Funky Music Sho Nuff Yvonne Fair with Marvin Gaye

Ever since I bought “The Bitch is Black” on import* when it was released I have wanted to know if Marvin Gaye recorded a version of Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On and if so were bits taken and added to Yvonne Fair’s version? Or did he just record those little bits fo Yvonne? I would love to hear the full song by Marvin. Is it in the Motown Vaults?
* I’m sure other U.K. members of my age can remember the 1960s and 70s when Motown singles and LPs were released sometimes 6 months or more after the US release. In my case it meant travelling into London to buy import copies from specialist soul shops, Contempo Soul Source springs to mind.

Does anybody know if Marvin Gaye ever recorded Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On [[apart from the Yvonne Fair track)? Is it I the vaults, laying there unreleased?

I have no idea, but I’ve always loved this track, and wondered what Marvin was doing on it!! :D

From Yvonne Fair interview 1975 courtesy of Blues and Soul.".


The initial sides the team cut included Yvonne's versions of two of Norman's compositions — "Funky Music" and "Let Your Hair Down" and both proved successful sides for the lady on the R&B charts. "You know Marvin Gaye was on the beginning of 'Funky Music' and I have to say how grateful I am to him for contributing to the record. He felt that DJ's might play the record out of curiosity to see if it was him and they did!" The material for the album was selected basically by Norman but Yvonne says that he "told me if there were particular sides I wanted to do, we could cut them. So we had "It Should Have Been Me" — which always goes down well in my stage act — and "Tell Me Something Good" — although you can see we did that a different way from the way Rufus did it." Some of the tracks on the album were produced by some of Motown's other renowned teams — there's Gloria Jones/Pam Sawyer's contribution in "It's Bad For Me To See You" [[a song also cut by Betty Wright some time back) and Clay McMurray with the Barbara George classic, "I Know" — all of which suggests that Yvonne Fair has more than her share of material 'in the can'.

I think Yvonne's version of "Tell Me Something Good" is awesome... better even than the Rufus & Chaka original. :D