"Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide" is the debuting single for singer

Marvin Gaye Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. (; April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) was an American Rhythm and blues, R&B and soul singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He helped shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player an ...

, released as Tamla 54041, in May 1961. It was also the first release off Gaye's debut album, '' The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye'', in which most of the material was the singer's failed attempt at making an 'adult' record compared to Motown's younger R&B sound.Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide
at

Discogs Discogs ( ; short for " discographies") is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. Database contents are user-generated, and described in ''T ...

Overview

Background

In 1960,

moved to

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

with his mentor

Harvey Fuqua Harvey Fuqua ( ; July 27, 1929 – July 6, 2010) was an American R&B singer, songwriter, record producer, and record label executive. Fuqua founded the seminal R&B/doo-wop group the Moonglows in the 1950s. He is notable as one of the k ...

, who had first booked him as a co-lead singer of " Harvey & the Moonglows", a splinter version of the popular fifties doo-wop group, the Moonglows. Fuqua and Gaye met up with several members of the Gordy family, and before long both of them were dating the female Gordy members Gwen and Anna respectively. Around that fall, Marvin was introduced to Motown Records CEO

Berry Gordy Berry Gordy III (born November 28, 1929), also known as Berry Gordy Jr., is an American retired record executive, record producer, songwriter, film producer and television producer. He is best known as the founder of the Motown record label and i ...

after Gaye walked in during a party at the local Hitsville studios and played around on the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

. Gordy later signed Gaye first as a session drummer for Anna Records and eventually signed him into Motown's Tamla label as an artist. After several arguments over the direction of the album - the headstrong Marvin wanted to record a "

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...

-styled pop album" while Gordy wanted him to record R&B, the two came to a compromise, while most of ''Soulful Moods'' featured covers of jazz songs and Broadway tunes, three of the final songs on the album were produced in a

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predomina ...

mode.

Song style

This song was inspired by a

Ray Charles Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential musicians in history, and was often referred to by contemporaries as "The Gen ...

ballad and featured background vocals by

The Andantes The Andantes were an American female session group for the Motown record label during the 1960s. Composed of Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow, and Louvain Demps, the group sang background vocals on numerous Motown recordings, including songs by M ...

. During the song Marvin mixes a smooth

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

with a few

falsetto Falsetto ( , ; Italian language, Italian diminutive of , "false") is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ...

whoops.

Release

Gordy released it with the b-side being the Anna Gordy and Harvey Fuqua-penned "Never Let You Go (Sha-Lu Bop)" in May 1961, a month after Marvin's 22nd birthday. Before its release, however, Marvin sought to begin his solo career with a new name. Inspired by

Sam Cooke Samuel Cooke (; January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964) was an American singer and songwriter. Considered one of the most influential soul music, soul artists of all time, Cooke is commonly referred to as the "King of Soul" for his distin ...

, Marvin added an "e" to his last name therefore becoming forever known as Marvin Gaye. Despite regional success in Detroit, the song failed to enter either the pop or R&B chart on the national ''Billboard'' magazine.

Mary Wells Mary Esther Wells (May 13, 1943 – July 26, 1992) was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s. Along with the Supremes, the Miracles, the Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and the F ...

later covered the song for her own debut Motown release, '' Bye Bye Baby I Don't Want to Take a Chance''.

Credits

*Lead vocals by

*Background vocals by

*Instrumentation by

The Funk Brothers The Funk Brothers were a group of Detroit-based session musicians who performed the backing to most Motown recordings from 1959 until the company moved to Los Angeles in 1972. Its members are considered among the most successful groups of stud ...

*Written and produced by

References

{{authority control 1961 debut singles Marvin Gaye songs Songs written by Berry Gordy 1961 songs Tamla Records singles