'Inner City' Robbery?

I touted the great new doc Searching for Sugarman a couple of days ago here, and watching it I did wonder: The lost, ripped-off, redeemed performer Rodriquez recorded a song called "Inner City Blues" a year, or at least a few months, before Marvin Gaye's different and fantastic song of 1971--of the same title.   They both hailed from Detroit.  Make me wanna holla? Coincidence?

A piece about the film in The New Yorker last month found an even more amazing fact--a musician who played on the Rodriguez track also played on the Gaye track.  Did he mention the song or title to Marvin?  I waited for the punch line.  No, the musician replied.  I can't even remember Rodriguez, let alone his song....That obscurity is as much a fit with the movie as any theft might have been.  In any case: the two songs are decidedly different.   Here's the Rodriguez song.