Marvin Gay Sr.

The couple bought a small house in southeastern Washington, D.C., at 1617 First Street SW, which was only a few blocks away from the Anacostia River.

The street was nicknamed "Simple City" for its being "half-city, half-country".

Alberta already had a son named Michael, but Gay sent Michael to live with his sister-in-law, Pearl.

Two years after marrying, they had their first child, a daughter they named Jeanne.

Marvin Pentz Gay Sr. (October 1, 1914 – October 10, 1998) was an American Pentecostal minister.

Gay was born the first of 13 children to George and Mamie Gay on October 1, 1914, on a farm along Catnip Hill Pike in Jessamine County, Kentucky and was raised in Lexington.

He had a troubled childhood, where his physically abusive father would often beat his mother, him, and his five siblings.

According to Gay's wife, Alberta, Gay's family life consisted of constant violence, involving domestic abuse and shootings.

"Gays against Gays", she told author David Ritz.

When Gay was still a child, he and his mother joined the Pentecostal church, the House of God.

Gay moved to Washington, D.C., in his late teens to pursue a career as a minister of a House of God church there.

While in Washington, Gay met his future wife, Alberta Cooper, whom he married on July 2, 1935.

On April 2, 1939, their first son, Marvin Jr., was born.

Son Frankie (born Frances) and daughter Zeola followed shortly afterwards.

However, by the late 1940s, Gay had left the House of God to join another sect called the House of the Living God, but soon returned to the House of God to head its Board of Apostles in the early 1950s.

Gay left the House of God altogether in the mid-1950s, after not being named Chief Apostle of the church, and, according to his son, "that's when my father lost his healing powers".

In most accounts, Gay was described as a strict and sometimes overbearing father to his four children.

According to his children, Gay would make them observe an extended Sabbath, which was every Saturday.

Gay was against the Christian tradition of attending church on Sunday, accusing Christians of violating God's commandment to keep the "Lord's Day", which he contended was Saturday.

According to Gay's daughter Jeanne, he was someone who never "spared the rod, he was very, very strict", in reference to the saying "spare the rod, spoil the child".

Gay also would question his children on Biblical passages, administering beatings if they answered wrong.

All four of Gay's children had problems with bed wetting, which led to more beatings.

Gay administered most of his harshest punishments on Marvin Jr. According to Marvin's sister, Jeanne, from the age of seven well into his teenage years, Marvin's life consisted of "brutal whippings", since Gay would strike him for any shortcoming, including putting his hairbrush in the wrong place or coming home from school a minute late.

Marvin later stated, "It wasn't simply that my father beat me, though that was bad enough. By the time I was twelve, there wasn't an inch on my body that hadn't been bruised and beaten by him."

He also said that "living with Father was like living with a king, an all-cruel, changeable, cruel and all-powerful king".

He further stated to David Ritz, "if it wasn't for Mother, who was always there to console me and praise me for my singing, I think I would have been one of those child suicides you read about in the papers."

In 1970, Gay fathered a son named Antwaun Carey with another woman, as a result of one of his extramarital affairs.

On one of his first missions as preacher at a church in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Gay impressed the congregation, and his church later made him Bishop.

According to his son Marvin, his father was known as a healer.

Gay eventually settled as a minister of a local House of God church.

When his son was around four or five, his father brought him to church congregations and revivals to sing for audiences.

According to relatives, the elder Marvin Gay was a passable self-taught piano player.

He bought a secondhand piano at a rummage sale and coached his son in piano lessons, which the younger Marvin Gay learned by ear, and it was one of the few stable times in the father and son's relationship.

Marvin Sr. nurtured Marvin Jr.'s musical talents, so long as he stuck with liturgical music.

Alberta Gay later stated that her husband hated Marvin, as she told David Ritz in 1979:

"My husband never wanted Marvin, and he never liked him. He used to say he didn't think he was really his child. I told him that was nonsense. He knew Marvin was his. But for some reason, he didn't love Marvin, and what's worse, he didn't want me to love Marvin either. Marvin wasn't very old before he understood that."

Conversely, Gay said this about Marvin:

"It was important that I have a male child. A namesake is what I wanted. The day he was born, I felt he was destined for greatness. I thanked God for the blessing of his life. I thanked God for Marvin. I knew he was a special child."

According to Jeanne Gay, her father never held a job for longer than three years.

He was the father of recording artists Marvin Gaye and Frankie Gaye and gained notoriety after shooting and killing his son Marvin on April 1, 1984, following an argument at their home.