Jonathan Storm: PBS looks at what was going on with Gaye

Delving deep into the dichotomy of personality that plagues so many successful artists, tonight's

American Masters

profiles Marvin Gaye, "one of the most musically creative minds ever."

That assessment, in the show that airs at 9 on WHYY TV12, comes from Smokey Robinson, one of Gaye's best friends and one of his many colleagues at Motown Records interviewed for this thorough yet disappointing show.

It's disappointing because it's too darn short. Everyone in the universe has a piece of the action in songs and videos from the '60s, '70s and '80s, and producers jumped through a million hoops to get rights to chilling performances of so many of Gaye's hits. But not once do they take the time just to let a song play.

An extra half-hour of unadulterated tunes would have added so much to the show, though it's still an admirable success, accomplishing its bio goal at least with some killer background music.

Gaye had one of the most varied careers of any popular musician, from "Hitchhike," one of the scads, and one of the best, pop songs tied to a new dance craze, to "Sexual Healing," one of soul's most sensual celebrations of the oldest dance craze of all.

"Sexual Healing" is No. 231 on Rolling Stone's list of 500 greatest songs. Two other Gaye-penned hits make it: "Let's Get It On" (167) and "What's Going On," which lands at No. 4 all time, behind "Like a Rolling Stone," "Satisfaction" and John Lennon's "Imagine."

Robinson outlines what Gaye told him as he worked on it: " 'Smoke, God is writing this, man.'

"And when you listen to it, I believe him."

(Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," written by Motown's Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, comes in at No. 80, the only version to make the list.)

Written in reaction to the Vietnam War, "What's Going On" was the keystone of an album of the same name, "a protest album," Motown boss Berry Gordy calls it. "I was petrified," he says, but the label released the record anyway, and it turned out to be "probably the greatest piece of work that Motown has ever put out."

It was a turning point both for the artist and R&B music in general, which broadened to flower in all sorts of colors. The shift to the serious in Gaye's music, however, also coincided with a different flowering: A lack of self-esteem, seeded in his upbringing with a strange and controlling father, led to serious drug and alcohol abuse.

The death of his former singing partner, Tammi Terrell, who had collapsed in his arms at a concert three years earlier and died of a brain tumor at 24 in 1970, also spurred depression. They were a dynamic, hit-making machine ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "You're All I Need to Get By," "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" etc.), and Gaye had been like an older brother to his partner.

So many artists, in various stages of suavity and disarray, appear to talk about Gaye.

Martha Reeves complains that because he always wore a hat and shades, "you couldn't see how fine he really was."

"He couldn't dance a lick," says Bobby Taylor. "He'd pat his foot like a white boy." And there is proof: footage of Gaye, clunking up the stage at the Apollo.

From obscure European sessions to

Shindig

, teen America's cheesy, lip-synch TV favorite in the early '60s, performance film illuminates the sadly-not-uncommon tale of a man of brilliance who was pulled apart by inner demons.

The father, also named Marvin Gaye, a preacher with a penchant for cross-dressing and an insane temper, in 1984 shot and killed his son, one day before his 45th birthday. The show implies that, to some extent, the depressed and distraught Gaye may have orchestrated the incident himself.

Dead young, Gaye left one of the great musical legacies. Tonight's

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

could have passed on a lot more of it, as it successfully chronicled his life.

Television

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

Tonight at 9 on WHYY TV12