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Berry Gordy
b. 1929
The boxer who built a hit factory on West Grand Boulevard
He left Northeastern High School in the eleventh grade to box professionally, on the theory that it was the fastest way to get rich. Berry Gordy Jr. was the seventh of eight children born to a Georgia couple who came north in the Great Migration and built a grocery store, a printing shop, and a plastering business in Detroit. He fought until the Army drafted him in 1951 for Korea. Home again, he opened a jazz record store that failed because his customers kept asking for blues, then took a job on the Lincoln-Mercury assembly line. What he saw there he never stopped describing: a bare frame went in one end and a finished car came out the other. He wanted that, for singers.
In 1959 he borrowed 800 dollars from the Ber-Berry Co-op, the savings fund his family ran, and bought a photography studio at 2648 West Grand Boulevard. Hitsville U.S.A. ran 22 hours a day. One house band, the Funk Brothers, played on nearly everything. Friday morning quality control meetings voted records up or down, with Gordy holding the veto. An artist development department drilled diction, choreography, and etiquette. Out of that house came Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson 5.
Motown sold itself as the Sound of Young America, and the phrase was a strategy. Gordy aimed his records at white radio and shaped his acts to be received there, and critics then and since have called that a compromise, arguing that the polish sanded something off and that the grittier Southern soul coming out of Memphis was the truer article. Gordy's answer was that the mainstream was the point, that Black artists locked out of it gained nothing from authenticity. The business terms are a separate argument and a harder one. Holland-Dozier-Holland fell out with him over royalties and profit-sharing in 1967, and the litigation that followed ran until 1977. Florence Ballard signed away her claim to the Supremes name and her royalties, sued for more, and lost.
On June 14, 1972, Motown announced it was moving everything to Los Angeles. Some artists and Funk Brothers went. The Detroit operation never recovered, and many people who loved the label date its decline to the day the trucks left. Gordy sold his interest in Motown Records to MCA and Boston Ventures in 1988 for 61 million dollars, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the same year. The National Medal of Arts followed in 2016, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2021. Hitsville is a museum. What he built is not in dispute. What it cost the people who built it with him still is.
Lifespan
Berry Gordy's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.
Notable works
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Tamla Records
company
Started on 800 dollars borrowed from the Ber-Berry Co-op family savings fund 1959 -
Money (That's What I Want)
song
Written with Janie Bradford and cut by Barrett Strong 1959 -
Motown Record Corporation
company
Incorporated April 14, 1960 at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit 1960 -
Shop Around
song
Written with Smokey Robinson, the label's first million-selling single 1960 -
Lady Sings the Blues
other
The Billie Holiday film he produced, which got Diana Ross an Oscar nomination 1972 -
To Be Loved
other
His autobiography, subtitled The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown 1994
Life in brief
with age at each point- November 28, 1929 aged 0 Born in Detroit, the seventh of eight children His parents had come north from Oconee, Georgia, in 1922.
- May 1952 aged 22 Arrives in Korea with the 58th Field Artillery Battalion He later served as a chaplain's assistant, driving a jeep and playing the organ at the front.
- 1953 aged ~24 Opens the 3-D Record Mart, a jazz shop in a blues town It failed. He went looking for work at the Lincoln-Mercury plant.
- August 1957 aged 27 Jackie Wilson releases "Reet Petite", his first hit as a songwriter Written with his sister Gwen Gordy and Billy Davis.
- January 12, 1959 aged 29 Tamla Records begins operating on an 800-dollar family loan Smokey Robinson had pushed him to stop leasing his records to other labels.
- April 14, 1960 aged 30 Tamla and Motown merge into the Motown Record Corporation
- 1967 aged ~38 Holland-Dozier-Holland break with him over royalties and profit-sharing Motown sued for breach of contract, they countersued, and the case was not settled until 1977.
- June 14, 1972 aged 42 Motown announces it is moving all operations to Los Angeles Esther Gordy Edwards stayed behind and kept Studio A intact. It is now the Motown Museum.
- June 28, 1988 aged 58 Sells Motown Records to MCA and Boston Ventures for 61 million dollars He entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the same year.
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