(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . February 13, 1983: The Afternoon Marvin Gaye Revolutionized The Singing of the National Anthem [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-16 “Marvin Gaye was absolutely on the forefront of [artists tackling societal issues]. He was an important guy, artistically, at that time. He talked about issues that resonated in the black community in a very meaningful way.” — Kareem Abdul Jabbar On Sunday, February 19, the Utah Jazz will host the NBA All Star Game at Salt Lake City’s Vivint Arena. This year, Jay Park will be singing the national anthem. Over the years there have been some great entertainers performing the national anthem at NBA All Star Games, including Macy Gray, Chaka Khan, and Gladys Knight. No one put their own stamp on the anthem and moved the crowd like Marvin Gaye did forty years ago. If you’re a basketball fan, a social activist, a music nerd – and you were alive at the time -- you probably remember what you were doing on the afternoon of February 13, 1983, when all eyes were focused on Marvin Gaye as he strolled onto the basketball court at The Forum in Inglewood, California. Dressed impeccably in a blue suit, white shirt and tie, and white pocket square, and wearing sunglasses, Gaye was there to sing the National Anthem at the NBA’s 33rd All-Star game. Coming off some difficult personal years, Gaye reached deep into his soul, and stirred the crowd as perhaps no other anthem singer had ever done. Now, thirty-five years later, Gaye’s rendition is still the standard by which all other versions are judged (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRvVzaQ6i8A). As Justin Tinsley wrote in a piece at theundefeated.com titled “The players’ anthem when Marvin Gaye sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at the 1983 All-Star Game” (https://andscape.com/features/marvin-gaye-the-star-spangled-banner-1983-nba-all-star-game-players-anthem/)the stars were out, being “a stone’s throw from Hollywood.” The players, including Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Maurice Cheeks, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Reggie Theus, Moses Malone, Pat Riley, Bill Laimbeer, Andrew Toney, Alex English, Robert Parish, Jamaal Wilkes and more were lined up on opposite free throw lines, facing each other across the court. “Even then the synergy of basketball icons and a musical icon made all the sense in the world.” “Being the head coach of the Lakers, and coaching the All-Star Game at the Great Western Forum that day … it just made it a special, almost spiritual-type moment for me.” — Pat Riley For Gaye, his appearance at the All-Star Game marked a comeback moment. According to Tinsley, he had recently returned from Europe “in which the singer temporarily escaped demons that had nearly devoured him, he was riding high off the success of the smash album Midnight Love, which was, in turn, fueled by the Goliathan influence of its landmark single ‘Sexual Healing.’” In a 1983 interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxKeoX8s5aE&feature=youtu.be&t=7m43s), Gaye forthrightly talked about the difficult times he faced: “1975 to 1983 hasn’t been very good. In fact, the last seven years of my life haven’t been exactly ecstatic.. I’ve been happy … but somewhat most of the time pretty depressed. My depression is because of my empathy for humanity, and, my feelings for the world and things. I’m awfully upset when I have to do things to achieve a certain amount of status so that I can be able to do something else, so that people will listen to me.” Gaye, Tinsley pointed out, had performed the national anthem in a traditional manner several times before at an assortment of events, including an Oakland Raider foorball game in Oakland, and Game 4 of the 1968 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals, so there was little reason to suspect he would do anything different. [Interestingly, Tinsley noted, it was at Game 5 of that Series that Jose Feliciano, a young Puerto Rican musician, “performed the anthem with a slower, brooding twist that caused some Tiger Stadium attendees to pepper the blind Puerto Rican musician with boos.”] “[After the game,] it was just common knowledge that whenever you talked about the anthem, everybody just pointed to it like, ‘Yeah, that was the best one that was ever done.’ Not because his techniques were good — they were — but because spiritually, in that moment, he really captured the feelings of everyone in The Forum. I’ve never been part of an anthem where everybody’s just in unison and lost control and just started moving. It was a beautiful moment.” — Isiah Thomas Tinsley reported that before the game, NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien was worried that something might go wrong. After all, they tried to get 1980s hit-maker Lionel Ritchie to sing the anthem, and that hadn’t worked out. “All during the day, and right before the early afternoon tipoff, Gaye was nowhere to be found. ‘[Lon Rosen, Lakers’ director of promotions] hadn’t heard from Marvin or his people. They weren’t sure where he was,’ McIntyre said. There’s a chuckle in his voice now. But 35 years ago it was anything but a laughing matter. ‘So they started looking for a backup, I think.’” “I’ve gone on the record many times saying that Marvin Gaye was my favorite artist. His music touched me in a deep, special and personal way. Reading ‘Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye,’ it’s kind of gut wrenching. It’s heartfelt in terms of the struggle he had … Just to do what he wanted to do. He really just wanted to be a crooner. He just wanted to sing and share his gift with the world. But pressure came from a lot of different places to be more, do more, and that eventually cost him his life.”— Julius “Dr. J” Erving The scene was set. Gaye stepped up to the microphone, made a slight adjustment and a “simple beat dubbing a drum track done by Gaye’s guitarist and musical director Gordon Banks and a keyboard track that Gaye laid down himself,” started playing. As Tinsley noted, “And what happened next would be the only time in history the national anthem closely resembled a rhythm and blues song. There isn’t a blueprint for Gaye’s charisma. Or his showmanship. It was innate. … Gaye’s anthem was patriotic in its own soulful way, but it was simultaneously debonair too. Each note left his vocal cords with the pizazz of a street crooner.” “We were two-stepping, listening to the national anthem,” Magic Johnson told Tinsley. “We were just bouncing left to right. It blew us away. We just got caught into the moment of this man. People just forgot it was the national anthem.” “Before you knew it, you were swaying, clapping and were like doing something to the anthem that you’d never done before in your life. Or since,” said Thomas. “It just wasn’t the players. It was the whole arena. Everyone in unison almost caught the Holy Ghost.” “[I]f I have to do sex, so that they can listen to social topics that might be viable, I’ll do sex first,” Gaye said in that 1983 interview. And at The Forum that glorious February afternoon, the players, the coaches , and the fans, listened and they swayed, they gasped and applauded, and they rapturously inhaled the moment. On April 1, 1984, Gaye was murdered by his father. “How,” in the age of players protesting police brutality and social inequality by kneeling or raising a fist during the playing of the national anthem, “does Gaye’s anthem fit into the current conversation around it?,” Tinsley asked: “We have to take everything in context,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “I think that people were trying to make an issue of the anthem because they didn’t want to deal with the issue Colin Kaepernick raised, which is the fact that black Americans — unarmed black Americans — should not be getting killed by police officers at the rate that they are. That’s what the issue is.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/16/2153295/-February-13-1983-The-Afternoon-Marvin-Gaye-Revolutionized-The-Singing-of-the-National-Anthem Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/