One major engine of change for the development of modern Popular Music in the West was the emergence of Motown Records. As one commentator observed: ‘This organisation is built on love,’ thirty five year old Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, told Newsweek in early 1965. ‘We’re dealing with feeling and truth’. More than that, Motown had a massive impact on the Pop music industry and US culture by introducing radical organising and marketing programmes for its artists and in doing so also radically promoted racial integration in America. For these reasons, Motown's emergence was a massive ingredient in the nature of the evolving global Pop industry. |
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Berry Gordy And His 'Motown' Berry Gordy started his career in the music industry producing and songwriting. The son of an Afro- American entrepreneur, in 1957, Gordy had his first success with the song ‘Reet Petite’, recorded by Jackie Wilson. The next year he wrote the very successful ‘Lonely Teardrops’ for Wilson and established the Jobete Music Publishing Company. Meanwhile he also began to produce records such as the Miracles’ ‘Get a Job’. In 1959, Gordy borrowed money from his family and rented an eight-room house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, and founded the Motown Record Corporation, which began to issue records under a variety of labels. Gordy initially recorded R & B artists on Tamla Records and signed many African-American acts. He scored a minor hit with the first Tamla release, R&B singer Marv Johnson’s ‘Come To Me’. Later during his first year of operation he co-wrote and released ‘money’ which had significant success on the R&B chart. In September 1959, the Motown founder recorded ‘Bad Girl’ by William ‘Smokey’ Robinson and the Miracles, a song that reached 93 on the pop-charts. Convinced that Motown should distribute its own records, Gordy went national with his own product with great success. In 1960, Gordy co-wrote and distributed ‘Shop Around’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. It hit the top of the charts and finally established Motown as an important independent company. Throughout the next four years, Gordy continued to produce hits by capitalising on the 'girl group' craze at that time. In 1959, he signed Mary Wells who had a string of top hits – the best known in 1964, when she topped the charts with ‘My Guy’. The Marvelettes were also signed and had a massive hit with ‘Please Mr Postman’ Motown’s first No 1. The Marvelettes also toured and played a lot for many integrated audiences. Other all girl groups signed included Martha and the Vandellas, who performed as backup singers on many Motown hits, and then hit the charts in 1963 with ‘Come and Get These Memories’ and then followed up with huge hits such as ‘Heat Wave’ and ‘Quicksand’. |
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Shop Around
The Marvelettes - Please Mr Postman |
The Sound Of Integration It was in 1964, when Berry Gordy began to assemble the parts of a music machine to create a distinctive Motown sound, which in time reflected and futhered the integration of African Americans into white America. Gordy always supported the Martin Luther King's peaceful integrationist program. In 1963, he released a recorded version of King’s ‘I Had A dream’ speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln memorial at the end of the march on Washington DC. He also recorded another album of King’s speeches, 'Great March to Freedom', which captured the civil rights leader in a Detroit march. All in all, Motown was a very strong backer of Martin Luther King’s total program. In Detroit, Berry felt Motown’s job was to make young blacks aware of their culture, of the problems they faced and some of the ways out of these problems. Motown aimed to showcase their its artists to young black kids and get them off the streets and perhaps inspire them to maybe live up to the imagery Motown projected which offered an avenue for escape and hope. |
Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream
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The Supremes Primary among these were the Supremes, a girl group that eventually fulfilled Berry Gordy’s dream of a polished African-American act that sang gospel-based pop to both American blacks and whites. After the Supremes were duly ‘polished and trained’, by Gordy's 'Motown machine' they began to produce some incredible hits from 1964 onwards including ‘Where Did Our Love Go' which topped both the pop and R&B charts. Following other great acts, they also appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. Wearing sleek, light blue Chandelier gowns, they embodied the Motown image of the slick, cultivated African-American entertainers and overnight became pop stars. Other hits included Baby Love, Come See About Me, You Can’t Hurry love, Stop In The Name Of Love, You Keep Me Hanging On, I Hear A Symphony, and many others. |
The Supremes - You Keep Me Hanging On
The Supremes - Baby Love
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Gordy specially groomed and cultivated streetwise teens from Detroit to make them acceptable to mainstream America. Gordy hired a team of stylists and others who ran finishing schools, as well as choreographers, to train and prep his performers – to polish the rough edges off them to sophisticate them in all dimensions so they could play to all audiences. In other words – to train them to be able to perform in Buckingham Palace or the White House as well as normal audiences. Above all, he sought to train all his performers into polished professionals, who could speak and conduct themselves with dignity, and dressed well with good postures, to have the correct attitudes and make up, correct stage technique – in general how to be well rounded professionals who could sing and even act. Gordy retained control of the successful group (the Supremes) by creating a family atmosphere and strictly monitoring and controlling their private lives and bank balances. Moreover, he even restricted them from dating. |
The Songwriting Team The songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, joined forces in 1962, and perfected the formula of success they discovered with their composition, ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’. From late 1964 to 1967, they wrote a series of number one hits which rivaled the chart success of the Beatles.’ Dozier commented- ‘ We knew we had stumbled onto a sound (for the Supremes). You’ll notice we patterned ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Come See About Me’ right after our first hit. In fact, all the Supremes' big hits were really children of ‘Where Did Our Love Go’. The different singles sounded remarkably similar because of the in-house rhythm section known as the Funk Brothers, who played on most of the Supremes recording sessions. Along with a few other musicians who joined them occasionally in the studio, the Funk Brothers provided the trade mark percussive beat of the Motown sound. |
Motown's - The Funk Brothers
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