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The Sound Of Young America: The History of Motown

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Motown

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.

Motown Founder - Berry Gordy

The Supremes - Where Did Our Love Go

Sounding much like Martin Luther King , Jr., Berry Gordy created a music empire

some claim produced the ‘sound of racial integration’. In the mid 60s this emergent 

music empire exemplified the peaceful integration advocated by King and reflected the

progress of the Civil Rights movement. The African-American owned and operated

Detroit - based Motown was established a year before the first sit-in demonstration and

achieved some moderate success during the Civil rights strife of the early 1960s. 

However, using the assembly-line techniques of nearby auto-factories, Motown became

a major force in popular music from late 1964 to 1967, when Civil Rights activists 

achieved a number of significant legislative victories. During the time when the Civil 

Rights of African-Americans began to be recognized, Motown became the first African

American-owned label that consistently and successfully groomed, packaged, 

marketed, and sold the music of African-American youths to the white American 

masses, thereby furthering significant racial integration in the United States.

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’.

Berry Gordy

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Shop Around

The Marvelellets

The Marvelettes - Please Mr Postman

The next year they recorded the memorable ‘Dancing in The Street,’ which neared the

top of the pop chart and, along with hits by Mary Wells and the Marvelettes, positioned

Motown as a major source of the girl group sound.

Martha & The Vandellas - Heatwave

Martha & The Vandellas

Martha & The Vandellas - Dancing In The Street

As it was, the Motown heyday coincided with the many significant achievements 

attained by the Civil Rights Movement in those years, and Motown played a great role 

in integrating black and white fans and furthering racial harmony in the United States. 

Much of this was fueled by Gordy's hopes to produce an environment for the upward 

mobility of everyday African-Americans

The Music

Berry Gordy combined the polished image of the Motown acts with a gospel-based 

music that could appeal to the American mainstream. ‘Blues and R&B always had a 

funky look to it back in those days, and we at Motown felt that we should have a look 

that the mothers and fathers would want their children to follow. We wanted to kill the

imagery of liquor and drugs and how some people thought it pertained to R&B’, 

explained Motown producer Mickey Stevenson. 

‘I did not like the blues songs

 when choosing material for our

artists, and Berry agreed with

that,’ continued Stevenson. ‘We 

enjoyed John Lee Hooker and 

B.B. King just as much as the 

next guy, but we would reject 

anything that had a strong blues 

sound to it.’

In place of Blues and R&B, Gordy favoured a distinctive music themed around an

insistent, pounding rhythm section, with horns and tambourines punctuating and 

featuring echo-laden, shrill  vocals which bounced back and forth in the call-and-

response of Gospel. Building upon his experience with girl groups, he produced a full 

sound both reminiscent of and expanding upon Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Aiming

for the mass Pop market, Gordy called the music, ‘The Sound of Young Americas’ and

placed a huge sign over the Motown Studio that read ‘Hitsville U.S.A.’
 

Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound

Gordy & Hitsville USA

The Sound Of Motown

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

‘I saw Motown much like the world Dr King was fighting for,’ explained Gordy, ‘with 

people of different races and religions, working together harmoniously for a common 

goal.’ Indeed, Motown was a special place for African-Americans.

The Stable & The Assembly Line

During the three years that Motown was at its peak, it assembled an incredibly 

impressive stable of acts and an equally impressive means of ‘production’ of these acts 

to stardom and success.

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

The Supremes - Baby Love

The Supremes & The Machine

The Supremes very much became the 'guinea pigs' for Gordy's sculpting program that

transformed every day rough edged performers into international sophisticated stars

Using methods practiced in the Detroit auto factories, Berry Gordy developed a process

that ensured the continued success of the Supremes and other bands by assembling the

parts of a hit-making machine that included standardised songwriting, an in-house 

rhythm section, a quality control process, selective promotion, and a family atmosphere

reminiscent  of the paternalism fostered by Henry Ford in his auto plant during the early

twentieth century. ‘I worked in the Ford factory before I came into the record business,

and I saw how each person did a different thing’, Gordy reasoned. ‘And I said, ‘Why

can’t we do that with the creative process?’. It was just an idea of coming in one door

one day and going out the other door and having all these things done.’

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.

By the mid -1960s, Berry Gordy had assembled a Motown Team that could take poor

African-American youths from Detroit and teach them to talk, walk, dress, and dance 

like successful debutantes and debonair gentlemen. ‘I’m sure that blacks were wearing

tuxedos, top hats, wigs, and eyeleashes before Berry Gordy came along but not with

the popular music we were recording, and not for the same reasons,’ observed one 

Motown staffer. ‘We really wanted young blacks to understand that you do not have to 

look like you came out of the ghetto in order to be somebody other blacks and even 

whites would respect when you made it big. They’ll believe you had a rough

childhood; you don’t have to prove it to them by looking like hell.’

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.

The Funk Brothers

Motown's - The Funk Brothers

Berry Gordy attempted to maintain the consistent quality of Motown material (mostly 

of the Supremes) by conducting weekly meetings that closely scrutinised possible 

releases. These meetings were brutal in their quest for recording perfection. Gordy 

carefully promoted the songs, which were released through a marketing strategy that 

kept the slick Motown image intact. Besides spots on the Ed Sullivan show, he secured 

appearances for the Supremes on many other high profile programs on mainstream 

television. For concerts, he also got them gigs at many high class settings throughout 

the US as well as exclusive clubs and hotels, and arenas.

The Major Motown Acts All Received The 'Motown Treatment'

Apart from The Supremes, many other major acts recieved the Motown treatment 

including Mary Wells, William’Smokey’ Robinson, & The Miracles, Stevie Wonder, 

the Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and The 

Four Tops. They were all similarly groomed and provided with songs and thus hits from

the legendary Motown songwriting production crew.  In the end, as with the Supremes,

all benefited from the Motown finishing school,, the dance classes, the musical 

direction, and the promotion to become slick popular acts, which appealed to both 

white and African-American audiences. One member claimed: 'Because of Motown the

music merged, black and white music was brought together and solidified. The mixture 

was a turning point in our country – the music melted together, and that was great for 

social relations.’

The Temptations

Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing

Four Tops- Baby I Need Your Loving

Stevie Wonder

Wrap Up:

During the mid 1960s, Berry Gordy established a music empire that included eight 

record labels, a management service, and a publishing company. During the years 1964

to 1967, Motown placed 14 number one pop singles, 20 number one singles on the 

R&B charts, 46 more Top Fifteen pop singles, and 75 other Top Fifteen R & B records.

In 1966 alone, 75% of all Motown releases hit the charts. The next year Motown 

grossed $21 million, selling 70% of its records to whites. ‘It no coincidence’, one 

newspaper claimed, ‘that while  10,000 Negroes are marching for their civil rights in 

Alabama, the Tamla Motown star is on the ascendant.’ Berry Gordy, putting into action

the program of peaceful integration, created one of the most commercially successful 

African-American-owned enterprises and certainly the most successful African- 

American- owned  record company in US history.


However the Motown empire began to decline in 1967. Gordy fired some members of 

his biggest acts for questionable reasons and also quarreled about royalty rates with his

songwriting –production team which quit the company in 1968 and filed a suit against

Motown. By the time the inner cities exploded in rage and thousands of young college 

students took to the streets to protest against the war in Vietnam, the Motown machine

had begun to slow down.

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