Jazz in my soul
Marvin Gaye & Bobby Scott
By Edith Anderson
My play “Jazz in My Soul/a Marvin Gaye Story” never started out to be a stage play, I simply wanted to do a jazz show spotlighting the songs Marvin Gaye & Bobby Scott recorded back in 1968, beautiful torch songs from the Great American Songbook… songs Marvin Gaye had chosen to show the world his chops as a jazz singer. I was going to call the show “Marvin Gaye/On the Wings of Jazz.” I was ready!
After brainstorming the idea with my husband and others I concluded that I had work to do. Almost no one knew these songs existed and had no clue Marvin wanted to be a jazz singer. So, my job was clear… I had to tell Marvin Gaye’s story of his desire to be a jazz singer and have the concert at the same time. Simple right? Well it took about 6 years of starting, stopping, and starting again…reading, researching, fantasizing and dreaming. And at the end of the proverbial rainbow waiting just for me, all tied up in a big beautiful bow was “Jazz in My Soul/a Marvin Gaye Story.” New attitude, new title! Now that I’m done writing, and after a successful “reading” I find myself thinking more and more about Mr. Scott, and the relationship between the two men. My research for the play was focused mainly on Marvin. I didn’t give Mr. Scott a voice, (a physical voice). But now I want to learn more about him. One day recently I felt an urge to hear some music from “Vulnerable” (the album by Marvin Gaye which my play is all about.) Instead of going to my own music file, I decided to google “Vulnerable” and listen via YouTube. One of my favorite pastime activities on YouTube is checking
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out the comments people leave underneath each song. I enjoy reading all the nice things said about Marvin Gaye’s incredible voice. I’m always taken-a-back at the amazement of younger people who are hearing him sing jazz ballads for the first time. That is always a treat for me. But instead of getting Marvin Gaye’s “Vulnerable” a video popped up! It was the Berklee School of Music! WHAT?! It was the Berklee Music School doing “The Shadow of Your Smile” from the Vulnerable album with vocalist “Bilal” singing just like Marvin Gaye! Oh My God! I was blown away! Where was this video when I started my research for Jazz in My Soul? I didn’t see it! It was posted in May of 2015, why hadn’t I seen it?! After I finished beating myself up about it all, I felt a sense of pure unadulterated validation. Suddenly I was not alone. It was no longer just a story I heard about back in the day, or some old songs Marvin just happened to record. NO! This made things different…this music is alive! It’s living and breathing right now in 2019! The Berklee Music School brilliantly did what my play calls for at the very end, “A Concert!” The school recreated the entire “Vulnerable” album. (The album by Marvin Gaye arranged by Bobby Scott (some songs) released in 1997 after the death of both men.) It was beautifully done. Berklee’s rendition of the album was arranged and conducted by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson with the Berklee Neo-Soul Ensemble and Berklee Contemporary String Orchestra. The concert was produced by Revive Music founder Meghan Stabile. It’s on YouTube, check it out for yourself, just type Vulnerable in the search engine. Thank me later
I didn’t stop there, as a matter of fact I can’t stop. I keep finding extraordinary bits and pieces about Bobby Scott, and how much he and Marvin’s life paralleled. Bobby Scott was a child prodigy, he studied under
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