Romantically Yours

MARVIN GAYE

(Sony )

Posthumously released in '85, Romantically Yours was mostly recorded in the 1960s, when Marvin still had yearnings to be a ballad crooner in the Sinatra mold. You could argue that the disc is best reserved for Gaye aficionados and completists, because there is tentativeness in his orchestra-bathed interpretations of "Fly Me to the Moon," "The Shadow of Your Smile" and the like — but I find his subtle re-contourings of the melodies quite beguiling. The album also includes a handful of Gaye originals that he composed in the style of standards, tunes that are slight but intriguing entries into his overall canon.

This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...