Marvin gaye singing the national anthem
The All-Star Anthem
It was promptly afternoon in Inglewood, California, about 10 minutes before the 12:30 p.m. televised start of the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, and Amanda Mayo was in a broom closet.
Twenty minutes earlier, a panicked Lon Rosen, the Lakers’ director of promotions, had asked the 24-year-old team employee to get ready. The planned pregame act was nearly two hours sdelayed and, despite the very Hollywood crowd gathered at the Forum, Rosen couldn’t find any singers to fill in. So the usher with perfect pitch, the actress’s daughter who had talked her way into the team’s rotation of national anthem singers, would have to perform.
The small space under the Forum’s stairs was the preferred warm-up spot for Mayo, whose mother, Janet Blair, was the luminary of a string of musicals and comedies in the 1940s. She didn’t mind these last-second requests. There was no moment to obsess or panic , though she did contact her brother and allow him know what might be coming. “Call everybody,” she told him.
Surrounded by concrete walls and with an audience of a mop and broom, Mayo thought about the magnitude of the scene, and the excitement surround
That one time Marvin Gaye sexed up the national anthem
I am an enthusiast, fan, and rigid devotee to the entirety of Marvin Gaye’s work.
While some may choose the work of Billie Holiday, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix (probably my second), John Lennon, Tupac, or Janis Joplin as their musical paragon, none of those artists subverted the platform to the extent Marvin did.
And he was forever at odds with his Motown label boss Berry Gordy, the visionary auto dealer-turned-record mogul who constantly made a fuss about Gaye’s penchant for missing deadlines for delivering new albums. Motown was run prefer a machine, and Gordy didn’t love people messing with the timing. But that didn’t penetrate Gaye’s orbit. He remained on communication with his boilerplate response: “Berry, I’m always on time.”
The record sales figures in the prior to mid-’70s backed up that position.
Gaye performed the national anthem before the 1983 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles at The Forum (pre-Staples Center) to an electronic drum track, with minimal synths that emitted so much detached bedroom sex appeal that Marvin received shouts and cheers, mostly from women
Being the head coach of the Lakers, and coaching the All-Star Game at the Great Western Forum that day … it just made it a unique, almost spiritual-type moment for me.
— Pat Riley
Marvin Gaye could not have looked more quintessentially Marvin Gaye if he’d tried. It was Feb. 13, 1983: the afternoon of the 33rd annual NBA All-Star Game at The Forum in Inglewood, California. Everyone was packed in, a stone’s throw from Hollywood. Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Maurice Cheeks, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Reggie Theus, Moses Malone, Pat Riley, Bill Laimbeer, Andrew Toney, Alex English, Robert Parish, Jamaal Wilkes and more. Even then the synergy of basketball icons and a musical icon made all the sense in the nature. And now as the NBA All-Star Game returns to Los Angeles this weekend, the fourth time since the game’s 1951 inception that it’s been held in the L.A. area, the synergy is a given.
Thirty-five years ago, of course, things were different. Nowadays, fans have a huge say with regard to who starts in the game. The top two vote-getters draft their own teams. And melody is a quintessential part of the NBA All-Star Weekend life
Marvin Gaye Spices Up “The Star-Spangled Banner” At NBA All-Star Game, On This Day In 1983 [Watch]
America’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, has given harmony fans many reasons to laugh, weep, cheer, or even kneel over the years, but no one turned the performance of the patriotic tune into one hell of a sexy hour quite like Marvin Gaye did during the 1983 NBA All-Star Game at The Forum in Inglewood, CA.
On February 13th, 1983, the NBA’s best gathered at the Los Angeles arena for the 33rd All-Star Game between Eastern and Western Conferences. Unbeknownst to those in attendance that nighttime, all would eventually leave the game as winners after experiencing Gaye’s sensualized rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Accompanied by only a drum-machine (high-tech equipment in 1983) Gaye turned all of The Forum into a baby-making palace of soul with his pre-game show that still has yet to be topped.
Related: MonoNeon Funks Up The National Anthem At Grizzlies Vs. Warriors NBA Game, Analysts React [Videos]
In front of a packed dwelling of world-class athletes, celebrities, and fans, Gaye walked up to the mic at