Together (Remastered) Marvin Gaye & Mary Wells

• 1 Once Upon A Time (Single Version / Mono) 02:27
• 2 Deed I Do 02:55
• 3 Until I Met You (Corner Pocket) (Album Version) 03:19
• 4 Together (Album Version) 02:43
• 5 (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons (Album Version) 02:33
• 6 The Late Late Show (Album Version) 02:43
• 7 After The Lights Go Down Low (Album Version) 02:48
• 8 Just Squeeze Me (But Don't Tease Me) (Album Version) 02:31
• 9 What's The Matter With You Baby (Single Version / Mono) 02:23
• 10 You Came A Long Way From St. Louis (Album Version) 02:51
• Total Runtime 27:13

Info for Together (Remastered)

Together is the first and only studio album released by the duo team of American Motown artists Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells. It was released on the Motown label on April 15, 1964. The album brought together the rising star Gaye with Wells, an established star with a number-one pop hit to her name (1964's "My Guy"), singing mostly standards and show tunes, in the hopes that Gaye would benefit from the exposure.

This album became the first charted album credited to Gaye, peaking at number 42 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and yielding two top 20 singles, "Once Upon a Time" and "What's the Matter with You Baby". Shortly afterwards, Wells, who received bad advice from her former husband and manager, left Motown upon reaching 21. The label had to find another duet partner for Gaye, enlisting Kim Weston for one album, Take Two, also consisting of similar material, but later yielding a longer-lasting pairing of Gaye with Tammi Terrell, with more contemporary material.

"Motown mogul Berry Gordy, Jr. decided to increase his chances for sales by recording his male and female stars together, and the public went for it. Together trekked up the pop charts, finally stopping at number 42, a good showing for an R&B album in 1964. A two-sided hit and the only single released, "Once Upon a Time" and "What's the Matter with You Baby," helped the cause by charting in the upper echelons of the R&B and pop charts. The former is a slow, floating ballad, while the latter is an accusing jump-beat number. A rendition of Sam Cooke's "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" doesn't measure up to their talents or the song involved, while "Deed I Do" fits the mold of songs done by male/female duos of the early '60s. For the most part, the material is different than what Mary or Marvin normally cut; Marvin probably felt more comfortable with these songs than Mary, since they were closer to the MOR tunes that he preferred doing -- at the time -- anyway." (Andrew Hamilton, AMG)

Marvin Gaye, lead vocals
Mary Wells, lead vocals, additional vocals
The Love Tones, background vocals
The Andantes, background vocals
The Funk Brothers

Digitally remastered

Marvin Gaye
Brilliant, enigmatic, and headstrong, Marvin Gaye was an innovator. In 2009, he would have been 70 years old, and it has been 25 years since his tragic death. But today Marvin remains as influential and exciting as ever: Rolling Stone recently named him one of the greatest singers of all time.

He was born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. on April 2, 1939, in Washington, D.C., where he dreamed of singing before large crowds; he joined a co-founded a local doo-wop group, the Marquees, who were spotted by Harvey Fuqua, who made them his new Moonglows. Marvin arrived in Detroit on tour with the Moonglows and stayed, as did Harvey, and Marvin was signed to Motown just based on raw singing talent. He was also a songwriter, an OK drummer-and handsome as hell. He wanted to sing jazz, to croon Tin Pan Alley standards, but that didn’t pan out. Motown founder Berry Gordy encouraged Marvin to sing R&B, and once Gaye sang the soulful (and autobiographical) “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow” in 1962, stardom enveloped him. The incendiary “Hitch Hike,” “Pride And Joy,” and “Can I Get A Witness” sold like crazy in 1963, and Marvin oozed silky sexiness on the 1965 classics “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” “I’ll Be Doggone” and “Ain’t That Peculiar.”

By 1968′s immortal “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” and on a series of electrifying duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston (“It Takes Two”), and his ultimate singing partner, the ravishing but ill-fated Tammi Terrell (“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” et al), Gaye was a commercial force. He soon became recognized as an artistic one as well.

At decade’s turn, Marvin seized full control of his output with the deeply personal, socially aware 1971 masterpiece What’s Going On, which produced three hit singles: the title track, “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” and “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).” He defied expectations again with “Trouble Man,” a 1972 hit single featured in his haunting, jazzy score of the movie of the same name. He zoomed to the top of the charts with his passionate Let’s Get It On, while delivering a pop confection in Diana and Marvin, his duet album with Motown’s queen, Diana Ross. I Want You, released in 1976, was another sensual masterwork, a meditation on obsessive love that was also No. 1. Marvin made his personal life public through his songs, and it was never more evident in 1978′s Here, My Dear, a sprawling double-album chronicling his divorce from Anna Gordy, Berry’s sister. Even his No. 1 dance classic from 1977, “Got To Give It Up,” a studio cut added to flesh out the double-LP Live At The London Palladium, was about the singer’s reluctance to get loose on the dance floor.

Marvin left Motown in 1981, with the politically tinged album In Our Lifetime. He fled to London, then Belgium, where he created for Columbia Records “Sexual Healing,” his first Grammy® winner. But another hit was not salvation from his demons. On April 1, 1984, one day before his 45th birthday, Marvin was shot to death by his father.

Marvin’s influence reaches across the generations. He was rightfully among only the second group of artists honored with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987. More recently, Marvin was No. 6 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time. “Motown Week” on American Idol 2009 (Season 8) featured remaining contestants singing not one but two of Marvin’s songs. His records-and his ringtones and his DVDs-are still going gold.

This album contains no booklet.