From The New York Times:
Marv Tarplin, the Motown guitarist and songwriter who shaped the sound of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and was a co-writer of “The Tracks of My Tears” and other hits, died on Friday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 70.
The cause of death has not been determined, a spokeswoman for the Miracles, Jeanne Sorensen, said.
Mr. Tarplin had a knack for coming up with catchy riffs and melodies. He was fooling around with a calypso song he had heard Harry Belafonte sing, rearranging the chords, when he came up with the three-chord vamp that formed the backbone of the 1965 hit “The Tracks of My Tears,” for which Mr. Robinson wrote some of the most poignant lines in pop music.
Mr. Tarplin wrote much of the music for several other Miracles hits, including “My Girl Has Gone,” “Going to a Go-Go” and “The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage.”
He also collaborated on several songs that Marvin Gaye recorded. Two of the songs he wrote for Mr. Gaye (with Mr. Robinson and others) reached No. 1 on the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1965: “I’ll Be Doggone” and “Ain’t That Peculiar.”
• The Miracles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracles