Marvin Gaye's 1976 Turn: Leon Ware's Songs and Ernie Barnes' Sugar Shack

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By 1975 Marvin Gaye was stuck. Coming off a massive 1973 success, he could not write or record, and his marriage to Anna Gordy, sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy, was falling apart, which put him in conflict with the top of his own label. In 1973 at the Hitsville West studio in Los Angeles, producer Ed Townsend had introduced the 34-year-old Gaye to 17-year-old Janis Hunter, and the relationship became an obsession. The break came from another room: Motown songwriter and producer Leon Ware, known for hits for Michael Jackson and the Miracles, was building a sensual, down-tempo solo record. Gordy heard the mixes and directed the material to Gaye.

Gaye reshaped Ware's songs by singing softly and close to the microphone with Hunter sitting in the studio, working largely from his own new studio in Los Angeles. He stacked multi-tracked doo-wop harmonies over a light disco groove and leaned on the ARP Odyssey synthesizer. For the visual identity he turned to Ernie Barnes' 1971 painting The Sugar Shack. Released in spring 1976, the album sold over a million copies in the United States while many critics dismissed it, yet the hosts trace the Quiet Storm format and later neo-soul back to this sound.

• Gaye bought eight original Ernie Barnes paintings and got permission to paint banners promoting the album's singles into The Sugar Shack.
• The Sugar Shack also appeared in the closing credits of the sitcom Good Times.
• The ARP Odyssey's portamento let notes glide between pitches, which the hosts compare to the vertigo of the affair.
• One critic called the album a voyeur's delight, likening it to peering through Gaye's bedroom window.
• Janis Hunter's 2013 memoir describes a chaotic relationship; she and Gaye married and divorced within three years.