In 1959 Elvis dominated the airwaves, while Big Joe Turner,
Ruth Brown, and Jackie Wilson—the pioneers of rhythm-and-blues—were confined to
the lower reaches of the dial, paid a fraction of what the King made imitating
their sound. On December 14, 1959,
an entrepreneurial genius from Detroit
found a way to change that. He started Motown Records, which, with its
unbeatable sound and unmistakable style, would launch African-American
entertainers to the top of the charts and out of the “race records” ghetto.
Berry Gordy, Jr., was born in 1929
in Detroit, the grandson of a Georgia
slave. His parents had moved north as part of the Great Migration,
African-Americans leaving the South in search of industrial jobs. The migration
had brought with it not only labor but also jazz and blues, and Detroit
had a booming music scene. Gordy dropped out of high
school and tried to make it as a boxer before serving in the Korean War. He
returned from the war to an assembly-line job with Ford and wrote songs in his
free time. He eventually quit the job to write professionally for local groups
including the Matadors.
In 1959, egged on by the Matadors’ lead singer, a teenager
named Smokey Robinson, Gordy
borrowed $800 from his family to start a small record label called Tamla, later to be known as Motown. He reached into the
rich loam of Detroit’s jazz scene,
putting together a house band of musicians who had cut their teeth playing with
Charlie Parker, Muddy Waters, Sarah Vaughan, and Ray Charles. The band, which
called itself the Funk Brothers, was the heartbeat of Motown, taking the scraps
of music that arrangers gave it and building songs on the fly, layering up from
the drums. On the dirt floor of a garage at 2648 West
Grand Boulevard—Hitsville,
U.S.A—the musicians gathered daily, cranking out songs with assembly-line speed
and regularity. Martha Reeves, of Martha and the Vandellas,
described the time as “like a river constantly flowing—talent and creation
constantly flowing.”
Motown’s first No. 1 hit on the R & B charts was “Shop
Around,” by the Matadors, now renamed the Miracles. Cowritten
by Robinson and Gordy, it was a blues-inflected
number until Gordy pulled the musicans
in for a 2 a.m. recording session to
remake it. He wanted the song to appeal to a broader audience, so they turned
it into an upbeat pop confection with a swinging beat and a doo-wop inspired
chorus. That blending of styles became the foundation of the Motown sound.
The Motown sound was based on the lively swing of rhythm and
blues combined with tight harmonies reminiscent of gospel. The groove was
anchored fearlessly by the incomparable bass of James Jamerson
and the drummers Richard (“Pistol”) Allen and Benny Benjamin; Earl Van Dyke
played “gorilla piano,” pounding so forcefully that his instrument needed to be
tuned daily. Joe Messina, who cooked up the backbeat with his funk-inflected
guitar, remarked, “I think the magic was that we listened to each other . . .
and we liked one another.”
The relentlessly danceable music soon broke out of the R
& B charts with the Marvelettes’ catchy “Please
Mr. Postman,” which shot to No. 1 nationwide. With his core of virtuosic—and
unsung—musicians, Gordy was able to launch the
careers of the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Jackson
5, and the Four Tops. All had hits in the top 10. In fact, by the mid-1960s
three out of four Motown releases were charting, and 68 singles had sold more
than a million copies apiece. Gordy was the richest
African-American, with an annual income of more than $10 million in 1972.
He had a reputation for being overbearing and ignoring
musicians’ union regulations, but he was crafting groups from the bottom up,
teaching them how to speak, stand, and dress in addition to sing, turning
working-class Detroit natives into
debutantes. In a country just tentatively desegregating, he had to counter
stereotypes of black musicians as sexual predators. While Elvis gyrated, the
Four Tops played perfect gentlemen in matching suits. The smooth,
sophisticated, and stylish Motown royalty served as ambassadors to a white
world, effectively integrating music. The musician Ben Harper remarked in the
documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, “Motown
was America’s
introduction to soul music . . . and that’s a powerful music. It’s the music of
hope.”
Motown hits like “I Heard It Through
the Grapevine,” “Dancing in the Streets,” and “Where Did Our Love Go” had wide
appeal and jostled with white artists’ songs for spots on the top 10. In 1965 a
tour took Gordy’s Detroit
acts to sold-out shows in England
while the Beatles invaded America
covering Motown tunes.
In 1972 Gordy relocated Motown to Hollywood,
but many of the musicians who had formed the core of the in-house band stayed
behind, and the label lost some of its luster. During the 1970s there were some
successful new acts, such as Lionel Richie, but they didn’t
hit the top 10 as often. “Motown would have been better off with the record
thing if we had stayed in Detroit,”
Gordy eventually admitted. He sold Motown to MCA in
1988, and it remains an active label, with artists including India.Arie, Erykah Badu, and Stevie Wonder—the only
musician left from the days of classic Motown. But it is no longer the
independent powerhouse it once was.
Berry Gordy was the first black
entertainment mogul with anything like his eight record labels, production company, publishing company, and talent
management agency, all under his control. His savvy business sense and eye for
the perfect hook made him a model for the likes of Russell Simmons and Sean
(“P. Diddy”) Combs. But the most important legacy of
Motown was the music—gorgeous, accomplished pop that still swings after more
than 40 years.
—Elizabeth D. Hoover is a former editor at American Heritage
magazine.
12/15/05
Source: American Heritage Inc.
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