Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" (1967)

If you’re ever in trouble

I’ll be there on the double

As you listen to this song, picture Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in the studio recording it.

Whether they are alternating call-and-response lines (as they do in the verses) or are singing together (as they do in the choruses), the musical chemistry is palpable – there’s a real emotional engagement between the two singers.

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

That’s why it’s hard for me to believe that they recorded their parts separately – Terrell recorded her part first, with Gaye coming to the studio to do his part later. 

Presumably Gaye was able to listen to her vocal track when he recorded his.  But Terrell could only imagine what her duet partner’s singing was going to sound like – she was like a movie actress shooting a love scene all by herself, having to pretend that the male actor playing her lover was present.

Somehow the performers (and the producers) pulled it off.  It may be the greatest pop duet ever recorded, yet it wasn’t really a duet at all – it was two solo performances stitched together.

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Dusty Springfield was eager to record “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” when fledging songwriters Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson played it for her, but Ashford and Simpson held it back from her because they hoped they could use the song to get a job at Motown.

The strategy worked.  Motown’s head honcho, Berry Gordy, hired them in 1966 – Ashford was 25, Simpson only 20.  

The pair penned several Gaye/Terrell duets and numerous songs for other Motown stars – including Gladys Knight & the Pips, Marthas and the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and especially Diana Ross.  (Most of the songs on Ross’s first three solo albums were Ashford-Simpson compositions.)

Ashford and Simpson were married in 1974, and went on to release over a dozen albums as recording artists.

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The Gaye-Terrell version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” peaked at #19 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1967 – it reached #3 on the R&B charts, but it’s shocking to me that it wasn’t a bigger crossover hit.

Diana Ross had a number one hit with the song in 1970.  Her cover is much slower and more stylized – it opens with an elaborate instrumental introduction, and Ross declaims the verses rather than singing them.  I give her credit for trying something completely different, but I think the result is clearly inferior to the original.  There’s no spontaneity, no feeling.  

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Just a few months after “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” was released, Tammi Terrell collapsed during a performance with Gaye.  

When doctors examined the 22-year-old singer, they found a malignant brain tumor.  After undergoing eight surgeries, she was blind, confined to a wheelchair, and weighed only 93 pounds. 

Terrell died in 1970, a month short of her 25th birthday.  

Some biographers believe that Marvin Gaye’s subsequent depression and drug abuse resulted from Terrell’s illness and death.  

In 1984, Gaye’s father shot and killed him after the two men argued.  Gaye died the day before his 45th birthday.

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Knowing about Terrell’s and Gaye’s tragic deaths makes listening to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” bittersweet.  The two were truly gifted singers, and their performance on that record is so very alive.     

Click here to listen to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which clearly deserves its place in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.

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