Marvin Gaye recorded song for the Free Press you’ve probably never heard

In 1966, Marvin Gaye was becoming a teen idol with such songs as “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “I’ll be Doggone,” “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” and “It Takes Two,” with Kim Weston.

They were stories of romance, dreams and broken hearts.

Fans then could also listen to another single by Gaye: “The Teen Beat Song.”

That was a 45-rpm promotional record, issued by the Free Press, in which Gaye praises the paper for its coverage of Detroit’s flourishing music and youth-culture scene. The “Teen Beat” page ran every Friday.

In his mellow tenor, Gaye sang, “The Teen Beat is mighty neat, in the Free Press, it’s the best, hey-hey-hey.”

Seriously.

It wasn’t Gaye at his best, but it was a marketing coup for the paper. The Free Press distributed the record at the Carnaby Street Fun Festival at the State Fairgrounds in November 1966 and made it available to readers.

Gaye’s promotion of the Free Press was arranged by the late Al Abrams, the famous Motown Records publicist and one of the organizers of the Carnaby festival, which included Andy Warhol’s Mod Wedding.

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Gaye’s posthumous fame is so mythical that it seems hard to believe he would have devoted time to endorsing the Free Press, and almost certainly for free. But he hadn’t achieved that level of stardom by 1966, and Motown founder Berry Gordy was eager to have his singers court Detroit’s daily newspapers to help generate publicity for the record label.

The B side carries a short and chatty interview with Gaye by Free Press reporter Loraine Alterman, who originated the paper’s “Teen Beat” page in 1965. Those were action-packed years for rock 'n' roll and baby boomers coming of age. Alterman, in her early 20s and working her first newspaper job, is a story in herself.

She had a nose for news, ranging widely as a reporter and becoming a local star, covering music, art, clubs, deejays, hippies, fashion, marijuana, academics and sex. She interviewed the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and numerous other groups as they passed through town. She paid attention to Detroit’s Black music scene. She reviewed records.

Alterman, 80, grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Barnard College in New York. Despite her groundbreaking rock coverage, it wasn’t her favorite music. She preferred jazz.

“Truthfully, I never liked rock and roll,” she said in an interview. “I wasn’t approaching it as a fan. I was more of a journalist. I wasn’t ga-ga over these people. I wasn’t that impressed. It was just a job to talk to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

“If I had been sent to Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk, I would have been speechless. Rock and rollers? They were just kids — like me.”

Alterman’s rock music coverage helped give the Free Press an early advantage over the then-stodgy Detroit News in attracting young readers. One of them was the teenaged Susan Whitall, who grew up to write about popular music for the News, Creem magazine and in several books. She considers Alterman a pioneer.

“To see a young female face — Loraine Alterman’s — on top of a music column in 1965 and ‘66 was quite different, revolutionary even,” Whitall said. “I devoured her Beatles’ coverage.”

Alterman left Detroit during the long newspaper strike in 1967 and eventually wrote for the British music magazine Melody Maker. She also served as Rolling Stone magazine’s New York editor. While on assignment one day to write about the making of “Young Frankenstein,” she met actor Peter Boyle. They fell in love and married in 1977. One of Alterman’s New York friends was Yoko Ono, and John Lennon served as their best man.

Boyle died in 2006 of multiple myeloma. Alterman serves on the board of the International Myeloma Foundation, organizes a yearly comedy show to raise money for research and has co-produced such Broadway musicals as “Memphis,” “Beautiful: The Carol King Story,” and “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg: The Life and Times of the Temptations,” based on the book by Detroit-born author Dominque Morisseau.

In 1966, Alterman previewed the Carnaby Street Fun Festival in the Free Press, but was out of town for the event. She has a copy of “The Teen Beat Song” in her New York home.

“What do you think about teenagers and their clothes and their fads?” she asked Gaye.

“I think if they want to wear mod and everything, I think that’s groovy,” he answered amicably. “Who wants to wear Levis all the time?”

Listening to the 57-year-old interview makes Alterman smile.

“I sound like I’m 12 years old,” she said. “I listen to it, and I think, ‘who was that person?’ ”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Marvin Gaye recorded promotional song for Detroit Free Press