Marvin Gaye, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” A Capella

Ernest Thoreau has left a new comment on your post “On the Road July 2013”:

Here’s a music selection for you if you want it. Marvin Gaye on stage by his lonesome doing Grapevine a capella. It’s haunting. He keeps great rhythm. Uses the silence as much as his voice. And throws down some killer smooth dance steps.

   Seems like they aren’t making as many great pure musicians as they used to.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

4 Responses to Marvin Gaye, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” A Capella

  1. I actually love this song. But you know what? I'm going to suggest that this is the original with the vocals isolated. I think he's lip synching. Pay close attention to his lips. At one point, the songs says, "Honey, honey . . . well." His mouth doesn't move when "well" is sung.

    Either way, Marvin Gaye was a giant. I was in college when he died. I still remember being overcome with sadness at the news.

  2. The line in the song: "Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear." seems apropos. This is his studio vocal take combined with a tv performance which was almost certainly lip synced.

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