Singer / songwriter / record producer Harvey Fuqua was born in
Louisville, KY, on July 27, 1929. His uncle was
Charles Fuqua, a member of
The Ink Spots, and Harvey spent much of
his childhood singing on street corners with relatives and friends,
including Bobby Lester. After a stint in
the army, Harvey formed a vocal group with Lester called The Crazy
Sounds and they began singing in the nightclub circuit in and around
Cleveland, OH. In 1953 rock-and-roll pioneer
Alan Freed caught the group's act and
signed them to his Champagne Records label, changing their name to
The Moonglows. The next year they recorded
their first hit, "Sincerely", co-written by Fuqua and Freed for Chess
Records and it went to #1 on the R&B charts. Considered a classic of
the "doo-wop" vocal style, the song has been covered by a number of
artists, including
The McGuire Sisters, for whom it was
one of their biggest hits.
In 1959 Fuqua changed the lineup of The Moonglows, importing several
members of a Washington group called The Marquees, including a young
singer named Marvin Gaye. After The
Moonglows broke up, Fuqua and Gaye moved to Detroit, where Gaye became
a background singer and session drummer at Motown Records and Fuqua
became a producer and manager, working with Anita Gordy, sister of
Motown founder Berry Gordy (he eventually
married Gordy's sister Gwendolyn). He also started two record labels,
Harvey and Tri-Phi, which signed such artists as
The Spinners,
Jr. Walker and the All Stars
and Shorty Long. He later sold the two
labels, along with the talent, to Motown.
Fuqua eventually became head of Artist Development at Motown, in which
capacity he helped the label's artists craft their stage acts, and
found time to write and produce songs for such singers as
The Supremes (for whom he wrote "Someday
We'll Be Together"), Stevie Wonder and
Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (he
produced most of their duets together).
He left Motown in 1969 and went to RCA Records, where he stayed for a
number of years, producing and managing. In 1982 he contacted his old
friend Marvin Gaye, whom he hadn't seen for several years, and that
eventually resulted in the production of one of Gaye's biggest hits,
"Sexual Healing", from the album "Midnight Love".
Fuqua was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of
The Mooglows, in 2000. He died of a heart attack in Detroit, MI, in
2010.
