Trouble Man [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Soundtrack]

Marvin Gaye | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 7, 1998)
• Original Release Date: 1972
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Soundtrack
• Label: Motown
• ASIN: B0000060NH
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,745 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #100 in Music > R&B > Classic R&B

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Two phenomenons of early-'70s soul--Marvin Gaye and the soundtracks of blaxploitation flicks--met on this 1972 souvenir of the violent Robert Hooks vehicle. Unlike Curtis Mayfield's concurrent Superfly, however, Gaye's record mostly fails to rise above the clichés of film music. Save for the pained, dramatic title single and a few moments of sax-and-wah-wah strutting, much of what's here fails to touch Mayfield's song suite. That's ironic, given that Gaye bookended Trouble Man with two conceptual triumphs, What's Going On and Let's Get It On. His fans, and students of the genre, won't find this a total disappointment, but with "Trouble Man" itself available on a number of best-of CDs, it's inessential. --Rickey Wright

Product Description

CD Digitally Remastered

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting and atmospheric score. August 2, 2004

By Robert Johnson

Format:Audio CD

Marvin long considered his score to the forgotten film TROUBLE MAN to be his best work. While I would not call it his best (could anything really top WHAT'S GOING ON, LET'S GET IT ON, or HERE, MY DEAR?), it is a fantastic album in it's own right. Textured and atmospheric, this lovely, complex score deserved to be featured in a much better movie. It's often compared with the ground-breaking soundtracks SHAFT and SUPERFLY, however TROUBLE MAN is much more poised and intricate than those funk classics. It sounds more like a bittersweet separation, rather than a head-on collision. Though largely instrumental, TROUBLE MAN does contain the hit title song (#7 Pop, #2 R&B), which is justifiably considered one of Gaye's classic singles.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvin's soundtrack is a sweeping urban soundscape. August 9, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Audio CD

Marvin Gaye's body of work never ceases to amaze me. While it is true that "Trouble Man", the soundtrack, has been actually produced by the 5 or 6 arrangers listed in the jacket credits, Marvin lent his name to the final product, and if you listen to his output from the "What's Going On"- "Let's Get It On"-"I Want You"-"Here My Dear" era there are some awe inspiring, but lesser commercial ventures. "Marvin and Diana" and this are prime examples of what I'm saying. Listen to the butterscotch and blues multi-vocal tracking on "Cleo's Apartment" and listen to how it segues into the "Trouble Man" single--sublime! The bluesy Marvin Gaye vocals and the Trevor Lawrence (he sounds as if he were playing on a late night street corner, doesn't he?) saxophone work makes this an excellent CD. It was remastered using 20-bit technology in 1998 and it will hold it's own against any pure jazz album. Get it from Amazon.com, now.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars He May Have Been a "Troubled Man"...but Brilliant! November 20, 2012

By L. Boki

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

3 Cheers, a toast of Dom and a 15 minute standing ovation as the final entry into the expanded editions of Marvin's golden era is finally here in time for Thanksgiving 2012. Like millions of others, "What's Goin' On" felt like the soundtrack of my formative years. Coming right during the spring I graduated from high school, okay yes I'm near ancient, I declared it as my "Best Album of All Time"!!!! It wasn't necessary for Marvin to follow it up right away because I listened on a daily basis, never tiring of it.

But then, after dropping the single "You're the Man", Marvin made a complete left turn and expressed his musicality and jazz instrumentation with the soundtrack to a 70s movie that I never had any intention to of seeing, "Trouble Man". What I liked about the album immediately was the challenge it brought to my musicality. It was another opportunity to expand my musical knowledge. I had followed Santana's transformation into jazz at around the same time with "Caravanserai" and "Love, Devotion and Surrender" with John McLaughlin. ("You're the Man" may have proven that it was impossible to top "What's Goin' On". It is not like there wasn't more to say about any of the number of topics that album presented. I anxiously wanted a follow- up or so I thought. But it was clear that he had made such a definitive statement that, for the time, all that could be said, Marvin had said).

Diana Ross had offered the Great American Songbook via Billie Holiday's vast repertoire. And that was jazz and blues with vocals. Marvin was stepping into a jazz soundtrack possibly closer to Quincy Jones' early A&M releases. It was different from the transcendental jazz that Santana was venturing into. Where Berry Gordy may have initially resisted "What's Goin' On", with its political leanings, I would have thought that he was particularly excited by his achievements on "Trouble Man". It was a percursor to "Round Midnight".

Somehow Marvin manage to achieve a Top 10 Pop and R&B single with the title track. This would greatly assist the soundtrack's ultimate success where the movie may have underperformed. In a fascinating way, the single could also have been autobiographical. Interestingly, Marvin would begin to experiment with acting in little known movies like "Chrome and Leather". Though "Trouble Man", the film, did not come through Motown Industries, Inc like "Lady Sings the Blues", it would have been interesting to see Marvin in the lead actor role that Robert Hooks assumed.

Though there was no follow-up to the lead single, it would have "T Stands for Trouble" as an instrumental candidate. Funky and rhythmic, Marvin, like Stevie explored the world of keyboards and synthesizers. Radio in 1972 wasn't that adventurous save for the new medium, FM. The FM band could have possibly rotate a few of the instrumentals on the soundtrack.

Prior to "What's Goin' On", I was naive to the fact that Marvin had written such modern day classics, "The Bells", "Baby I'm for Real" and/or the sublime "If This World Were Mine". Marvin's formidable talent as a songwriter/producer was only eclipsed by his ability to play a variety of instruments with The Funk Bros. on the soundtrack to "Trouble Man". "Trouble Man" was another great entry into Motown's transformation into an album label in the 70s. Just as Stevie and Diana had spread their creative wings, followed a little later by Smokey, Marvin reinforced his position with the Mount Rushmore of the Motown stable. "Trouble Man" remains as proof of the talent of the Motown stable that would evolve and blaze throughout the 70s.