"Because of the importance of its industry Automotive, Detroit is nicknamed the Motor City a long time. As I was talking primarily to people of rural origin who came from southern states, I decided to replace "city" with "town", which is of advantage to think about a small town, and contraction of Motor Town Motown gave the word. " Berry Gordy 
With Stax in Memphis, Motown in Detroit and Los Angeles, has shaped the future of black popular music from the early sixties and 'disco arrived five years later. But while Stax remained true to the roots of culture African-American based on the fervor of black gospel and philosophy nonchalant blues, Motown was inspired by the transmutation of rhythm & blues rock & roll at the height of the Eisenhower era to produce an urban soul, both benign and developed, capable of conquering the American public at a time for relations between communities. Ultimately, Motown was integrated into daily American just like Broadway, to the point of cultural reference is today obliged, as evidenced by the recent example George Tenet, omnipotent CIA director, who calmed his nerves with the aftermath of September 11, 2001, singing loudly standards Motown in his office between meetings of crisis in the White House. But even more than the characterization of a style, Motown is a success story and a man, Berry Gordy, who put his intelligence and intuition in the service of his ambition and intuition in the service of his ambition to escape the mediocrity of existence that awaited him in the ghetto of Detroit. Until his company was acquired by MCA in 1988, the fate of Motown turned exclusively exceptional carrying a visionary project.
Since he entered the world of rhythm & blues writing some success for Jackie Wilson (Reet Petite, Lonely Teardrops), this former boxer and jazz record shop worker became a requirement by including the universe the song is different and that the law is inevitably the stronger side, a fact that disturbs him deeply. Nature is rebellious, Gordy did not see why the record industry would continue to make huge profits on the backs of these small producers Afro-American which he is the archetype. In Chicago, the growing success of Vee-Jay Records, a company founded and run by blacks, proves that show business was not the white monopoly of commercial success. Yet, Vee-Jay can not escape the limited scope of the black community and understands the need Gordy "integrate" its production if it wants to reach ninety percent of the remaining America.
The recent example of rock and roll shows him the way forward while enlightening about the nature of the pitfalls to avoid, by borrowing rhythms purely African-American to give priority to white artists, the profession has given birth to a universal phenomenon that revolutionized popular music. To prevent such looting from happening again, Gordy intends to erase the features most "ethnic" rhythm & blues to keep only the specific elements of rhythm, obliterating any sexual connotation to give his repertoire a freshness and naivety reserved until the white variety. If Sam Phillips who discovered Elvis Presley, has always said that his fortune would be made the day he would find a white singer capable of assimilating the vitality of black blues, Berry Gordy knows that success awaits those who will make the public appreciate black artists seamlessly integrated, enabling the American dream.
To achieve his ends, he must first find the money, which he did early in 1959 borrowing eight hundred dollars to the reserve fund family fed by his many brothers and sisters, after a showdown with his elder Esther who criticized him for thirty years to maintain chimeras adolescent. With this sum, he created the label Tamla - a name inspired by the standard Tammy Debbie Reynolds - on which he recorded his first artist, Marv Johnson. When Come to Me shows some signs of success, Gordy did not have the necessary means of distribution and must sell the rights to his artist at United Artists, death in the soul.
For eighteen months, the pattern is repeated several times. To move to the next step by publishing and distributing itself hits it starts to generate (Barrett Strong Money is a case in 1960), he must find moral support from William "Smokey "Robinson, a young singer and songwriter crossed in 1957. This meeting will change their two lives. "It's Berry who taught me to write a song and give it meaning," to remember Smokey. "I've always been good at making rhymes, but my songs had no continuity. Berry showed me how to tell real stories around a coherent theme, with a beginning, middle and conclusion. "Passionate song since childhood, Robinson founded a group with some classmates at Northern High School, originally dubbed the Matadors, they become the Miracles on the advice of Gordy and carry him to a first 45-T entitled Got a Job, assigned End Records in New York. The day when Berry and Smokey are mailed a check for three dollars and nineteen cents in return for their labor, they decided to build around a real Tamla label. A new common composition and performed by the Miracles Shop Around, gives them the means by moving the top of the charts R & B and Pop charts in second place early in 1961, a crossover success that validates the outset Policy Editorial imagined by Gordy.
development of his company through the recruitment of new interpreters. After obtaining the results commercially mixed with Blind Sammy Ward and Mable John in a similar vein of the blues, Gordy focuses on artists from beginners softer soul, which he says compositions carried by easily memorable melodies around romance commonplace that everyone can s identify. After the Miracles, the Marvelettes (Please Mr. Postman) in 1961, Contours (Do You Love Me) Mary Wells (You Beat Me To The Punch) and Marvin Gaye (Stubborn Kinda Fellow) in 1962, Martha & the Vandellas ( Heat Wave, Quicksand) and Stevie Wonder (Fingertips - Pt 2) in 1963 confirms the reputation of the firm in Detroit until the Supremes, The Four Tops, the Temptations, the Elgin, and Shorty Long finally ensure its future.
