Edward Benjamin Townsend, born in Fayetteville on April 16, 1929, became a singer, songwriter, producer, attorney, and educator whose 50-year career included writing 250 published songs, scoring two Hot 100 hits as an artist, producing performers including the Impressions, and teaching disadvantaged teenagers about the music business and addiction issues. After his father, an African Methodist Episcopal minister, moved the family to Memphis, Townsend traveled abroad, studied at Wilberforce University, graduated with a law degree from Arkansas State College, and joined the Marine Corps in 1951. While stationed in Korea, he was overheard singing by an advance man for Horace Heidt, who encouraged him to pursue music, and after his discharge Townsend went to Los Angeles to work in the record business, producing artists, writing songs for his Encino label, and recording under his own name for several West Coast labels. In 1958, his pop ballad “For Your Love” for Capitol Records reached No. 13 on the Hot 100, and his follow-up, a revival of “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” reached No. 58 and became his last hit as a performer, though he continued recording sporadically into the 1970s. Turning to production and songwriting, he moved to New York in 1963 to become musical director of the Scepter and Wand labels, wrote and produced Theola Kilgore's “The Love of My Man” for Scepter's Serock imprint, and later guided Marvin Gaye through contract negotiations with Motown Records before presenting him with “Let's Get It On,” which Gaye reworked from Townsend's original draft about recovery from alcoholism into the title song of a classic album of erotic expression. Townsend cowrote and coproduced side one of Marvin Gaye's 1973 album Let's Get It On, whose title track became a No. 1 pop and rhythm and blues hit, while the album reached No. 2 on the pop LP chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart, was ranked among Rolling Stone magazine's 500 greatest albums of all time, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004. He later collaborated with Gaye on Here, My Dear, wrote and produced for Curtis Mayfield's Curtom Records including the Impressions' last Top 20 pop hit, “Finally Got Myself Together,” started a mentoring program in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, composed “Rehabilitation: Been There! Done That!,” made his last major stage appearance in May 2000 on the PBS special “Rock, Rhythm and Doo-Wop,” and died in San Bernardino, California, on Aug. 13, 2003.