SONG OF THE DAY Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

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In a similar vein to Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 track,Whitey on the Moon, Marvin Gaye and James Nyx Jr wrote today’s song as a direct protest to the misspent tax dollars the US government was spending on sending astronauts to the moon!  Illustrating the contrast of the bleak economic situation in the ghettos of inner-city America as billions was being spent on space exploration, the song is a scathing analysis of financial imbalance!

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler), often shortened to Inner City Blues, was released as the third and final single from Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album, What’s Going On.  Co-writer, James Nyx Jr and Marvin Gaye had already written down ideas for the song based on the current critical economic issues, but the title for the song came one day when Nyx was reading a paper.  Drawn to a story that referred to these neglected areas as the  ‘inner city’, what better way, Nyx thought, to sum up the issues than to entitle a song Inner City Blues!

Recorded in March and released in September 1971, Gaye produced the entire track at the studio nicknamed Hitsville USA.  The track was accompanied Wholy Holy on the flip side.

In its unedited version as it appears on the album, the final minute of Inner City Blues (and of the LP) is a reprise to the theme of What’s Going On, the album’s first song!  This final minute was cut off of the single version, however, but either way the song is a immensely cool and powerful..check it out above.