Frankie Gaye And Kim Weston - It Takes Two
IanLevine IanLevine
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 Published On Mar 14, 2008

This was the one time I teamed up Kim Weston with Marvin Gaye's brother Frankie, to recreate Marvin and Kim's hit, "It Takes Two", and watching this now, it's so hard to believe that he passed away a few years later. When we all first went to Los Angeles, in April 1989, to have a second public reunion there of all the California based former Motown artists, immediately following the one we'd just done in Detroit, Frankie came along, and we were all shocked and numbed by how much he looked like his late brother Marvin. So I had the brilliant idea of teaming him up with Kim for them to re-do "It Takes Two". Frankie was Marvin's younger brother , and had been the inspiration for "What's Going On", and indeed Frankie sang on that, alongside Marvin, and if you listen closely you can hear both voices on there. Frankie and his wife Irene were actually in the house when Frankie's father shot Marvin dead, in 1984. Anyway, Frankie seemed such an obvious and necessary addition to Motorcity. In 1990, Frankie and Kim got to perform this classic to a huge crowd on the rooftop of the enormous Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit, on a hot humid summer Saturday night, after it had poured down all day. I was sitting next to Berry Gordy's sister, Esther Edwards, and she gasped in shock when Frankie appeared, and said it was like seeing a ghost. Sadly Frankie, just like his brother Marvin, has now passed on to that soul concert in the sky, but I shall always be so proud of working with him. I had known Kim Weston since 1969, because very close to my sixteenth birthday, in 1969, my parents took me to the USA for the first time. We changed planes in New York to go to Los Angeles. Sitting across the aisle was a smart affluent black man with an attache case containing assorted vinyl 45s. My Mother asked the stewardess to find out if he was a soul singer, and it turned out he was Motown songwriting legend and head of A&R, Mickey Stevenson. Needless to say, I spent the whole journey chatting to him, and at the airport his wife, Kim Weston, met him off the plane. I was fascinated by her - a Motown legend, so suave and glamorous. She arranged to pick me up at the hotel next day, and took me shopping all over Los Angeles. Mickey arranged for me to go to Motown's West Coast warehouse, and buy singles for my collection at wholesale prices. Eighteen years later, my friend Henry Sellars was in touch with Kim, and brought her over for me to record, the very very first former Motown artist to start the Motorcity project. She vividly remembered me from being sixteen, although she still swears to this day that I was fifteen. We recorded a new Motownesque song, "Signal Your Intention", and Motorcity was born.

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