Berry Gordy is not only a talented producer, is also a virtuoso of the organization and a prudent manager who does not let itself be influenced by its success in administering the company. In particular, he runs his business from his home, buying at 2648 West Grand Boulevard a cottage on two levels in which he mixes his family life and his art. To tame the chance, give it a name Gordy prophetic Hitsville, USA
With time and as and as the success allows him to develop the building and buying houses nearby, will host Hitsville studios and offices, to eventually become the seat of the first label of Afro-American countries. In the meantime, after Tamla , other labels are emerging one after another - Gordy, Soul and Rare Earth VIP - all clustered around a single banner, that of Motown. Gordy applied on an almost industrial recipe that was used to construct the initial success of the Miracles, defining what was soon called "the Motown sound . For the directory of artists, he uses the services of songwriters employees who work exclusively for him. Gordy generally prefers to work in teams, to better control the quality of their work, risking a certain standardization. The trio flagship of his empire consists of two brothers, Brian and Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier associated. From 1963, HDH (for Holland-Dozier-Holland) become the privileged authors of Martha & the Vandellas, the Four Tops, of Elgin, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye and the Supremes, creating the chain of international hits: Baby Love, Come See About Me, How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), It's The Same Old Song, Nowhere to Run, Reach Out I'll Be There, Stop! In the Name of Love, Where Did Our Love Go ... In total, thirty of their compositions will be entitled to the honors of Top 10 Pop, allowing the name of Motown to circumnavigate the world.
In the studio, the same systematic rigor, while an orchestra was formed welded and extremely inventive, capable of recording the chain behind the major Motown stars with the blessing of his musical director Maurice King former conductor of the Flame Show Bar home. Led by pianist Earl Van Dyke, the Funk Brothers rhythm section of drummer Benny Benjamin includes bassist James Jamerson and and a series of guitar including Joe Messina, Eddie Ellis and Robert White. For arrangements, it is for Hank Cosby and Gil Askey, while the choruses are provided mostly by secretaries, each putting his hand to the dough when it comes to advancing the various departments of the business entrusted to that Gordy mostly to his brothers and sisters. As enriched as the winners of Motown and new artists recruited (Brenda Holloway, Junior Walker, Jimmy Ruffin, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Spinners, Edwin Starr, Undisputed Truth ...), Gordy expanded the team that supports him. If he himself supervised the entire production of Smokey Robinson's debut with the multiplication of the sessions required to appeal to new producers in the first half of the 1960s: Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier, of course, but also Norman Whitfield, who took over the artistic direction of Motown, William "Mickey" Stephenson, Barrett Strong, Clarence Paul, Ivy Hunter, Johnny Bristol, Harvey Fuqua and later Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Frank Wilson, Hal Davis and Marvin Gaye.
Gordy's intelligence is that he understood early on that disk is not sufficient to guarantee the success of its artists. For having observed how Colonel Parker was managing the rise of Elvis Presley, he knows the scene and promotion - especially television - can make and break careers. This observation led him to develop a school for the show, Artist Development, told Harvey Fuqua. Edited by Cholly Atkins, the Temptations or the Supremes choreography work developed, while Maxine Powell gives Motown stars maintenance courses to teach them to smile, to be held in public, answering questions with wit journalists and television hosts, to be tactful in all circumstances. Gordy for this is to reassure middle America by proving that all African Americans are not aggressive.
Finally, the skill with which he built his empire is a reflection of his talents as a businessman. In addition to its various labels, the armed wing of his empire is its music publishing company, Jobet Music, which must be added the company Organizing shows International Talent Management, as many complementary strengths that enable it to garner the dollars at all levels of the chain, writing for the stage. In 1965, Motown employs one hundred people in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles, and the turnover of the company amounts to eight million dollars, making the boss Gordy Afro-America's most powerful American a success that benefits first and foremost to his family.
