José James celebrates one of his heroes with a tribute to 1976 disc ‘I Want You’

In 2016, when R&B legend Marvin Gaye’s seminal album “I Want You” turned 40, writer and critic Jason King assessed it for the music-review website Pitchfork. “Like no other record before or since,” King wrote, “ ‘I Want You’ captures the distilled feeling and aesthetics of Black sensuality, sex and simmering erotic desire — right down to the seductive bump ‘n’ grind cover art by the late, great Ernie Barnes. With its ambient soundscapes, yearning melodies, experimental tempos, elegant chord changes and haunting lyrics, the album is, for my money, the sexiest rhythm and blues record ever made.”

Upon its release in 1976, however, Gaye’s uncharacteristically subdued (no political preaching, no carnal bombast), slightly disco-tinged, jazz-and-blues-infused work — a collaboration with co-writer and conceptual architect Leon Ware — got a tepid response and was only a modest commercial success, compared to Gaye’s previous effort, the chart-topping (and stylistically pigeonholing) “Let’s Get It On.” 

Now, at 50, as at 40, it is widely beloved, owing in part to critical reassessments that began in 2003 when Motown reissued a deluxe edition. As a template for Gaye’s successors and creative progeny, among them Frank Ocean, Maxwell, D’Angelo, Sadé and Kendrick Lamar, “I Want You” is also one of the most artistically influential works in Gaye’s canon. Even Madonna covered it.

Genre-spanning musician, composer, and bandleader José James is firmly in that camp. He’ll perform Gaye’s album in its entirety with vocalist Lizz Wright at Orchestra Hall in an SCP Jazz concert Feb. 6, and says “I Want You” has long been a personal inspiration. “It’s my all-time favorite album, across all genres. I always go back to it. I love the production, I love the songwriting, I love the performances — not only from Marvin, but from the musicians. It’s like a who’s who of what Motown in L.A. was up to at that moment. If you want to hear jazz, it’s there. If you want to hear gospel, it’s there. If you want to hear R&B, it’s there. The soul is there. And the songwriting is so adventurous and creative. I really have to give Leon Ware his props.”


James believes he and Gaye, who died in 1984, are flip-sides of the same conceptual coin. Gaye was a gospel, R&B and soul singer who wanted to sing jazz. James is at his core a jazz singer who loves to sing R&B and soul. “I understand everything that he does phrasing-wise and harmonically,” James says. “He’s easily my favorite male singer. I love the poignancy, when he’s irreverent, when he’s sensual, when he’s sacred. I think more than anybody in American music, he really gives you all of it — all the vulnerability, all the arrogance, all the perspective. He was incredibly self-aware in a way, and that’s incredibly rare.”


This isn’t James’ first time interpreting the music of one of his musical heroes. In addition to Erykah Badu and Al Green homages, his album-length tribute to the late Bill Withers, "Lean on Me“ (2018), is a gorgeous example of someone who knows how to channel music rather than merely perform it. The songs, it seems, are in his bones. And so it is with ”I Want You." “It’s completely immersive,” James says of performing Gaye’s tracks live. “I did some of these songs last year with my band on the road, just kind of testing it out. And it’s immediately soulful. It really draws in the audience in a way that is completely unique. You start playing the music and you’re like, Oh, wow. This is in the DNA. This is in the bones of the song itself.”

Interpreting Gaye’s material — or Withers’ or Badu’s or Green’s — is less about his singing, James says (though his singing is terrific), and more about the power of memory. Of specific times, places and emotionally formative life events that people attach to Gaye’s songs. “I love hearing those stories after [shows], because it allows people to get in touch with their emotions and their feelings in a safe way. 

“That, to me, is what music is really all about.”