The Test Tube and the Scale

  If, out of the great American R&B record labels, Motown represented the hope-filled, sanguine possibilities of racial integration, and Stax the inner strength of black—and thus, human—consciousness, then Philadelphia International Records conveyed a fantasy of our easy surrender to sensual imperatives against an urban backdrop. Before the label could find its voice, however, there came a brief period of emulation of commercially proven models, and the mid-late sixties model for intersex, R&B duets was Motown’s Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Ersatz beauty is a common enough occurrence in rock and roll, so when it appears to us without guise, it’s as a sui generis aberration, and we never fully recover from its initial shock. The harmonies of Gaye and Terrell, though ubiquitous in the collective memory, have never been normalized to the extent that their appearance inspires fatigue in the manner of some overly familiar Motown mainstays. In a similar style, Bunny Sigler and ...