Soul singers don’t come much better than Marvin Gaye and this deep cut comes from a session in 1967 – the year he brought us his best known tune, I Heard It Through The Grapevine.

As so often in his songs, if not his life, Marvin has been left by a woman and is not enjoying the experience of being deprived of love and affection.

This Love Starved Heart of Mine (It’s Killing Me) is the only released Marvin Gaye song to have been written by the Lewis sisters, Helen and Kay – a pair of 1950s jazz singers turned Motown hitmakers for the likes of Gladys Knight.

Not that they had Marvin in mind at the time.

The duo originally wrote the song for Al Wilson, the singer of northern soul classics The Snake and Show And Tell – and he even recorded it – but Motown failed to sign him to the label.

The song, credited variously to producer Harvey Fuqua or Johnny Brisdtol, lay undiscovered in the Motown vaults for decades until it appeared on a 1994 compilation.