Harvey Fuqua, who sang the doo-wop anthem Ten Commandments of Love with the Moonglows, introduced Marvin Gaye to Berry Gordy Jr and produced the classic disco recordings of Sylvester, was one of the key figures who oiled the wheels of black popular music during the burst of creative energy that swept the world in the 1950s and 60s. A singer, record producer and industry executive, he spanned several eras and was active until shortly before his death at the age of 80.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he was the nephew of Charlie Fuqua, a member of the Ink Spots, the internationally popular vocal quartet. In 1951, aged 22, Harvey and three friends – Prentiss Barnes, Bobby Lester and Alexander Graves – formed their own group, the Crazy Sounds. The following year they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, the headquarters of Alan Freed, the radio disc jockey whose show, Moondog's Rock and Roll Matinee, was already speaking to the nation's youth. Freed, an entrepreneurial type, rechristened them the Moonglows, released their first single on his own Champagne label, and retained an interest in their progress.
A move to Chicago brought them several releases on the Chance label, including a version of Doris Day's Secret Love, before they signed for the Chess label, run by the Polish immigrants Leonard and Phil Chess (originally Lejzor and Fiszel Czyz), who were becoming famous for their patronage of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and many other key figures in 1950s rhythm and blues. The Moonglows' first release on the label, a swooning doo-wop ballad called Sincerely, written by Fuqua and co-credited to Freed, and with Lester taking the lead vocal, reached No 1 on the US R&B hit parade in 1954, but the greater success of a cover version by the McGuire Sisters prevented them from rising above No 20 in the pop charts (the original version was later used by Martin Scorsese in his film Goodfellas).
In 1957 they appeared in Freed's exploitation film, Rock Rock Rock, alongside Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, before recording Ten Commandments of Love, in which Fuqua's lugubriously romantic lead vocal was dramatically counterpointed by the spoken words of the group's guitarist, Billy Johnson. Billed as by Harvey and the Moonglows, the song remains a doo-wop standard.
The following year, after a series of disagreements, the other members left the group and Fuqua recruited a new set of Moonglows, importing the members of a Washington DC group called the Marquees, who had been discovered by Bo Diddley and included a young drummer and singer named Marvin Gaye. Fuqua himself stepped aside from the group but continued to record for Chess as a solo artist and in duets with Lester, his former Moonglows colleague, and Etta James. In 1959 he appeared in another Freed film, Go Johnny Go, singing another of his compositions, the finger-popping Don't Be Afraid to Love Me, to the evident enthusiasm of his young white audience.
A tall, handsome and charismatic man, Fuqua lacked the distinctive voice to make him a front-line solo artist; instead he turned to backroom activities in the music business. A move to Detroit in 1959 put him in touch with the Gordy clan, initially through Gwen Gordy, a songwriter whose brother Berry was in the process of starting a record company. Fuqua married Gwen in 1961 and began an association with Berry, who was on the brink of forming the Tamla and Motown labels with a group of ambitious young local singers, songwriters and musicians.
While Berry was getting his project off the ground, Fuqua and Gwen started their own labels, Harvey and Tri-Phi, on which they issued records by Harvey's discoveries, including the Spinners (known in the UK as the Detroit Spinners), Shorty Long, Junior Walker and Ann Bogan (later a member of the Marvelettes). In 1963 the labels and their artists were absorbed into Berry's growing empire, and Fuqua became the head of the company's Artists and Repertoire office, responsible for signing new artists, to whom he became a mentor, and for overseeing the production process.
As well as Gaye, he brought the singer Tammi Terrell to the company, producing their duets Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Your Precious Love and If This World Were Mine in collaboration with his protege Johnny Bristol. He was a key figure at Hitsville USA, as Motown's headquarters became known, during the period in which the slogan "The Sound of Young America" carried the ring of absolute truth.
When Gordy decided to move the operation to Los Angeles in 1971, leaving many of his employees behind, Fuqua made a production deal with RCA Records. The deal resulted in several hit singles and six albums with New Birth, a group initially featuring Bogan. Later in the decade he produced a series of records featuring the gospel-trained gay singer Sylvester, including I (Who Have Nothing), You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) and Dance (Disco Heat), in which a talented young arranger, Patrick Cowley, added a new level of emotional drama to disco music and created the blueprint for a style known as Hi-NRG, a key influence on such later artists as Bronski Beat and the Pet Shop Boys.
When Gaye left Motown in 1982, after falling out with Gordy, he enlisted Fuqua to help him put the finishing touches to his first recordings for Columbia Records. The resulting album, Midnight Love, and a single, Sexual Healing, restored Gaye's popularity and earned two Grammy awards. In April 1984, however, Gaye was shot dead by his father during an argument between his parents.
In later years Fuqua lived in North Carolina and worked from time to time as the road manager for Smokey Robinson, another friend from the early days at Motown. The Moonglows occasionally reunited to perform at doo-wop revival shows, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Fuqua also became a trustee of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, set up to provide some of the music's pioneering figures with the financial rewards originally denied them by the larcenous business practices of the music industry. His death came in a Detroit hospital after a heart attack. Gwen, from whom he was divorced in the 1960s, died in 1999; he is survived by his second wife, Dr Carolyne Fuqua, the founder of the Circles of Light ministries and a teacher of Egyptian mysticism, and several children.