TROUBLE MAN
| Marvin Gaye
TROUBLE MAN
Trouble Man is a soundtrack and the twelfth studio album by American soul singer Marvin Gaye, released on December 8, 1972, on Motown-subsidiary label Tamla Records. As the soundtrack to the 1972 Blaxploitation film of the same name, the Trouble Man soundtrack was a more contemporary move for Gaye, following his landmark politically charged album What's Going On. This was the first album to be written and produced solely by Gaye. The only other album recorded under his full creative control was In Our Lifetime, released in 1981. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
1973 - it’s sweet and churning jazz that abstracts the action rather than decorating or interpreting it
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Independent
2013 - Nowhere is that disparity more pronounced than on Trouble Man, a forgettable joint that boasted what may be Marvin Gaye's most brilliant music.
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The Paris Review
2014 - absolutely sui generis within the Marvin Gaye canon for being not only a blaxploitation film soundtrack—the only film score he would ever do—but for being jazz-based and largely instrumental
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All Music
Though largely absent of his one-of-a-kind vocal presence, the arrangements are richer and more sophisticated than the majority of early blaxploitation fare, with some of the same theatricality and filmic urgency of the best Morricone or David Axelrod soundtracks.
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IGN
2006 - All of this adds up to one simple fact: the movie is okay, but the music is magnificent.
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Jazz Weekly
2012 - you end up with a sort of R&Bish jazz that stands up pretty well against contemporarty material put out by Grover Washington Jr. and the like. This is the jazziest Gaye ever got
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Dereks Music Blog
2013 - Granted several tracks on the original version of Trouble Man feature on Original Film Score, but there’s much more to explore and enjoy. By the time you’ve listened to the original version of Trouble Man and the Original Film Score, then you’ll have come to the conclusion that Marvin Gaye, like Isaac Hayes, could’ve enjoyed a career composing movie soundtracks.
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Robert Christgau
Buy the single unless you like soundtrack albums. This ain't no super-fly shit.
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Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews
The title track is breathtaking and the album is thematically coherent with flashes of brilliance, but there's a lot of redundancy
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OO Cities
I generally enjoy this album a good deal, certainly more than I expected to given its less than exemplary reputation
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Okay Player
2012 - Trouble Man deserves a place alongside not only the more heralded soundtrack offerings from Gaye’s contemporaries and his own more revered ‘70s classics, but on the shelf of any music or cinema enthusiast
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Manifesto
2009 - The music on this soundtrack is seductive soul that is chock full of honesty and power. Gaye was arguably at his best here, making the album a must have for any music lover.
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Soul and Jazz and Funk
2013 - Gaye's superlative soundtrack album, though often overlooked, remains a crucial work in his canon
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