In contrast, his main collaborators are not always treated with the same consideration, even if memories contradictory spoke about it. However, it is undeniable that some discontent is emerging in the Motown stable , most artists of the company having imprudently signed unfavorable contracts. If some do not hesitate to go when they are released from their obligations, others use their celebrity to renegotiate their future. This is the case of Stevie Wonder that threatens to leave Motown, the day of his majority and ended up getting a royalty rate and an acceptable total artistic freedom in the studio. Things did not go favorably in the case HDH of which have slammed the door at the end of 1967, holding that their pay was not up to what they brought to the company. The break is when Gordy their claims four million dollars in damages, prompting the immediate response of the trio's lawyers, whose requirements are five times higher, and the trial will succeed until the mid-1970s.
Gordy reveals nothing of these problems out, sticking to a policy of showing a reassuring face whatever the circumstances, even washing his dirty linen family. Always very attentive to his image, he usually plays on all fronts: vis-à-vis the show business, it is a responsible partner who never calls into question the usual practice of a profession largely driven by the white establishment ; the same time, to defuse any criticism within the black community, he published on Motown speeches of Martin Luther King in 1963.
The radicalization of the black movement in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. King forced Gordy to greater clarity in his positions. Forum for Black, he publishes texts opposed the war in Vietnam and manifests virulent against exploitation Blacks in America from Nixon. It is true no late pays more militant manages to consequences, the entire American intelligentsia as having taken up the cause of the minority Afro-American at the turn of the decade. In artistic terms, the net shift in policy Motown is a much more credible extension through the works of social consciousness and politics that is the album What's Going On - or protected from producer Norman Whitfield: Edwin Starr, Undisputed Truth, and the Temptations who suddenly give their records a funky color, radically different innocent harmonies of their debut.
If the sixties soul allowed the politically correct Motown to impose on the charts, the next decade is the result of capitalist Berry Gordy. For this complex and ambitious entrepreneur who, like Caesar on the eve of war in Gaul, was distressed to thirty years have not yet made a fortune, the supreme symbol of success is Hollywood, bearing alone the American dream. To approximate this Babylon he covets, Gordy takes advantage of the emergence of the Jackson 5, a group shaped moving to Los Angeles, California the headquarters of his company by bringing in aides like Smokey Robinson and Suzanne Depasse. This voluntary exile allows him to hang contact with the world of cinema that closed very quick to use his money to produce films like Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany, two productions with varying success showcasing his muse, Diana Ross .
For Gordy, the mere fact of finding his place in Hollywood is a personal victory, but it is not the same for Motown who gradually loses some of its biggest stars as and as its whitens coaching: The Four Tops in 1972, the Jacksons 5 three years later, followed by Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross at the beginning of next decade. This shift is even more disturbing that the film quickly reveals itself a dubious investment; Motown fortunately can count on to develop the production of television programs, support of the faithful few (Stevie Wonder, and to a lesser measure the Temptations) and happily on the arrival of new recruits as the Commodores (which will emerge eventually the personality of Lionel Ritchie), and then Rick James and Teena Marie.
When Motown festival with great fanfare its twenty-five years in 1983 with a show TV spectacular entitled Motown 25 , financial success is no doubt but the flame of the beginning is hardly a gleam, as evidenced by the recruitment of highly opportunistic actor Bruce Willis, singer questionable that his passion for soul has pushed into the arms of Berry Gordy. By selling his record company to MCA for $ 61 million while retaining his interests in music publishing, film and television, he has demonstrated in 1988 that his goal was economic, not artistic. Gordy's departure from Motown deprived much of its capacity innovations, its president Jheryl Busby merely giving an example the Four Tops to Today, as he sees in the Boys and Good Girls 5 and the Jacksons new Supremes. Today, the page is turned once, whereas Motown continues to evolve within the Universal group with new recruits (Boyz II Men, Erykah Badu, Profyle, India Arie ...), the building's original Hitsville Detroit has turned into a museum, freezing in the history of one of the essential chapters of soul music.
Motown (English)
Motown 50 (English)
Music
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Standing in the Shadows of Motown part.1
Standing in the Shadows of Motown part.3
Standing in the Shadows of Motown part.4
Biography taken from the book Encyclopedia of Rhythm & Blues and Soul Sebastian Danchin, Editions Fayard (2002).
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