. Anna would encourage Marvin to record, even if Marvin didn't feel up to recording on a particular day, sometimes leading to spats, both privately and publicly, according to Marvin.

In Motown's carefully concocted public relations stories, Marvin and Anna married as quickly after they started dating in 1961. However, according to Gaye, they married in 1964, as he shouted after a bridge in his song, "I Met a Little Girl". The date of their marriage was January 8, 1964. Marvin was 24, Anna was 41. The marriage was deemed controversial not just due to their age difference but also put Gaye in conflict with some of Motown's peers, who accused him (and later Diana Ross) for marrying/having relations with the company and also bristled at Gaye's stubbornness towards the label's grooming school, which Gaye hardly attended though Anna Gordy was a co-founder and president of that school. Gaye would later account, however, that even with his famous in-laws, he felt like he was an outsider. During their marriage, Marvin and Anna tried having a child. Later Anna was told that she couldn't conceive, which devastated the couple. Sometime after, members of the Gordy family and Smokey Robinson concocted a plan to have Marvin and Anna's teenage niece Denise Gordy produce a child. Marvin Gaye III was born on November 17, 1965.

Denise Gordy herself confirmed the story in two Marvin Gaye biographies. Anna adopted Marvin III as her own child. It was said Marvin III didn't learn the truth of his birth until after his father's death. Marvin himself told David Ritz that he hid the fact that Anna adopted the child due to public relations by Motown and feared he would be poked fun at for not naturally conceiving. Despite the birth of Marvin III, however, Marvin and Anna's relationship grew more contentious. Because of Marvin's growing fame, he would often be accused of infidelity. Overtime, Marvin suspected the same of Anna. Their troubling personal life also impacted Marvin's later music, especially in songs like "I Heard It through the Grapevine" and "Chained", the former song talking directly about rumors of infidelity. In 1969, the couple co-wrote The Originals hits, "Baby I'm for Real" and "The Bells". Both songs became the group's first couple of hits in 1970. Anna helped contribute to one of Marvin's greatest works, 1971's What's Going On. Anna was listed as a co-writer on some of the songs on the album including "Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky)" and "God Is Love". Despite its success, Marvin and Anna's personal life continued to unravel. After moving to Los Angeles, Marvin and Anna filed for legal separation. Afterwards, Marvin began a relationship with Janis Hunter. Following the births of Marvin and Janis' children, Nona and Frankie, Anna filed for divorce from Marvin in 1975. Divorce proceedings would take over two years, before being settled in March 1977.

During court proceedings, Marvin's attorney concocted a plan to have Marvin's next album's royalty earnings sent to Anna to help pay for alimony. This led to the creation of the so-called "divorce album", Here, My Dear.

After Marvin Gaye

Though she had spent most of her adulthood in public, following her divorce from Marvin Gaye, Anna Gordy settled into seclusion. In January 1979, a month after Here, My Dear was released, Gordy was moved to sue after hearing the album but later stopped short of pursuing a lawsuit against her ex-husband. Gaye had agreed to give up royalties from Here, My Dear, to help pay for support and alimony payments, something Marvin had done once before when his wife threatened to have him imprisoned for failure to pay child support, Marvin solved this by going on a European tour.

In an ironic twist, Marvin and Anna remained close. Marvin's attorney Curtis Shaw recounted a moment when Marvin asked to stop by Anna's house and was stunned to see the battling ex-spouses lovingly embrace each other. Soon after Marvin walked in and Anna called for Curtis for dinner she had prepared. Curtis later recalled it as "really bizarre" given the divorce case. Anna Gordy became real supportive of Marvin's comeback in 1982 and upon his return to the United States after a couple of years in Europe, she would begin accompanying him to several public events, one of which was the 1983 Grammy Awards where Marvin won two Grammys for "Sexual Healing". Rumors sparked of the former couple possibly remarrying, however, both Marvin and Anna rebuffed the rumor with Anna stating she and Marvin were happy enough to "remain friends".

Anna Gordy was said to have been left shaken by her ex-husband's death in 1984. Following a funeral service, Anna went along with Marvin's three children to dispose of his ashes near the Pacific Ocean after he was cremated. Anna Gordy accepted her ex-husband's posthumous induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside their son in 1987 and his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame three years after that. Anna Gordy would make few public appearances after that. Anna is said to now be suffering with dementia and is being taken care of by her niece, Denise Gordy, in Los Angeles. Anna's last public appearance came around 2009 when she accompanied her brother Berry to celebrate Motown's 50th anniversary.

References