The sound of young America, Motown. With a vast galaxy of stars orbiting Detroit, visionary Berry Gordy, Jr. put the soul into the 1960s, lending the music of the Motor City’s urban streets and housing projects to a vibrant rock and roll symphony in harmony with the British invasion, California surf music, and Dylan’s political anthems. In the civil rights era, Motown elevated the African American experience by selling a lot of records, a Black-owned label and entertainment company whose artists dominated the Top 40. And through AM radio, Motown completed rock’s cross-over appeal while melodically influencing racial sensibilities that shaped America’s exploding youth culture.
So, stop in the name of love. I’m Joel Rhodes “Telling History.”
Berry Gordy founded Motown in 1959 when white teenagers were discovering Little Richard and Chuck Berry on the radio. Gordy’s musical and business genius – not unlike his contemporary Dick Clark – was to further smooth – critics said “whiten” – rock’s harder racial edge to make it more marketable. The first record company created by, and for, rock and roll, Motown is an excellent example of how this musical genre has always been both a shrewd commercial enterprise and genuine art form. And by the early sixties, the Black-owned and family-operated record company masterfully reconciled these often-dichotomous impulses.
Motown was a prolific hit making factory. Calculating and exacting, Berry Gordy managed and polished virtually every detail of his performers’ career and stage craft – grooming, etiquette, speaking, manners, choreography – intentionally producing safe, noncontroversial Black artists primed for crossover success with white audiences. In a very real sense, this upbeat, nonthreatening dance music facilitated racial integration at a combustible moment in American history.
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Temptations, Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, The Jackson 5.
Gordy coached these performers on a standardized, and instantly recognizable, Motown soul sound, strong vocal harmonies and looped melodies drawn heavily from Black gospel music’s call-and-response and the syncopation of bebop jazz.
The inhouse team of Lamont Dozier and brothers Eddie and Brian Holland, wrote, arranged and produced some the 1960s most memorable 45s. Before leaving the label in 1968, Holland–Dozier–Holland perfected and defined Gordy’s gameplan.
“Baby Love,” “Where Did Our Love Go?,” “I Can’t Help Myself,” “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Heat Wave,” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” “Can I Get Witness.”
Seventy-nine Motown records reached Billboard’s top 10 in the sixties, Holland–Dozier–Holland wrote 25 number one singles. Truly, Hitsville, USA.
Although Motown’s golden age coincided with the civil rights movement and Vietnam War, Gordy strategically steered his performers and their music away from those divisive issues as a matter of business philosophy.
That is, except for Marvin Gaye who mostly remained aloof from social and political commentary… up until the time he didn’t. Headstrong and socially conscious, Gaye wrote “What’s Goin’ On” in response to police brutality against activists and the war’s devastating impact. Against Motown’s prime directive of avoiding politics and controversy, Marvin Gaye issued an ultimatum, refusing to make any new music until Gordy released it. Eventually a million-seller, the album also featured “Inner City Blues” and “Mercy, Mercy Me,” some of the most powerful protest music of the sixties.
